For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers - The Hechinger Report

For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers - The Hechinger Report

For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers

Supporting teachers and communities will boost children’s academic achievement

There are 60,000 fewer public education jobs than there were before the recession began in 2007, according to an analysis of the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report by the think tank Economic Policy Institute. States and districts haven’t moved on from the austerity measures imposed by most states more than a decade ago when the recession hit. “If we include the number of jobs that should have been created just to keep up with growing student enrollment,” the EPI report states, “we are currently experiencing a 307,000 job shortfall in public education.”

A shortfall of more than 300,000 jobs in public education. Think about that the next time news of a teacher strike hits the headlines. Maybe severe budget cuts made sense to folks in 2007, but the underlying rationale behind firing teachers has never made sense to me.

In the Obama years, Republicans and Democrats alike were delighted to find common cause against teachers. Students weren’t doing so well, they argued, because their teachers simply weren’t good enough. Education reform was the name of the game, and everyone who wasn’t a quality teacher just had to go.

Problem was, that was a myopic view of the world. Neither students nor teachers exist in a vacuum. As I like to say, students don’t live in schools — they live in communities. And when their communities are negatively affected, that has a negative impact on them. So if you fire a whole bunch of black teachers, as education reformers did, with devastating effect, in New Orleans, Washington, D.C., and CONTINUE READING: For better student outcomes, hire more black teachers - The Hechinger Report