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There's an interesting story and graphic (above) in the Post today about public school teachers. Though the city has been attempting to hire more minority teachers, very few minorites are teaching students. Over 71% of public school students are black or Hispanic, but only 33% of the teachers are black or Hispanic. And recruitment of black and Hispanic teachers has dropped in the past years. Why is this a problem? Well, a 2004 National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force study finding: "Students of color tend to perform better – academically, personally and socially – when taught by teachers from their own ethnic groups."
One hypothesis is that less minorities are interested in teaching when there are better paying opportunities out there, while another is that certification is too tough.
Christopher Brown, an executive with the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, said the federal No Child Left Behind law has hampered recruitment of minorities because teaching licenses are now not as easily transferable from state to state.The Department of Education tells the Post that the DOE is working to recruit more minorities, by going to traditionally black colleges and even looking abroad in Spain and Puerto Rico."The majority of blacks in this nation attend traditionally black colleges, most of which are in the South," Brown said. "We're seeing an increasing number of teacher candidates remaining in the states where they earned their degrees, because that's where they get certified."
Here's the DOE teaching recruitment website.
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The blog regarding who is better able to achieve positive results teaching monoirty school children is a crock!!!
'smaller classes', 'higher teacher pay', 'more money for education', and 'higher teacher qualification'
With the above characteristic, there is no reason why a teacher from any given race would not be able to successfully teach minority children and have equal positive results.
Clearly you ahve never been a white teacher in a classroom of minority students.There are plenty of reasons. To see them, you must step into the shoes of an urban school kid.
1. Education is wack (ie: that's good for you, but no one in my family has ever graduated HS so we are all either stupid or the world hates us)
2. Teachers always 'teach up' to students who remind them of themselves and 'teach down' to kids who remind them of kids who never graduated.
We are all inherently racist, and when put in environments that allow us to select who gets resources, we will choose students like us.
3. There is a trend for rich white teachers to enter a school system to get 'experience' with urban kids and leave after a year or so, creating the impression that any of a kid's teachers aren't going to stick around for long, so why form a real student-teacher relationship. This feeling lasts from K-12.
4. White teachers are not a part of their community, don't understand it and will never be invested.
As for your 4th point: A person doesn't have to be from a culture of class to related and teach. They have to be good at getting a child to want to learn. There are people, teachers, that "get it." They do want what is best for the "human being." Good teachers dont see color and it is not an issue. They generally see the human condition and find what makes the student thrive and excel.
I remember elementary school,high school, and college. In all of those years, 1% of each level of the teachers "got it."
Many of the teachers in the system can't teach. So if any black, white, asian, or hispanic children are preped at home, educated at home as well as school, then they will do best when they encounter a teacher that can't teach.
Those children have parents at home following up what the teachers do not do well. For example: Some parents travel and teach children about different places. Some parents give there children an allowance and teach them about fractions, adding, and subracting. Some parents buy their children books or send the to museums. Better yet some parents take their children to work to experience professionalism. Kids get use to the idea of learning new things.
Identity politics is B.S.
I think it may be more of a question of class than race. Many people who become teachers are from an upper-middle class suburban background, because teaching doesn't pay well, and that means that working class and middle class people will choose other careers. Often teachers are upper class people who are not too bright.
If you have a suburban upper-middle class person of any race as a teacher at a working class urban school, then of course the teacher will not understand and will be most likely incompetent.
Teaching is about knowing the subject that you are teaching. It is about knowing how to explain the components of the subject without being boring. Then being about to get a child to explain it back with comprehension.
In high-school, I had a female coach and gym teacher, who was gay. In 10th, 11th, and 12th grade, I knew nothing about gay people. I grew up in a conservative religious home. She was a foreigner to me. And because of my limited understanding of her gender performance, with all due respect to her, I thought she was weird and freaky. However, she was so knowledgeable of her profession, that she was the very best gym teacher and coach in girls sports the school will have ever had.
She was a GREAT motivator, and GREAT instructor, and led her varsity field hockey and basket ball teams to the highest division. She was just a smart teacher...PERIOD.
She was the minority.
Bottom line, the system sucks! Do you know how many "minorities" applied to and were accepted into the Fellows program and TFA but were later dropped for bogus reason? It's a numbers game. Even when you do make it through the whole process you still have principals who like to play favorites and dismiss qualified teachers in favor of those they have personally hand picked. Again, bottom line, the system sucks!
It is also the wealthy, far-right political wing controling the funding in cities. The funding for the NYC school systems has been mis mangaged for years.
More importantly, the city continues to import poor people. Surely they know that poor people and new immigrants are the future bulk of drop outs. Or they are the people who can not go to college because of a lack of a scholarship, personal income, or mental apptitude. Drop outs and poor people work within the system which the intelligence at the top of the food chain are driving. I don't think the powers that be want the school system to get better. Education can not be that important in the major cities like NYC. If it is important, why would they leave the education system as it is decade after decade, turning out the same level of people over and over? They don't care. Who are they? The far-right liberal politicians.
"The majority of blacks in this nation attend traditionally black colleges, most of which are in the South," Brown said. "We're seeing an increasing number of teacher candidates remaining in the states where they earned their degrees, because that's where they get certified."
That is the most absurd theory I've heard yet. Just about every public school teacher I know here in NYC, white or not, was educated in another state.
My 4th point has nothing to do with the teacher and eveything to do with race, class, and power---which are supported by most of the following posts.
The power, in this instance, belongs to the kids. They choose to what extent they are going to accept white teachers as 'legitimate'. Legitimate is also defined in their eyes. Some criteria are pertininent to their education (She's smart and is deserving of being my teacher)and some seem ancillary (He understands my reality).
My point here is that we always assume that 'the teacher' needs to hold all the power in every circumstance and the 'student' should be so lucky to learn from someone so accomplished. Same in work environments. Until we start to empower our children and start creating responsibility for what goes into their own education through engaging them in this process, we are going to continue to half-educate kids as we prove to them that education is for white people like their teacher.
Having served on numerous school hiring committees during the last 9 years I have noticed these three things:
It's not uncommon to post a opening in a school and see nothing but whites apply.
Becoming a teacher is expensive. College tuition, rent in the city - - remember, unless someone is a Teaching Fellow, a person must complete a student teaching program where they work full-time for free. Try paying your rent on that!
And once in the system, Black males don't stay long in the classroom. It's been my casual observation that they're disportionally recruited to become school supervisors which means they aren't out there in large numbers seeking teaching positions many teachers covert.
Minority teachers (people of color) are usually, products of their own teaching environment.Growing up we saw many white faces implicating that the [caucasian] race was "intellectually superior." A minority teacher would serve as a paradigm to our children of color. Not only as an indivial that shares similar physical characterisitcs, but they also endorse an indication of leadership.