Report: New book sounds national alarm on U.S. education crisis

1996

This paper focuses on the need for, and the conditions necessary to maintain, a racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse teaching force, stressing the importance of culturally responsive teaching. It begins by describing what can be accomplished through diverse learning communities. Next, it offers a comprehensive look at the demographics of the current and prospective teaching force, focusing on social reform, integrating cultural contextual knowledge in learning communities, and pedagogy and expectations. It goes on to discuss what has been documented as effective in the recruitment and retention of teachers from underrepresented communities (e.g., rewards and incentives), noting influences on the teacher supply and discussing the prospective teaching pool and who leaves teaching. It examines program trends, focusing on precollegiate recruitment, paraprofessional pathways, college recruitment, and mid-career recruitment. After citing state and privately funded programs which have had a genuine impact, the paper concludes with recommendations for guiding comprehensive initiatives in the future. (Contains approximately 195 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

2014

1998

Advances in Religious and Cultural Studies, 2019

This chapter emphasizes the importance of implementing culturally competent recruitment and retention practices, which suburban schools and systems can use to ensure that all students have a well-trained and high-quality teacher of color. Changes in teachers' expectations for student success and strategies in managing administrative and behavioral tasks are all required of all novice teachers. Methods of recruitment, strategies of organization management, and student demographics should be factors in supporting the approaches to implement culturally competent policy change, impacting the outcomes for teachers of color and the student's they serve. A positive organizational culture to include culturally responsive instructional leadership, adequate teacher salary, and critical professional development are determinants for sustaining high-quality teachers of color not only for students of color but for all learners. An emphasis on valuing the cultural identity of teachers of color in suburban schools will be emphasized as a preventative measure for the othering of teachers of color.

The American Educational System has an equity problem. Black and Brown students are still statistically not meeting the education standards as their non-black and brown counterparts. More and more students of color are targeted and fall between the cracks of the educational system. It has become imperative for schools, school districts, state governments, and the national government to begin to take a closer look at the American Educational system and reflect upon its inequalities. If the system is not considered equitable, what needs to be done to make it equitable? The responsibility for making a change in the national school system, is that of everyone. As W.E.B Du bois states "A System Cannot Fail those it was Never Meant to Protect." The system has failed our black and brown children and it is time to address the issue. The intent of the research is to explore the inequalities of the American Educational system and determine the need for change.

2015

1999

This report outlines problems in California's public school teaching force, from training to recruitment to retention. It describes who currently teaches, notes the lack of minority teachers in an increasingly diverse student population, and examines pathways to teaching and barriers to certification. It details the teaching crisis in the state's seven largest districts, and it adds extended accounts from a teacher recruiter, a teacher candidate taking the California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST), and an experienced teacher of color watching newcomers being disempowered and unsupported by the system. Finally, the report makes recommendations about how to correct some of the problems that it describes, including: fully invest in the development of teaching talent and resources at high-need schools by creating local education action projects; develop a fully prepared, highly skilled teaching force better suited to California's changing demographics; eliminate barriers that prevent qualified people from becoming teachers, including the CBEST; significantly increase teacher compensation across the state and provide incentives for teaching in high-need schools; and aggressively institute programs to attract more teachers of color. (Contains 58 bibliographic references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

At a time when schools are destroying the minds and spirits of Black and Brown students, as educators, we must work differently to make sure our children's souls are not claimed by those who refuse to acknowledge their brilliance. The purpose of this essay is to explore the educational activism and scholarship of three Black women educators in an effort to help readers understand how and why they should inform our teacher education and teaching practices today. The authors highlight the lives of Anna influential women whose work and theories have shaped the field of teacher education. Through a brief historical analysis of their scholarship and practice, the authors examine how these women ignited educational progress for Black children. This piece is written to honor their lives, center their theories on education, and bring them out of obscurity.

