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How important are black teachers? A new study says having just one black teacher while in third, fourth or fifth grade reduces the chance low-income black students drop out of high school by 29 percent. For male students, that percentage jumps to 39 percent.
How important are black teachers? A new study says having just one black teacher while in third, fourth or fifth grade reduces the chance low-income black students drop out of high school by 29 percent. For male students, that percentage jumps to 39 percent.
I tend to agree this is true, but I have one caveat- they need to be a competent and caring black teacher, not just a black teacher. We sure could use more black male teachers. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, most college attending black males (the smallest demographic in college) get snagged up by grad/professional schools, businesses, and industry and teaching can't compete.
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I agree, John. All kids need role models with whom they can identify. But, as Oldhag indicates, they need to be competent people, too. We didn't get many Black (or for that matter not one Latino) teacher candidates, which made it difficult.
I tend to agree this is true, but I have one caveat- they need to be a competent and caring black teacher, not just a black teacher. We sure could use more black male teachers. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, most college attending black males (the smallest demographic in college) get snagged up by grad/professional schools, businesses, and industry and teaching can't compete.
This sounds like a great reason for schools to recruit those black professionals, business people, and industry folks to become teachers, if only in a limited capacity. What if they taught only a few days a month? It would be useful to know if mentoring makes a difference, too. This group does.
The researchers initially studied about 100,000 black students who entered third grade in North Carolina Public Schools between 2001 and 2005. About 13 percent of the students ended up dropping out of high school, while about half graduated, but with no plans to pursue college.
However, low-income black students who were as good as randomly assigned to least one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade, were not only less likely to drop out of school, but 18 percent more likely to express interest in college when they graduated. And persistently low-income black boys — those who got free or reduced-price lunches throughout primary school — who had at least one black teacher in third, fourth or fifth grade, were 29 percent more likely to say they were considering college.
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The researchers replicated their findings by looking at black students in Tennessee who entered kindergarten in the late 1980s and participated in the Project STAR class-size reduction experiment. There, they found that students who had at least one black teacher in kindergarten through grade three were 15 percent less likely to drop out. Having at least one black teacher in those grades also increased a student’s chances of taking a college entrance exam by 10 percent.
This “race match effect” is sometimes called “the role model effect,” a term that gets at why the researchers think a stint with a black teacher can be so lastingly beneficial for black students.
I am not sure why this surprises anyone. If everyone of your race you meet, when you are young enough that things become ingrained in your subconscious, views education as something you need to just get through and everyone you meet who is involved in education is a different race than you, it is only natural that the child will develop an almost unshakeable belief that education is not for them.
I have spent decades whenever we moved finding out which schools had high black populations and no black teachers then emotionally blackmailing young black NCOs and officers into volunteering to read once a month, including my own family. As the years have gone by that has become of limited value though because black teachers aren't generally in as short of supply around military bases as most places because teaching seems to be a rather common profession of military spouses of all races. These days principals and school districts generally make a real effort to hire competent black teachers when the opportunity presents itself.
Most schools I see around here have oodles of black and Hispanic aides but the teachers still tend to be white or Asian. That still sends the wrong message. I was chatting with an elementary principal friend and she was surprised when I said I wished her one black kindergarten teacher didn't have the only black aide. For more than one reason it would have been better to separate them, starting with more kids being exposed to black educators and ending with it would be good to see a black person in charge of a white person.
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I saw a program that took the black teacher one step further. It was in NYC which had a large diverse pool of teachers to draw from. In a neighborhood where young black boys were particularly unlikely to graduate, they offered a program for boys who were deemed at risk to be offered first choice at three particular teachers who were black men. Starting in kindergarten these teachers had half of their classes be kids more at risk, and then as those kids moved up a grade, the teacher moved with them. Right through elementary.
It was a very successful program for the students who had higher graduation rates than heir peers but in many ways more stressful for the teachers who had to spend much more time on learning new curricula each year. Last I had heard the program folded as they were not finding enough teachers willing to take on that role. That is one of the situations where I think teachers should get higher pay than their peers to compensate for the stresses. Additionally I think those teachers should be eligible for sabotical for a year in between taking in a new cohort.
I am not sure why this surprises anyone. If everyone of your race you meet, when you are young enough that things become ingrained in your subconscious, views education as something you need to just get through and everyone you meet who is involved in education is a different race than you, it is only natural that the child will develop an almost unshakeable belief that education is not for them.
I have spent decades whenever we moved finding out which schools had high black populations and no black teachers then emotionally blackmailing young black NCOs and officers into volunteering to read once a month, including my own family. As the years have gone by that has become of limited value though because black teachers aren't generally in as short of supply around military bases as most places because teaching seems to be a rather common profession of military spouses of all races. These days principals and school districts generally make a real effort to hire competent black teachers when the opportunity presents itself.
Most schools I see around here have oodles of black and Hispanic aides but the teachers still tend to be white or Asian. That still sends the wrong message. I was chatting with an elementary principal friend and she was surprised when I said I wished her one black kindergarten teacher didn't have the only black aide. For more than one reason it would have been better to separate them, starting with more kids being exposed to black educators and ending with it would be good to see a black person in charge of a white person.
I agree with you. Kids need role models with whom they can identify.
The trouble I had was how few Black applicants we got. I never tallied it up, but I would say that when we would get application packets from the system's personnel office, that far less than 10% were minority applicants. And yet, at least at that time (and probably still) FCPS worked at finding minority applicants.
But let me ask you a question. You seem familiar with the D.C. area. When I was in Prince George's County, Maryland back in the late '70s and early '80s, we had plenty of Black teachers. Is one possibility that the average Black teacher feels more comfortable in a school system with a larger Black constituency?
And, BTW, the even bigger challenge was finding Latino applicants! I don't remember a single Latino teacher applicant in 20 years of administration (a very few for aide positions). A few Asian applicants.
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