Where Instructional Materials (Still) Fall Short in Addressing Racial and Ethnic Diversity

In a polarized political environment, educators want more guidance on how to teach issues related to racial and ethnic diversity in their instructional resources.

That’s one of the core takeaways from a new EdWeek Market Brief survey of district and school leaders and classroom educators on where they believe instructional resources fall short in addressing issues of racial/ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion.

A core, unmet need: Academic resources do not provide enough direction to classroom educators — who are often on the front lines of political/cultural battles within school systems — about how to address those topics. The severity of that problem remains unchanged from the last time the survey was conducted three years ago.

Over the past few years, many K-12 districts have taken a closer look at their instructional resources to evaluate whether those materials reflect the needs of the enormously diverse student populations they serve, particularly in speaking to topics of racial/ethnic diversity. That focus, in turn, brought cultural and political backlash in some states, resulting in a wave of new restrictions on what topics can be discussed in classes and in academic materials that stoked confusion and division in some school districts.

In addition to needing more guidance on discussing issues of race and ethnicity, the new survey data also shows that educators’ opinions on where instructional materials are falling short have shifted in the past three years, including the number of those who don’t see materials falling short in areas of race and ethnic diversity at all increasing.

There’s also been a decrease in the portion respondents who say materials are lacking because historical stories or references involving people of color are missing or diminished, as well as in the respondents who believe materials are not speaking to the experiences of students of color.

Fear of Saying the Wrong Thing

The nationally representative, online survey was conducted by the EdWeek Research Center in March and April of 163 district leaders, 95 school leaders, and 925 teachers.

The same survey question was asked of administrators and educators by the research center in the fall of 2021. At that time, many school districts were taking steps to increase their focus on making sure that classroom resources spoke to the backgrounds and interests of racially diverse populations.

Parents and others in the community in some cases demanded an increased level of responsiveness to those populations, particularly in the wake of a national reckoning on racial issues following the murder of George Floyd in a year earlier.

Those efforts provoked a strong response, however, from Republican lawmakers in many states, who said the measures went too far and set about implementing a wave of laws and policies restricting lessons on racial and gender topics. Over the past three years, 18 states have approved laws or policies meant to limit discussions of those topics. Administrators and teachers face potential disciplinary action if they run afoul of state or local policies.

Asked in the survey where instructional resources fall short, 41 percent of all respondents said they don’t provide teachers with enough supporting guidance on how to address the topics.

While the largest percentage of respondents are teachers, a deeper analysis of the data did not show any statistically significant differences between how teachers, school leaders, and district leaders answered the question.

This demand for more guidance on issues of race and ethnicity isn’t new — and hasn’t waned much in the past three years.

When the same question was asked in 2021, 42 percent of respondents also said materials weren’t providing enough direction on how to discuss racial and ethnic diversity.

It’s not surprising that educators want clear guidance about what they can and should say, said Morgan Polikoff, professor of education at the University of Southern California’s school of education and faculty co-director of its EdPolicy Hub.

Yet while administrators and educators may want this guidance, it’s not easy for companies to provide it, in part because they’re wary of getting involved in “thorny First Amendment issues about what you can and can’t say in the classroom,” he said. More broadly, many state restrictions are only a few years old, and companies are still trying to determine how they should respond.

For academic resource providers, state restrictions are still “a relatively new phenomenon,” Polikoff said.

One of the first things Wil Johnson, director of equity and inclusion at Snohomish School District in Washington State, did when he joined the roughly 9,500-student school system in 2021 was address educators’ concerns regarding teaching about racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“The majority of the conversation [in 2021] was about people not wanting to say the wrong thing,” he said, especially when it came to white teachers speaking about issues of race. “If you had a person who was not of African decent and they’re talking about the African experience, they don’t feel like they can do that.”

Johnson — a former special education teacher who also hosts a podcast focused on equity and education in his community called At-homish — had his team work with the district’s teaching and learning department to draft guidelines on how to address potentially challenging topics for teachers.

First, he said, the guidelines advise teachers to know their audience and ensure lessons and materials are developmentally appropriate. If teachers are concerned prior to giving a lesson, they’re instructed to confer with colleagues and the administration before proceeding.

The guidelines also emphasize that lessons should be directly connected to state learning standards and that teachers need to be able to clearly explain the academic outcome they were anticipating.

Another component, he said, is helping teachers become aware of potential emotions that will surface during the lesson and create a plan for how to navigate these conversations with students and families before, during, and afterward.