Teacher education programs in the United States (U.S.) struggle to prepare teachers to meet the complex needs of elementary and secondary students in public schoolsespecially those of color, those living in poverty, and those whose first language is not English. In this article, we argue for focused attention on preparing educators to teach African American male students as these students face particular institutional challenges in successfully navigating the U.S. public school system. Drawing from the significant body of research on teacher education and teacher learning for equity and social justice, four Black teacher educators discuss challenges they have faced in classes designed to prepare teachers to teach Black male students. Through an analysis of commonalities in their experiences, they propose means for teacher educators to foster greater understandings of the heterogeneity found among Black male students so that teachers can craft more responsive and responsible educational experiences for Black males.

2006

Data from a unique new survey of over 1,000 teachers in K-12 public schools across the country show that our teaching force is largely segregated. This is the first report in a series analyzing this new dataset finds that teachers of different races are teaching students of very different racial composition, adding an extra dimension to growing student racial segregation. Future CRP reports analyzing this dataset will examine working conditions, teachers' attitudes and relationships, and training for diverse schools that may well influence their decisions about where to teach and whether they believe they will remain at their schools. White teachers comprise an overwhelming majority of the nation's teachers. Yet, our data indicate that white teachers were the least likely to have had much experience with racial diversity and remain remarkably isolated. Not only did white teachers, on average, attend schools when they were elementary school students that were over 90% white, they are currently teaching in schools where almost 90% of their faculty colleagues are white and over 70% of students are white. Additional findings include: !" White teachers teach in schools with fewer poor and English Language Learner students. The typical black teacher teaches in a school were nearly three-fifths of students are from low-income families while the average white teacher has only 35% of low-income students. !" Latino and Asian teachers are in schools that educate more than twice the share of English Language Learners than white teachers. !" The South has the most diverse teaching force of any region in the country, along with the most integrated students. One-quarter of southern teachers are nonwhite, and 19% of southern teachers are African-American. Early concerns about the loss of African American teachers at the beginning of desegregation in the South no longer holds. !" The West is the only region of the country with a sizeable percentage (11%) of Latino teachers. The majority of students in the West are nonwhite, with a large share of Latino students. !" Nonwhite teachers and teachers that teach in schools with high percentages of minority and/or poor students are more likely to report that they are contemplating switching schools or careers. !" The percentage of white teachers and students is lower in schools that did not make AYP, while the percentage of poor students is higher. !" Schools with high concentrations of nonwhite and poor students tend to have less experience and qualified teachers despite NCLB's emphasis that qualified teachers be equally distributed. In other words, nonwhite teachers are often teaching in schools that may be more difficult to teach in. The report concludes with recommendations for diversifying the teaching force and ensuring that schools serving students of all backgrounds have a racially integrated, highly qualified faculty. Creating schools with integrated faculties will help prepare students for living and working in our racially diverse society, including giving our nation's future teachers early, important experiences with diversity. As in other studies of teacher mobility patterns, teachers in this sample are more likely to plan to leave segregated nonwhite schools. This could be interpreted as prejudice, but it is true, in a less dramatic way, for teachers of color as well as for white teachers. The reality may be that the challenges of poor preparation, inadequate resources, student mobility and teacher turnover, sanctions from NCLB, and other factors that make the teacher's work harder in high poverty segregated minority schools are driving teachers away. These data should trigger serious thought among educators and policymakers about how we can work with teachers to improve working conditions and rewards that would deepen their commitment to such schools and how we can recruit and train more of the kind of teachers most likely to seriously commit to the work of reforming those schools. Moreover, we should consider whether it is fair to assign students to schools with conditions that lead teachers to leave them. Congress recognized the centrality of the role of teachers when it made getting "highly qualified" teachers into the classrooms of poor children a central requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act. For more than three decades, however, Congress and most states have not provided any serious policy initiatives to either reverse the drastic under-representation of teachers of color in our schools, which now have more than 42% students of color, or to prepare the largely white groups of new teachers for teaching effectively across lines of race, culture, and language that are so central in our society. During the civil rights era these necessities were strongly recognized; for example, the Emergency School Aid Act passed during the Nixon Administration provided funding to school districts to retrain teachers to deal more effectively with racial change. Desegregation plans included strategies for desegregating the teaching force as well as students and sometimes included efforts to train more nonwhite teachers. In the current era of test-based accountability that began in the early l980s, these objectives have been largely forgotten though they are more vital than ever given this country's rapidly changing demographics. This first report from our national survey of teachers strongly suggests that we need to carefully examine the consequences of teacher segregation and the failure to recruit, train, and retain nonwhite teachers.

