What Do We Do

History

Established in 2001, the Vermont Teacher Diversity Scholarship Program is a non-profit loan cancellation program that supports students from diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds who want to enter the teaching profession. The VTDSP works in conjunction with all major Vermont institutions of higher education, and partners with seventeen school districts covering every county in the state. In addition, we have formed partnerships with a number of statewide organizations.

Why do public schools in Vermont
need to be thinking about teacher diversity?

In the years between 1998 and 2008, public school enrollment reported amongst all minorities in Vermont has risen substantially. The race/ethnicity categories of Black, American Indian or Alaskan, Asian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic, and Other/Multi-Racial represent a total enrollment number of 5,700, or 6.06% of Vermont’s 94,114 public school enrollment population. In FY08, the two largest minority groups were Asian or Pacific Islander and Black, with enrollments of 1,611 and 1,565 respectively. These two groups comprised 55.7% of Vermont’s elementary and secondary minority enrollment population. The largest growth in public school ethnicity enrollment has been reported in the Hispanic category with a compounded annual growth rate of 9.52%.

Certain areas of Vermont in particular are rapidly becoming more diverse. Post 9/11 in-migration from urban areas of the nation and foreign lands has brought new faces, new languages, and new opportunities in communities such as Brattleboro, Burlington, Springfield, Rutland, and Winooski. Learning to interact in a culturally diverse world is part of each student’s success as a 21st century learner, regardless of whether s/he is bound for higher education endeavors or the US workforce. Vermont’s lack of teacher diversity denies all students the opportunities to learn about themselves and other cultures.

The most recent US Census (2000) indicates that there were 261 teachers of color in Vermont. The same census data indicate that there were 13,138 education professionals (not including paraprofessionals) and roughly 100,000 students in Vermont schools. These figures indicate a ratio of white to non-white education professionals is 98:2, and suggests that the chance of a student of color being in a classroom with a teacher of color is about 1 in 100. The chance of any student being in a classroom with a teacher of color is about 1 in 50.