As a student, I never questioned why an overwhelming majority of my teachers were White women and did not reflect my racial identity; it was the norm. The one thing that I did know was that I had to go to school. I grew up in New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the world, and attended public schools that qualified for Title 1 assistance in the Bronx from kindergarten until my senior year of high school. All of the schools that I attended served mainly students of color. Throughout my entire K-12 education, I only experienced three teachers of color. I was in 7th grade when I met my first teacher of color. In high school, I met two teachers of color who were understanding, compassionate and understood the realities of the students that they taught. Moreover, they incorporated our experiences in the classroom. One of these teachers is even partially responsible for my journey into education.

Over recent years, there has been an increased focus to recruit teachers of color with the goal of increasing diversity among our nation’s teachers. With 80 percent of teacher identifying as White, it’s evident that the racial demographics of teachers does not reflect that of students. Research studies predict that students of color in public schools across the nation will increase by 55 percent by 2020.

Researchers argue that all students, regardless of their own racial identity, prefer teachers of color. Considering the continued increase of students of diverse backgrounds in schools, initiatives such as NYC Men Teach, Today’s Students Tomorrow’s Teachers and the Grow Our Own Teacher Diversity program work to respond to the need for more diversity in the teacher workforce. Many educators and policymakers seem hopeful that an increase of teachers of color will help provide better outcomes for all students. While I agree with the motive to increase racial diversity amongst teachers, I think it is equally important to take a look at the landscape of education. Let’s interrogate why there are such a limited number of teachers of color, to begin with.

Below I discuss three reasons that may contribute to the limited number of teachers of color in the field.

Increased Requirements for Teacher Preparation Programs and Teacher Certification

When we think about how we work to attract the best teachers, one popular solution is to make teacher certification requirements more rigorous. Our initial thought is to accept students into education programs who have the best test scores. The idea is admirable. The ideal logic here is that the smartest people perform the best on standardized exams, and therefore they will automatically be effective teachers in all classroom settings. A handful of states, including New Jersey, have set SAT requirements for students entering teacher preparation programs. If students fail to meet SAT requirements, then they must pass a number of praxis exams before even moving forward in their education coursework and applying for certification. As educators, we question the correlation between high performance on examinations and intelligence even in our own classrooms. Researchers have raised concerns that standardized exams, such as the SATs, demonstrate and promote racial bias against students of color. There continues to be a widening racial scoring gap between students of color and their White counterparts while students who have access to additional resources perform better than less wealthy students. In states like New Jersey, students of color who do not meet the SAT requirements to enter teacher preparation programs are less likely to pursue the field of education considering that they would not want to endure additional standardized testing. We should also recognize that prospective prospective teachers of color may not have access to resources to prepare them for the standardized test or the finances to pay for the standardized tests.

Further, the increased number of standardized testing for pre-service teachers to obtain their teaching certification may also deter teachers of color from pursuing the field of education. EdTPA is a fairly new assessment that pre-service teachers must pass in the 16 states (and counting) that have adopted it. The edTPA is an assessment that is scored by independent scorers who are not teacher educators and have no affiliation to the communities or context where student teachers teach. Additionally, the edTPA costs around $300 and is known to negatively affect the experience of teachers learning to teach. If we want to attract more teachers of color to the field of education, we must interrogate the policies around the criteria for admissions into teacher education programs and the requirements for pre-service teachers to obtain teaching certifications to ensure that equitable policies and practices are being used.

The Profession of Teaching is not Appealing

As an educator who encourages students of color to pursue the field of education, it is difficult to get others to see educational careers as appealing when one has to compete with negative media portrayals. Movies and television depict white teachers as lazy, low-achieving and poor professionals who despise their jobs and the students that they teach. We also seldom see teachers of color in media. In addition to the adverse portrayal of teachers in the media, policymakers and government officials continue to blame teachers for failing students, without critiquing school systems, structures or standardized exams. The public’s perception of a teacher is negative without an accurate understanding of the context of education amid budget cuts, increased responsibilities of teachers, and having to teach to standardized exams, all of which contribute to teacher anxiety.

In addition to finding the field of education unappealing through media, students of color are known to have disproportionately negative experiences in schools than their White counterparts. This is attributed by teachers’ negative perceptions of students of color and school policies that have adversely negative effects on students of color. Students of color receive harsher disciplinary action and at higher rates than their White counterparts,which is known to contribute to the school to prison pipeline. Research suggests that teachers are known to have a racial bias toward students of color as it relates to achievement and therefore have low academic expectations of students of color. In nearly all schools, student achievement is measured by standardized curriculum and exams that do not represent students of color’s interest or culture and have historically less successful performance rates. Students of color culture and experiences are not generally reflected within schools or curriculum. I argue that students of color are subjected to trauma from navigating schools that have historically marginalized them. Given the circumstances of our education system and it’s history of marginalizing students of color, students of color might find it difficult to return and work within a system that has failed and marginalized them in the past, only to exist within the same system to be a co-conspirator in marginalizing and inflicting trauma on other students. Though many teachers of color, including myself, still persist and pursue the field of education with the goal giving back to our communities and serving as a role model for young people, being an educator within an oppressive system and structure ignites an internal battle that all educators of color must work through to be fully present in the classroom.

Lack of Retention of Teachers of Color

With less than 20 percent of our nation’s teachers coming from racially diverse backgrounds, teachers of color are leaving the profession at disproportionately higher rates. Many teachers cite that they leave the profession for reasons related to issues of diversity, inadequate training, poor classroom conditions, or the inability to maintain work-life balance. In my experiences as an educator of color, I realized that I had more responsibility than my White counterparts because of my positive relationships with students. When students were having issues, they were sent to me during the day to help them resolve them. As a teacher of color, I carried the weight of truly understanding what it meant to students to have someone who truly understood their realities.

The national starting average teacher salary $36,141. Often, teachers of color are responsible for financially supporting a family and paying student loans on top of necessary monthly expenses. Teaching is not a profession where you will have a surplus of income, so many teachers of color leave the classroom after a few years to pursue a more financially lucrative career. Considering the increased responsibility of teachers of color, the environment and culture of schools and low wages for new teachers, many teachers of color are not able to manage the stress, trauma, and anxiety that is associated with the job and therefore leave to pursue other careers outside of education. Teachers of color leave the classroom at a higher rate than White teachers. In many cases, teachers of color leave the profession because they do not agree with school politics or policies that treat students of color negatively, or they do not agree with the pedagogy and curriculum that they have to utilize to teach their students and rather leave the profession as a whole as opposed to inflicting trauma on their students.

Obviously, it is important to increase teacher diversity. Students of color deserve to have educators who look like them, who have experienced similar experiences and who have a better chance of understanding their realities. Students of color should not have to navigate schools without engaging with many teachers of color. But in our quest to increase teacher diversity, it must be understood that being a person of color does not serve as a prerequisite to becoming an effective educator and preparation and continuous training of teachers of color is equally, if not more, important than recruitment.

1 Comment
  1. Veronica 6 years ago

    Thanks for this right up! Much appreciated

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