Providing teachers that reflect the students
The Sacramento Bee published a good story on Saturday by Lorett Kalb and Phillip Reese on a group of teachers at McClatchy High working together in a colectivo to recruit students to get a college education and return to McClatchy as teachers. Here.http://www.sacbee.com/2014/09/20/6712601/mcclatchy-high-wants-students.html
However, the story misses an important issue.
Mc Clatchy used to get many minority teachers, both Asian and Latino from the Bilingual Multicultural Education Department at Sac state, before that program was eliminated in 2012. The major minority teacher recruitment program in Northern California was quietly shut down. I was the first Chair of that department.
By 2007, BMED was recruiting and placing minority teachers in the region such that between 30 and 36 % of all new teachers at Sac State were Latino. We did this for over 18 years. We trained over 600 teachers, most of them minority and most of them local.
Now that has been re- organized out of existence under the disguise of low enrollment. Current enrollment in teacher preparation at Sac State is about 6-8 % Latino. This data is available in publicly available sources.
The story of the creation and destruction of the BMED department is here.
Dr. Duane E. Campbell
Democracy and Education Institute