Black Teachers and Students in Maryland

The cultural identity of the teacher standing in front of the classroom sends a very important message about what students can be when they grow up, experts say. Despite efforts to recruit minority teachers, Maryland has failed to keep pace with the percentage of minority students in classrooms. The problem is particularly acute for black teachers, where their ranks have fallen 4.5 percentage points to 16.57 percent of all teachers, while black students account for 35 percent of all students. The state average for the number of black students per black teacher is 31.

The Maryland State Department of Education added Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander and two or more races as self-reporting categories in 2010, which may contribute to a small degree of variation in the data.

Click on a county for more information.