Disappearing acts: The decline of black teachers
BY BRANDON JOHNSON, CTU ORGANIZER | 01/31/2013
As long as I can remember, there has been a perennial plea for black people to enter the teaching profession, and many of us enthusiastically headed this righteous call.
However, as the nation's population and students have grown more diverse, the teaching force has done the opposite — it's grown more white and less diverse; the growing shortage of black teachers, especially black men is an issue in the nation's schools.
Although many stakeholders of public education agree that our elementary and secondary teaching force "should look like America," recent policy has ignored conventional wisdom and has led to the greatest involuntary exodus of blacks from the teaching profession.
In 2000, 52 percent of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) students and 41 percent of CPS teachers were black. Today, 43 percent of students and just 25 percent of teachers are black.
"Stand up to the Fat Cats" tells the story of outsider billionaires wreaking havoc on Chicago's schools.
Black teachers are more likely to work in high-poverty schools with high percentages of black students. In other words, the data indicates that black teachers are employed at higher rates in schools serving