Racial Group Staff Disparities in NJ School Districts

2007-02-R3

(Copyrighted 2007 by Don M. Tow)

 

Using public domain data (http://www.state.nj.us/njded/data/) from the NJ Department of Education (DOE), I have performed an analysis of the racial group (RG) distributions for the students and certificated staff of several school districts in NJ, and have found that there are systemic racial group staff disparities in NJ.

For example, for the Middletown Township School District (where I live), the results are shown below.

Middletown Township School District:  2004-2005*
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
92.0	97.6	1.8	1.0	3.5	1.4	2.6	0.0	0.2	0.0
Total number of students = 10,272.
Total number of certificated staff = 913.
*  Data came from the NJ Department of Education (DOE) web site:  http://www.state.nj.us/njded/data/

 

The above table clearly shows that for all minority RGs, the % of certificated staff is substantially less than the % of students in Middletown.  The NJ DOE website contains data from 1999-2000 to 2004-2005 (it also contains the student data for 1998-1999 and 2005-2006, but no certificated staff data for those two years).  The above disparities basically have remained steady during these years.  The NJ DOE website does not provide RG data for the non-certificated staff.

I have also done a similar analysis of five other school districts in the central NJ area, and have found similar disparities.  These five districts are Asbury Park City, Edison, Holmdel, Long Branch City, and Marlboro.  Their number of students/certificated staff are, respectively, 2812/427, 13563/1248, 3561/291, 5401/585, and 6012/492.  With a few small exceptions, all minority RGs in all the school districts that we have analyzed are under-represented.  The analysis results for these other five school districts are shown in the next table.

 

Asbury Park City School District:  2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
1.7	66.0	79.6	31.4	18.4	2.1	0.3	0.2	0.0	0.2
Edison School District:  2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
38.5	89.3	8.6	2.6	8.2	5.0	44.5	3.0	0.1	0.0
Holmdel School District:  2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
76.8	96.6	0.5	1.0	1.2	0.3	21.3	2.1	0.3	0.0
Long Branch City School District:  2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
33.1	83.1	31.4	9.9	33.9	5.6	1.5	1.2	0.1	0.2
Marlboro School District:  2004-2005
White		Black		Hispanic		Asian		Native American
% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff	% of Stud.	% of Staff
74.4	94.5	2.1	1.2	3.1	3.3	20.3	1.0	0.1	0.0

What are the major reasons for the above under-representation?  Without access to appropriate data (e.g., data on recruiting and hiring policies and procedures and the corresponding statistics), we do not know for certain.  We speculate that the reasons may include:

• Small pool of qualified staff from these minority RGs
• Lack of proper advertisements of openings that can adequately reach these minority RGs
• Assessment standards that may not be fair to minority RGs
• Interviewing and selection biases, including subtle ones.

We urge the NJ DOE and the various school districts to look into this issue, and find solutions that can remove the above under-representations of minority RGs, thus providing a fairer and richer diversified staff to serve the diversified student population in NJ.

The conclusion is that it seems that the under-representation of minority RGs at the certificated staff level is a systemic issue in NJ, and is not limited to just a few school districts in NJ.

 

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