The Effects of Educator Diversity Plans on Teacher Workforce Composition: Evidence from Arkansas and Tennessee

• In Event: New Evidence on Teacher Recruitment and Workforce Diversity

Abstract

Students of color now comprise more than half of K-12 public school enrollment, yet the teacher workforce has remained approximately 80% White for the past three decades (Grossman et al., 2025; Ingersoll & May, 2021). Despite this, empirical research increasingly links racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. teacher workforce to positive outcomes for both students, including higher academic achievement (Egalite et al., 2015), increased entry into gifted programs (Grissom & Redding, 2016), and fewer disciplinary infractions (Lindsay & Hart, 2017). However, access to a diverse educator workforce remains uneven. In Arkansas, roughly one-quarter of school districts do not employ a single ToC as a teacher of record (Criss et al., 2021). In Tennessee, roughly 45% of students are not taught by a single ToC in tested subjects from 3rd through 8th grade (Binsted & Grissom, 2025). Further, ToCs are more racially segregated across schools than students themselves (Hansen & Quintero, 2018). With this isolation, many students and educators are unlikely to experience the increasingly apparent benefits of educator diversity.

In response, several states have adopted educator diversity plan policies that require school districts to submit annual plans with goals and strategies to recruit and retain teachers of color (ToCs). This study evaluates whether such policies in Arkansas and Tennessee produced meaningful changes in the racial and ethnic composition of their school districts’ workforces. Adopting a synthetic difference-in-differences estimation strategy, I find that the Arkansas policy resulted in a 2.3 percentage point increase in the average district’s share of ToCs, translating to roughly 3.6 additional ToCs per district. Effects are largely driven by districts serving more than 5% students of color and districts with the largest teacher-student racial representation gaps. Tennessee’s policy produced no detectable effect. Findings indicate that low-cost regulations like diversity plan policies can increase workforce diversity, but their effectiveness likely depends on district incentive, capacity, and economic and political contexts.

Author

• Jacob Rubin, Vanderbilt University
  Presenting Author