Where have all the teachers of color gone?

District sets an ambitious target and commits to reversing a downward trend.

by Wendy Harris

Photo: Cheyney University

Cheyney University’s Call Me MISTER trains Black male students to become teachers. Pictured from left are Christopher Lewis (sophomore), Anthony Towns (senior), Howard Jean (director), and Joseph Bryant (graduate student).

It's 11:05 a.m. and 28 students at Fulton Elementary School in Germantown quietly file into Christopher Wright's 6th grade math class. After taking their seats, they dive into their daily series of equations on the blackboard. After making his way around the room checking each student's progress, he asks for the answers. Hands shoot up, and Wright dashes back to the blackboard.

One girl points out a mistake in one of the problems. "That number should be negative, instead of positive," she said with confidence.

Wright responds with a smile, "You're right. I'm just trying to trip you up."

Wright has been with the District for eight years, five at Edmonds Elementary and three at Fulton, where he teaches math and science. It seems that his students are thriving.

But Wright is one of just a handful of African American teachers at Fulton, and the only Black male instructor at a school where 99 percent of the student population is Black.

Some dispute a direct link between same-race teachers and student gains, saying that students can benefit from all talented teachers. But a 2005 Texas-based study "The Market for Teacher Quality," released by the National Bureau of Economic Research, reports "a positive value of matching students and teachers by race … and Black teachers tend to be more effective with minority students."

"Looking at my boys in particular," Wright said, "I've found that I can talk to them about my experiences growing up in North Philly because they have experienced the same things."

He said they listen when he tells them "the choices they make today are going to affect them tomorrow."

Currently, less than 34 percent of teachers are Black, Latino, or Asian in a district in which 87 percent of the students are non-white.

According to District data, 28 percent of teachers and 62 percent of students are African American, 2.6 percent of teachers and 17 percent of students are Latino, and 2.2 percent of teachers and 6 percent of students are Asian.

This year, just 17 percent of 984 newly hired teachers were African American, down from 28 percent in 2002, a figure cited in a never-released report from the 2006 Teacher Diversity Campaign.

Estelle Matthews, the District's Chief Talent Development Officer, said she was not aware of the report, which provided a detailed action plan. But she said that the Ackerman administration is embarking on several initiatives to diversify the workforce and wants to increase teachers of color to 51 percent by 2014.

"Students of color need to see that role model and understand that what they see in front of them is attainable and that they can get there with a mentor and a support system," Matthews said.

Reasons for the shortage

Teachers of color say that lack of support has kept untold numbers out of the profession. Carmen Brown-Perez, a Latino kindergarten teacher at Pennell Elementary who has been with the District for a decade remembers being discouraged while studying early childhood education at Temple University.

"I felt like this was my calling, but I had teachers who gave me a hard time," she said. "One actually said to me 'You'll never be a teacher.' But I think that made me more determined."