In this article I take seriously the call for recruiting and retaining more preservice teachers of color by critically considering some of the pressing challenges they might encounter in teacher preparation programs. I draw from critical race theory (CRT) in education to review the extant literature on preservice teachers of color and teacher education in the US. I excavate how the dominant, (dis)embodied and normalized culture of Whiteness, White privilege and White hegemony pervades contemporary teacher education, and presents a formidable challenge to the goal of preparing teachers (of color) to teach in a manner that is relevant, critical and humanizing while also socially and individually transformative. I conclude by envisioning how teacher education programs might address these challenges in such a way that more effectively meets the needs of preservice teachers.

2017

We analyzed the most recent nationally representative datasets from the U.S. Department of Education Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) 2011-12 and the SASS Teacher Follow-up Survey 2013-14 to understand the current state of teachers of color in the United States. Teachers of color comprise an increasing share of the U.S. teacher workforce, but that share (18 percent in 2011-12) is disproportionately low compared to the proportion of students of color in public schools (49 percent) and people of color in the nation (37 percent). It is also too low to meet the demand from school districts and families (Goldring, Taie, & Riddles 2014; Ingersoll & May, 2011). The gap between the percentage of Latina/o teachers and students is larger than for any other racial or ethnic group. More than 21 percent of students are Latina/o, while Latina/o teachers represent fewer than 8 percent of teachers. This, despite the fact that the percentages of Latina/o teachers and students are growing faster than those of any other racial or ethnic group. And while the population of teachers of color is growing overall, Black and Native American teachers are a declining share of the teaching force. Furthermore, the pool of potential Black and Latina/o teaching candidates dwindles as individuals move along the teacher pipeline, from high school graduation to college enrollment, teacher preparation, and employment in the teacher workforce (see Exhibit 1). By examining national data for a similar group over time, from the kindergarten-12 years to entry into teaching, we find that the percentage of Black and Latina/o teachers is disproportionately low. In 2007, Black and Latina/o students made up over 38 percent of k-12 students, less than 28 percent of high school graduates, and about 24 percent of high school graduates who went on to enroll in a two or four-year college the next fall. Black and Latina/o candidates made up just 19 percent of teacher preparation candidates, including baccalaureate and post-baccalaureate candidates, in the fall of 2008. Four years later, in 2012, Black and Latina/o candidates comprised about 20 percent of bachelor's degree-earners in 2012, but only 14 percent of education bachelor's degrees. Pg. 03 Current State of Teachers of Color in the United States Why Increase Teacher Diversity? The Positive Impacts on Students While all teachers require more intentional, culturally-based preparation to reach a growing diverse student population (Higgins, Shaffer, & Schlanger, 2017), increasing diversity in the teaching profession also can have positive impacts on student educational experiences and outcomes. This is especially true for students of colorwho demonstrate greater academic achievement and social-emotional development in classes with teachers of colorbut having teachers of color benefits White students as well. Many teachers of color report feeling called to teach in low-income communities of color, positions that are often difficult to fill (Villegas & Irvine, 2010). Thus, three in four teachers of color work in the quarter of schools serving the most students of color nationally, so their retention decisions have significant impacts on students of color (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017).

Issues in Teacher Education, 2004