USA TODAY International Edition
Wanted: Teachers of color
Even as U. S. schools are increasingly diverse, teaching force is still overwhelmingly white
“If you have low expectations for someone, you’re not going to push them so hard.” Anna Egalite, researcher, North Carolina State University College of Education
After a semester WASHINGTON spent wrangling preschoolers, Ricardo Carter has learned one important lesson: Never say no.
“I don’t use the word ‘ no,’ ” he said during a break at Aiton Elementary School in Washington’s Deanwood neighborhood. “I like to say ‘ not right now.’ ”
Carter, a soft- spoken 20- yearold who graduated from high school just seven months earlier, is part of a bold, if small, experiment here. Last fall, the school district began placing the first of 10 young African- American men in preschool classes citywide, hoping they’ll fall in love with the work and train to be teachers.
Part of the city’s Empowering Males of Color initiative, the effort is an attempt to crack a particularly tough nut in American education: a racial imbalance between teachers and students.
Nearly 63 years after the Brown v. Board of Education case kick- started racial integration in schools, students nationwide are taught by an overwhelmingly white workforce. Even as the proportion of black, Latino, Asian, Indian, African and other “nonwhite” students grows inexorably, the teachers these children encounter are nearly all white. And the racial mismatch, in many places, is getting worse.
That is, in part, a little- known and unintended legacy of the
Brown decision. Because most white communities in the 1950s and 1960s preferred white teachers over black ones, court- ordered desegregation often ended the teaching careers of black educators. One historian, Emory University’s Vanessa Siddle Walker, has said the culture of black teaching “died with Brown.”
Nationwide, at last count, about 82% of teachers were white, down from 83% eight years earlier. While the percentage of non- white students in U. S. schools rose from 39.6% to 45.7% between the 2003- 04 and 2011- 12 school years, the percentage of non- white teachers rose just 1.2 percentage points, to 18.1%.
In the 19 states with the largest gains in non- white students during this period, only five — Arkansas, Illinois, New Mexico, New York and Washington state — saw similarly large gains in non- white teachers. In Kansas and South Dakota, the percentage of nonwhite teachers actually dropped. Among other findings:
uIn 24 states, more than 90% of teachers were white in the 2011- 12 school year.
uIn 17 of those states, more than 95% of teachers were white, as the percentage of non- white students grew in all but two.
uIn those 17 states, non- white students accounted for 18.4% of students, on average. But just 3.3% of teachers were non- white.
Put another way: Even in schools located in the USA’s whit- est 17 states, each class typically contains four or five non- white students. But just 1 in 33 classrooms has a non- white teacher.
U. S. schools have made “very little progress” in recruiting and retaining minority teachers over the past three decades, said Anna Egalite, a researcher at North Carolina State University’s College of Education. When she began looking at statistics, she said, “one of the most stunning things” was how little had changed since 1987, when the proportion of white teachers was 87%.
Egalite got interested in the topic after she and her husband, an African- American middle school science teacher, moved from Arkansas to Boston. They began having conversations about how rare it was to see male teachers of color in the schools there. Existing research, she knew, showed modest academic benefits for students who shared their teachers’ ethnic profile. But new research was beginning to show something more important: Nonwhite teachers had higher expectations for students of color.
“If you have low expectations for someone, you’re not going to push them so hard,” Egalite said.
Low expectations begin a vicious cycle, starting with lower achievement, which eventually means a student is less likely to go to college. That means he or she doesn’t have access to a career like teaching, which means the next generation once again sees fewer teachers of color.
Egalite’s own research has shown “small but significant” positive effects in math and reading, especially in elementary school, when black and white stu- dents are assigned to teachers of the same race. The numbers show that the USA’s teacher/ student racial disconnect is holding back millions of young people.
African- American public school students are more likely to be in gifted and talented programs if at least 10% of the teaching force is black, a USA TODAY analysis of 2013- 14 federal data shows. And they are slightly more likely to take the SAT and ACT college entrance exams later. They also are disciplined at higher rates and expelled more often.
“It’s a problem for students of color because it’s important for them to see mentors and role models,” said John King, Education secretary in the final year of the Obama administration. “But I also think it’s a problem for white students. I think there’s a real benefit for white students in having diverse teachers, because ultimately we’re trying to prepare all kids for a diverse world.”