Skip to Content, Navigation, or Footer.
Support the IDS in College Media Madness! Donate here March 24 - April 8.
Friday, March 29
The Indiana Daily Student

opinion

COLUMN: Declining rates of minority teachers

Take a moment to think about all of the teachers you’ve had throughout your educational career.

Many of them inspired us to pursue our majors, opened our eyes to some new perspective or were merely kind enough to help us through our day.

Now, think about how many of your teachers were white and how many were of a minority race.

Personally, I can’t think of a single teacher I had up until college who wasn’t white, and the faculty population has still been 
overwhelmingly white.

I study Spanish and English, but have never had a native Spanish speaker teach me Spanish. This is one of the many racial gaps of our 
educational system.

A recent study from the Albert Shanker Institute, a group funded by the American Federation of Teachers, determined that the number of black teachers dropped between 2002 and 2012 in many of our nation’s largest cities.

In the past 25 years or so, the percentage of students of color in the education system has increased from 27.3 percent in 1987 to 44.1 percent in 2012, while the percentage of minority teachers has increased only slightly, from 12.4 percent to 17.3 percent.

Although the number of minority teachers is increasing nationally, in cities like Boston, New York, Chicago and New Orleans, the numbers have decreased at varying rates, from only approximately 1 percent in Boston’s charter schools and Cleveland’s district schools, 24 percent in all of New Orleans’ school and 28 percent in Washington, D.C.’s public schools.

Washington, D.C. has had especially drastic reductions in black teacher populations, which fell from 77 percent to 49 percent over the past decade, the most drastic 
reduction among any of the study’s cities.

All of these cities feature some of the largest and most diverse school districts in the nation, and have suffered through funding challenges — Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels, cough — and have had poor educational outcomes that partially stem from 
inexperienced teachers.

Minority teachers are most often placed in the poorer working conditions of these school districts, and any reduction in the number of minority teachers in these schools multiplies the loss as large portions of the student population go 
underrepresented.

It’s easy to look at this situation and decry these losses, but understanding the motivating forces behind this issue is crucial in order to fix it.

Barriers undeniably remain in place for people of color to become teachers in the first place — however, the past two decades have seen many schools focus on recruiting and hiring minority teachers.

What this statistic might more clearly represent is the abysmal retention rate for non-white teachers, “Great Recession” budget cuts and the shift from district to charter schools, where 
teacher-turnover rates are higher.

We can change the system by calling for schools to hire more teachers of color, demanding that our legislators stop their war against urban schools and placing more value monetary and otherwise on the valuable services teachers provide.

Get stories like this in your inbox
Subscribe