Educational accountability in how we recruit and retain educators of color must move beyond talking points and toward systemic change. Schools often celebrate diversity, but representation without respect becomes tokenism, recruitment without retention becomes performance, and diversity without equity becomes decoration.

Educators of color are frequently recruited to support diverse student populations while facing implicit bias, microaggressions, limited advancement, and inequities within the very systems they serve. We cannot ask educators to help dismantle inequities for students while allowing those same inequities to impact them professionally.

State boards of education must prioritize policies that not only recruit educators of color, but also respect, protect, retain, develop, and empower them. Accountability should examine who is hired, who stays, who is promoted, who is supported, and who is trusted to lead.

You cannot celebrate representation while silencing the represented, and you cannot preach belonging while practicing exclusion.

Join me in urging state boards across the United States to move from performative diversity to genuine equity. Representation is not enough. We need retention, protection, accountability, and transformation.

Sign this petition and help create educational systems where every educator is valued, supported, and empowered to thrive.