Policy surrounding the nation's shortage of
black teachers tends to focus around recruitment or retention.
Recently I wrote about the differences in expectations that White and
Black teachers tend to have for their students.
In turn, that brings us to perhaps the most powerful lesson to emerge from our focus group discussions: While we learned much about the strengths and ideals that
black teachers tend to bring to their work, we were struck mainly by the urgent need to support those teachers professionally and help them build long, productive, and satisfying careers in the public schools.
Not exact matches
The two populations — uncertified and AC
teachers — differ in a number of ways: AC
teachers are less likely to be
black or Hispanic,
tend to be several years younger when hired, and attended colleges with substantially higher median SAT scores (see Figure 1).
Similarly, the results for white students could merely reflect the possibility that the
black teachers in predominantly white schools
tend to be of lower quality than the white
teachers in those schools.
In the St. Louis area, school districts
tend to be divided along racial lines, and a New York Times reporter covering the story of the transfers heard from white parents in receiving districts who expressed concern that troublemakers will be among the transfers, and that
teachers may have to slow down to allow the students from struggling districts, which are predominantly
black, to catch up.
For instance, the results for
black students are consistent with the plausible alternative hypothesis that predominantly
black schools
tend to attract and retain high - quality
black teachers but only low - quality white
teachers.
On the other hand, schools with higher clusters of
black male
teachers tend to be among the hardest to staff, economically disadvantaged, and lowest performing schools.
The reality is that schools serving high proportions of
black and Latino students — typically in low - income communities —
tend to suffer from a range of stresses that affect the quality of the education they can provide, including factors such as high
teacher turnover, shortages of basic materials, fewer counselors, overcrowding, and poorly maintained facilities.
TRP
teachers who moved to different schools in the same district
tended to join ones where a similar proportion of students were from low - income families, a lower percentage were
black, and achievement was higher.
Black and Hispanic
teachers tend to enter the pipeline through nontraditional and alternative teaching routes at higher rates than they enter traditional programs.
The
black male
teachers I have studied also
tend to be intentional in how they develop and enact disciplinary - referral practices in their work.
This mismatch in ethnicity is a problem because white
teachers tend to have lower expectations for
black students than
black teachers have for the same students.
The study also found that
black teachers rated
black children's language and literacy skills higher upon school entry in the fall than white
teachers did, but
tended to report fewer gains in those skills at the end of the year, leading researchers to hypothesize that
black teachers have higher standards for
black children.
Increased exposure to Hispanic math and science
teachers in middle and high school
tends to increase the likelihood that Hispanic students take STEM courses during their first year in college, though pairing
black students and
black math / science
teachers does not have the same positive effect.
I thought my message of reverence and thanks to my high school
teachers — who were, with the exception of one, all white — for holding me to the same high... Continue reading White Teachers Tend To Have Consistently Lower Expectations of Their Black and Brown
teachers — who were, with the exception of one, all white — for holding me to the same high... Continue reading White
Teachers Tend To Have Consistently Lower Expectations of Their Black and Brown
Teachers Tend To Have Consistently Lower Expectations of Their
Black and Brown Students