Johnson said it’s also important to make sure that all faculty members are connected to the professional development they need to be able to teach issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Those that may need the most guidance may also not feel comfortable asking for other supports, such as DEI-focused conferences or other trainings, or to track down resources on their own, since it feels outside of their expertise, he said.

“We need to give [teachers] entry points,” he said. “We have a responsibility to educate people. If we look at it from a district perspective, we need to be able to take a step back and say ‘Who is in the room right now, where do we want them to get to, and how do we work to get them there?’”

Shifts in Opinions

The survey also shows that there are areas where educators’ opinions about instructional materials’ representation of race and ethnicity have changed in the past three years.

Twenty-nine percent of those surveyed today said they didn’t believe materials fall short in discussing racial and ethnic diversity at all — a jump from three years ago, when just 19 percent said the same.

Fewer respondents also feel historical stories or references involving people of color are missing or diminished in instructional resources. In 2021, 38 percent said the missing or diminished references were a shortcoming in the materials. That number dropped to 16 percent in 2024.

It’s unclear why educators’ thoughts have shifted since 2021 — in other words, whether it’s due to what they see as an improvement in academic resources, or if their overall opinion of the need for culturally-responsive materials have changed in response to efforts to promote them, and the resulting backlash.

Johnson, in Snohomish, said he has noticed an increase in representation in digital curriculum materials in recent years since they’re easier to keep updated when they’re online and allow for regular adjustments.

According to the data, fewer respondents also said materials didn’t speak to the experiences of students of color. Twenty-four percent of K-12 officials say that now, down from 36 percent in three years ago.

This year’s data also shows that urban districts were more likely than rural or suburban districts to find materials falling short in that area. Just under a third of respondents in urban districts said materials don’t speak to their students of color’s experiences, compared to about 20 percent of suburban and rural teachers, school, and district leaders in 2021.

These results are likely tied to demographics, Polikoff said, since urban districts are much more likely to have multiple different populations of non-white students.

Part of the problem for publishers, however, is that it’s nearly impossible to reflect the complex diverse needs of every district within a text.

“The reality is you can’t have one core material that’s going to solve all these problems and speak to every potential population in a given district,” he said.

One approach educators are taking is to instead have various kinds of supplemental products applicable to different populations, said Polikoff. He cautions against that.

“The best idea is to have all core curriculum materials broadly reflect the diversity of the American experience,” he said. The political reality of the country makes that “more complicated,” however, and ultimately he’s concerned the U.S. is seeing an overall shift to a two-curriculum system that’s divided by content requirements and restrictions in red and blue states.

“I suspect publishers feel like they’re in a very difficult place, where on one hand they want to have core curriculum that is culturally responsive,” he said, “but they also need to sell textbooks in the 30 states that are reddish. So they need to be careful.”

In addition, as districts across the country cope with state-level restrictions on race- and gender-focused lessons, some are looking for instructional materials that address those needs.

Thirteen percent of the teachers, school leaders, and district leaders who responded to the survey in 2021 said instructional materials fell short because they failed to address new limits place on them by state officials. That number has holds steady three years later, when 12 percent reported the same need.

The survey further reveals that the concerns about academic resources not addressing state restrictions are highest among middle school educators. Nineteen percent of respondents at the middle school level say instructional resources fall short by not addressing these new limits, compared to 12 percent of those at the high school level and 9 percent of elementary school level teacher, school, and district leaders.

While Johnson has not faced restrictions in Washington state, and has a school community that largely supports diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, he’s not surprised that middle school educators are cognizant of state-level restrictions.

“That’s when kids are really trying to find their identity,” he said, adding many are mixing with new groups of students and establishing new friendships.

Middle school educators are also more likely to be digging into potentially controversial issues for the first time, such as the complexities of American history, while they’re relying more on instructional resources than educators at other grade levels are, said Polikoff.

“High school teachers are more likely to be content experts who have that training and maybe don’t feel like they need the curriculum materials as much,” he said. But grades 6-8 are “where virtually all classes are still going to have core curriculum materials, and you’re starting to get into these more controversial issues.”

Takeaway: The demand for guidance in navigating racial and ethnic diversity, equity, and inclusion issues in the classroom remains high among educators. Education companies can help by suggesting steps teachers and school and district leaders can take while implementing curriculum and using instructional materials.

Those steps could include evaluating if a lesson is appropriate for the audience; establishing avenues to direct concerns about materials; making clear connections between the material, state standards, and desired outcome; and providing social-emotional supports in the classroom.