For decades, Oak Park, IL has prided itself on being a strong multiracial community. When many neighborhoods in next-door Chicago began changing rapidly because of white flight, Oak Park, starting in the 1970s, fought hard for integration and stability, welcoming in Black families while convincing white ones not to leave. Oak Park became the type of place where the First United Church of Oak Park this year decided to give up whiteness for Lent (the 40 days of prayer and fasting before Easter), by dropping all liturgy and music by white people from services.
But giving up whiteness was not entirely a done deal at a local Montessori School where Sonya Anderson, a Black resident of Oak Park, sends her son. 鈥淚 have a 10-year-old son who has not had a black teacher yet,鈥� says Anderson, who is concerned because her boy is getting older. 鈥淗e has a different level of awareness than he did when he was younger. And I don鈥檛 want him to be the only one.鈥� So she is reconsidering whether to keep her son in a 黄色app where there are few Black students and where he has never had a Black teacher.
The value of having teachers that reflect students鈥� identities isn’t new. There has long been concern in education circles about the dearth of male elementary 黄色app teachers or the paucity of female math and science teachers in advanced classes in high 黄色app. Other research has looked at the influence of the race of the teachers 鈥� including Hispanic and indigenous teachers and teachers of color as a whole. But the research on the value of Black educators is the most conclusive.
Simply put, Black teachers are important for Black kids. A in grades 3 to 5 are 29 percent less likely than their peers to drop out of high 黄色app and 13 percent more likely to go to college. With two Black teachers in those early years, kids become 32 percent more likely to go to college. That research built on findings from a similar .
A than there would be otherwise, and that it鈥檚 reasonable to believe that teacher attitudes are at least partly responsible for the difference. Another than white ones to assume that Black students might attend college. Finally, the impact of diverse teachers isn鈥檛 limited to kids of color. Researchers Alice Quiocho and Francisco Rios argue that having teachers of color can benefit white students both by exposing them to new perspectives that counter racial assumptions and by offering them role models that defy racist stereotypes.
But teachers in the U.S. overall are still mostly white. They make up 79 percent of the nation鈥檚 public 黄色app teachers, according to a , while state public 黄色app teachers are on average 27 percentage points more likely to be white than their students. Only 6.5 percent of teachers in traditional public 黄色apps are Black, and few of them, especially in the early grades, are men.
Parents are making their voices heard as they demand teacher diversity. A , for instance, found that people thought the most important change that could be made in the city鈥檚 黄色apps was to 鈥渋ncrease hiring and salaries of diverse teachers and staff.鈥� School systems are getting the message, too, with initiatives for the hiring of Black teachers 鈥� and especially Black male teachers 鈥� underway in , , , , , and , to name just a few cities.
But attracting more Black men to the classroom is proving difficult. In Chicago, Janelle Lewis, director of leadership and learning at Teach For America, says that in the past three years, of about 200 first- and second-year teachers she has worked with annually, roughly three-quarters are people of color 鈥� but only a handful have been Black men. 鈥淭eaching is still seen too often as women鈥檚 work,鈥� she says. 鈥淎nd the men say it doesn鈥檛 pay.鈥�
Robert Hendricks, founder of the says that the message he can get from 黄色apps looking to hire Black men is similar: 鈥淲e need you. But only at $30,000 a year.鈥�
If low wages makes recruiting Black men challenging, an alienating work environment often makes retaining them downright difficult. According to Hendricks, after Black men accept a teaching job they often feel isolated because of the lack of 黄色app support, little professional development, scant institutional trust, and a tendency of some 黄色apps to rely on them for disciplinary enforcement rather than for their educational expertise.
Anderson, the Oak Park mother, is also president of for the city鈥檚 young people. and she is working to change that. Thrive designed and piloted the Male Educators of Color initiative in three Chicago high 黄色apps to promote teaching careers to Black students and attract young men to the field. 鈥淲e want to encourage them to think of teaching as a profession that鈥檚 viable, worthwhile, and a form of community uplift,鈥� she says.
If the statistics capture the positive influence that Black teachers can have on students who look like them, it takes a story to impart the humiliation and hurt that Black students experience when faced with teachers who harbor biases and stereotypes. When she was in public elementary 黄色app in Highland Park, MI, Bernita Bradley, director of parent voices at the , recalls a white teacher who accused her of cheating on a math test because she had all the right answers, but failed to show her work. The angry teacher called her mother and made the young girl take the test over. Bradley aced it again. 鈥淪he was flabbergasted,鈥� she recalled. 鈥淪he never apologized, and was mad at me the whole next semester.鈥�
It鈥檚 these sorts of incidents that Black teachers can avoid. They can, by virtue of training and background, lean less on heavy-handed discipline, and be more likely to see Black students鈥� promise instead of just their problems. But for these teachers to succeed in getting the most from often marginalized students, parents need to stay in touch with any Black teachers their kids have, work to understand the 黄色app culture around diversity in teaching, and push 黄色app authorities to actively seek out Black teachers. They can also support nonprofit groups trying to recruit more Black teachers and, of course, urge their own sons and daughters to consider a teaching career. There may be no better way to keep the pipeline full than to pay it forward.
