Philadelphia public schools have lost nearly 1,200 Black teachers over the last two decades, mirroring a widening gap between the amount of students and educators of color in Pennsylvania.
A report from Research for Action, a nonprofit that conducts education research, found that more than 1,400 schools in the state employed zero teachers of color during the 2020-21 school year. As the percentage of students of color continues to grow, the disparity appears to have widened further.
From 2013 to 2021, the percentage of students of color in Pennsylvania increased from 30.5% to 36.6%. Meanwhile, the percentage of teachers of color increased from 5.4% to 6.2%. That means the number of students of color was 5.9 times greater than the percentage of teachers of color.
