By Marlana Edwards
With black students in public schools continuing to perform at poorer rates than their white counterparts, several studies and experts are pointing to high teacher turnover rates combined with the lack of black teachers in public school systems across the country as playing a crucial role in this underperformance.
Black Students Perform at Poorer Rates
A report released by the National Center for Education Statistics concluded that academic achievement was lower for both black and white students in schools where black students accounted for more than 40 percent of the student body, compared to schools where black students made up less than 20 percent of the student body.
In 1964, The Civil Rights Act mandated the Coleman Report, which required that the Department of Education examine the inequality of educational opportunities in elementary and secondary education across the U.S. in order to gauge the differences between black and white student performance.
The report initially found that in both math and reading, the average black student in grade 12 placed in the 13th percentile of the score distribution, meaning that 87 percent of white students in grade 12 scored ahead of the average black 12th grader.
Unfortunately, the disparity in the performances of white and black public school students has not changed much in the past 50 years. According to data from the 2013 National Assessment for Educational Progress, the average black student placed only in the 19th percentile in math, and in the 22nd percentile in reading.
These disparities are sometimes attributed to a lack of parental involvement and government funding, but experts say that internal factors also contribute significantly to poor performance in predominantly Black public schools.
However another issue might be contributing to this and it is high turnover rate of teachers in the system.
According to a 2007 survey of teachers conducted by the U.S Department of Education, Almost a quarter of new public school teachers leave the profession within the first three years. This attrition rate is close to the turnover rate for new police officers.
The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) revealed that teacher turnover has been increasing over the past 15 years and that some school districts have reported a higher dropout rate for teachers than students.
Schools with large African American and Latino student populations suffer from teacher turnover at higher rates than predominantly white schools. Research conducted by University of Pennsylvania Professor, Richard Ingersoll, shows that underserved schools lose 20 percent of their faculty each year. In New York City middle schools, the problem is especially pronounced. Two-thirds of educators (66 percent) exit within the first five years of teaching.
Ingersoll’s research revealed that Caucasian teachers are more likely to leave a school because of a lack of student discipline.
Alaudin Ullah, who has been a New York Public School District paraprofessional for over 15 years believes that white teachers are often unable to manage predominately black classrooms.
“Many new teachers in New York are white hipsters,” said Ullah. “They’re well intentioned but they don’t know how to manage classrooms full of kids that might make fun of them. A lot of these teachers feel intimidated by the physical presence of some of their students.”
Ingersoll also found that Caucasian teachers were more likely to stay at schools with higher populations of Caucasian students, while African American and Latino teachers are more likely to stay at schools with underserved students and populations of similar races.
A study conducted by the Learning Policy Institute concluded that uncertified teachers with little experience tend to leave at rates two to three times higher than those who have teaching certificates and teaching experience.
Agyei Tyehimba, a community organizer and founder of the Harlem Liberation school in Manhattan, N.Y, also believes that inexperienced teachers contribute to the poor performance of black students.
“Black students ultimately perform poorly due to a lack of experienced teachers,” said Tyehimba.
Tyehimba matriculated through the Teach for America Program as a young paraprofessional before becoming a teacher. He obtained his masters degree in Africana Studies from the Cornell University Africana Studies research center.
The study at the Learning Policy Institute also concluded that students in high-poverty and high-minority environments bear the brunt of the teacher turnover epidemic. High rates of teacher turnover prevent schools from coordinating curriculum, from tracking and relaying important information about students, and from maintaining relationships with parents and the student body.
Lack of Black Teachers in Public Schools
A shortage of African American teachers is also being pinpointed as one of the reasons for the poor academic achievement of black students.
A report titled A Quarter Century of Changes in the Elementary and Secondary Teaching Force: From 1987 to 2012 concluded that while the number of black teachers increased by 25 percent from 1987-2012, their percentage in the overall teaching force declined, from 7.5 to 6.5 percent.
A study conducted by the US Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics showed that as of 2015, the majority of America’s approximately 4,000 public school educators are primarily white. The study concluded that roughly 80 percent of all public school teachers were non-Hispanic white, while nine percent were Hispanic, two percent were non-Hispanic Asian, and seven percent were non-Hispanic black during the 2015-16 school year.
The study also showed that America’s public school population has been majority children of color since 2014, and of the nation’s 50.4 million public school kids, 24.6 million (49 percent) were white children and 25.9 million (51 percent) were kids of color.
Traci Peterson, a former New York Public School principal and professional development facilitator for the New York City Department of Education said that the presence of majority white teachers can have a negative impact on a majority black population, as white teachers are more likely to give harsher punishments to black students, which impedes their ability to learn.
“In my experience white teachers often give harsher punishments to black students, and they give the benefit of the doubt to white students. Teacher’s preconceived notions and biases about a child and their racial background can really deter students from pursuing higher education,” said Peterson.
A study conducted by Yale University Child Study Center on the Awareness of Implicit Bias found that black students are nearly four times as likely to be suspended as white students, and nearly twice as likely to be expelled.
The study also revealed that black preschoolers are 3.6 times more likely to receive one or more out-of-school suspensions. This can be attributed to implicit biases that white teachers have against black students. The study concluded that these biases also result in lower expectations and rates of gifted program referrals for black students, because white teachers perceive them to be less intelligent.
Tyehimba also believes that the influx of white teachers in schools in lower income communities perpetuates stereotypes and causes black students to be unfairly labeled.
“When young White teachers come into schools that are poor, overcrowded and predominantly Black and Latino, they tend to come with a colonizing perspective,” said Tyehimba.
“The teachers come with the mindset of ‘these kids are poor, violent, hungry, have terrible home lives, and we’re coming to save them,’ and that really doesn’t help.”
Judge Ronald Wilson of Tucson Arizona, who is also a professor at the University of Arizona, believes that harsh punishments for undeserving black students can ruin that student’s academic career.
“Almost all of the black men that I saw in my courtroom were young, poor, and underemployed,” said Wilson who also founded the Alcumus Institute for Advanced Mentoring, and the Roots College Preparatory School for Wayward Children.
“Most of them were high school dropouts or had their GED. A lot of the men had low self esteem and felt as if the school system had given up on them. Most of these men had a track record of school suspensions or expulsions, but they suffered from mental or emotional disabilities and were probably misunderstood for a long time,” said Wilson, who is also the immediate past national chairman of the American Bar Association Mental Health Courts Committee.
A study conducted on the long-run impacts of same-race teachers found that not only did the black students who were assigned to black teachers graduate high school at higher rates, they also were more likely to take a college entrance exam. The study also showed that low-income black students who have at least one black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate high school and consider attending college.
Peterson agrees that black public school students perform better under the instruction of black teachers.
“A Black teacher increase, especially a Black male teacher increase will benefit both Black male and Black female students,” said Peterson. Students of color work best under teachers who are concerned with their learning, and not their race.”
Comments