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California added 3,000 new classroom teachers and a significant number of new administrators despite declining student enrollment and budget reductions brought on by the end of pandemic funding, according to long-awaited data released by the California Department of Education on Thursday.

Researchers and education advocates have been calling for the release of the data for years. Although the information is submitted by school districts annually, it had not been updated on the CDE’s DataQuest website since the 2018-19 school year. The release fills in the gaps, including data through the 2023-24 school year.

“It’s very difficult to do this work without having the data in front of us to know what we can do and what is working,” said José Magaña, executive director of Bay Area Latinos for Education. “It’s something that we hope can become accessible or more accessible to folks now and in the future years, so that we can continue to invest in things that are working and also make tweaks and say what can we do differently.”

The delays were due to a lack of staffing, additional state reporting requirements and a backlog of reports that had to be reconfigured because the state changed course codes in 2018-19, said Cindy Kazanis, the director of the Analysis, Measurement and Accountability Reporting Division at CDE, in a previous interview with EdSource.

Now, parents, educators and researchers using the CDE’s DataQuest database can access information, updated through the 2023-24 school year, about teachers, administrators and other credentialed staff. The CDE plans to release data for the 2024-25 school year later this year.

The release is expected to include an upgrade that gives users the ability to filter information by gender, grade span, school or staff type, allowing them to learn, for example, how many Hispanic teachers worked in non-charter public schools in a district in a particular year, or how many credentialed administrators in elementary schools in a district were women.

The CDE has also added student-to-teacher ratios and administrator-to-student ratios, which also seem to be improving, according to the CDE.

The data is crucial to ensure California schools have a diverse teacher workforce, said Natalie Wheatfall-Lum, director of TK-12 policy for EdTrust-West. 

“Essentially, we can’t give California students the teachers that they need, which are diverse teachers, without being able to see where they are and see how they are being recruited and retained,” Wheatfall-Lum said. “It’s very important for us to have this information because we know the significant impact having teachers of color has on students of color and their success.”

Growth takes off in Fresno

The state has added 3,000 classroom teachers since the 2019-20 school year for a total of 285,891. The data shows that Fresno had the largest increase in the number of teachers in its schools, with 8% more over the five-year period ending in 2023-24. Napa County, on the other hand, lost 6.5% of its teachers over the same period.

It’s unclear if the number of teachers in the state has changed in the 21 months since the data for 2023-24 was collected. Declining enrollment, a smattering of teacher layoffs and tightened school budgets may have erased some of the increases in schools where 5% of the teachers are not qualified to teach the courses they teach. 

These gains could also be undermined by the recent freeze of federal teacher preparation grants and budgetary problems at California State University and the University of California, which could further reduce the number of teachers entering the field.

The state has also had an increase in the number of new administrators and pupil services staff in 2024-24. The number of administrators grew from just over 25,000 in 2019-20 to 28,780 in 2023-24. Pupil services staff grew from more than 30,000 to 36,535 in the same time period.

Number of Hispanic teachers growing

Much has changed in the five years since the data was last updated. The number of Hispanic teachers in California classrooms increased by more than 19% during that time, growing from 61,518 to 73,400, according to the CDE.

There was also a 21% increase in the number of Hispanic administrators and a 48.2% increase in the number of Hispanic school nurses, counselors and other pupil services positions.

The number of white teachers declined over the five-year period by 7%, reducing their number to 158,064, or 55% of the teaching workforce.

The change in the racial makeup of teacher candidates coincides with the evolving population of the state, where 56% of the K-12 student population was Hispanic in the 2023-24 school year, according to the CDE. 

There has also been an increase in the number of Filipino, Asian, American Indian and Pacific Islander teachers, while the number of Black teachers declined incrementally, despite state initiatives to recruit and retain them.

The trends are exciting, but more needs to be done to recruit and retain educators, especially as new research shows that 1 in 3 teachers anticipate leaving the profession, Magaña said.

Teachers of color are asking for more inclusive and supporting school environments, stronger systems to meet students’ behavioral and academic needs, and a healthier work-life balance, he said.

The increase in the number of teachers of color and teachers overall could be attributed to efforts by state lawmakers to ease the teacher shortage and diversify the teacher workforce by making earning a credential easier and more affordable. The state has also offered degree and coursework alternatives to several tests, established residency and apprenticeship programs, and paid for school staff to train to become teachers.