Racial and Ethnical Diverse America’s Public Schools + NCES Blog | Back to School by the Numbers: 2018

Racial and Ethnical Diverse America’s Public Schools

Racial and Ethnical Diverse America’s Public Schools

The FINANCIAL -- Racial and ethnic minorities accounted for 20% of all public elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States during the 2015-16 school year, according to data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That makes teachers considerably less racially and ethnically diverse than their students – as well as the nation as a whole.

By comparison, 51% of all public elementary and secondary school students in the U.S. were nonwhite in 2015-16, the most recent year for which NCES has published data. And 39% of all Americans were racial or ethnic minorities that year, according to U.S. Census Bureau population estimates. (Younger Americans are a more racially and ethnically diverse group than older people.)

According to PRC, nonwhites make up a small share of public school teachersNonwhite teachers not only were sharply outnumbered by white teachers in America’s classrooms, they also tended to work in different school environments, the NCES data show. For example, 31% of teachers in city schools were nonwhite, versus just 11% of teachers in rural schools – a reflection of the broader racial and ethnic makeup of America’s communities. And while nonwhite teachers accounted for 29% of the total in public charter schools, their share was considerably lower in traditional public schools (19%).

Larger shares of teachers were nonwhite at schools with more nonwhite students, while the reverse was true for schools with more white students. For instance, nonwhites made up 55% of teachers in schools where at least 90% of students were nonwhite. By comparison, across schools where at least 90% of students were white, nearly all teachers (98%) also were white. This is similar to the experience for students: Many students go to schools where at least half of their peers are their race or ethnicity. (A recent article by the Brookings Institution argued that students benefit from a diverse teacher workforce so nonwhite teachers should be more evenly distributed.)

In addition, considerable shares of teachers were nonwhite in schools with higher percentages of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. (Such eligibility is often used as a proxy measure for lower household income.) Nonwhites represented 34% of teachers in schools where at least three-quarters of students were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. In schools where a quarter or fewer students were eligible, just 11% of teachers were nonwhite.

While only one-in-five of America’s public school teachers these days are nonwhite, this share has increased since the 1987-88 school year (the earliest with comparable data), when about 13% of teachers were nonwhite. Hispanic and Asian teachers have accounted for much of the growth during that span. While the number of black teachers also has increased since the late ’80s, the share of black teachers has declined.

Racial, ethnic diversity has grown more quickly among U.S. public school students than teachersIn the past 30 years, Hispanic teachers have overtaken blacks as the second-largest racial or ethnic group among U.S. public school teachers. In 1987-88, there were about three times as many black public school teachers (191,000) as Hispanic teachers (69,000). Since then, the number of Hispanic teachers increased about fivefold to 338,000, while the number of black teachers increased by 34%, to 256,000. And while Hispanics still account for just 9% of teachers overall, they have accounted for a sizable share (18%) of the growth in teachers since 1987-88.

The share of Asian public school teachers has also grown steadily. Between 1987-88 and 2015-16, the number of Asian teachers roughly quadrupled, from 21,000 to 86,000. (Broadly, the Asian and Hispanic populations in the U.S. have grown dramatically in recent decades. In fact, they were the nation’s first and second fastest-growing racial or ethnic groups between 2015 and 2016.)

Meanwhile, the pattern in racial and ethnic diversity among principals is similar to that of teachers. Nonwhites made up 20% of U.S. public school principals in 2015-16, a share that has grown since 1987-88, according to another NCES survey. Much of this growth can again be attributed to Hispanics and Asians, who have both doubled in number. Though Hispanics and Asians still account for very small shares of all principals (8% and 1%, respectively), they accounted for much of the growth among principals since 1987-88.

Growth in racial and ethnic diversity has been much faster among U.S. students than among both teachers and principals in recent years. During the 1986-87 school year (the earliest year with comparable data), Continue reading: Racial and Ethnical Diverse America’s Public Schools

NCES Blog | Back to School by the Numbers: 2018 - https://nces.ed.gov/blogs/nces/post/back-to-school-by-the-numbers-2018

Trump’s Student Debt Policies Are Mind-bogglingly Corrupt

CFPB’s Student Loan Watchdog Resigns In Protest of Trump

Trump’s Student Debt Policies Are Mind-bogglingly Corrupt

The Republican Party’s economic policies have grown so corrupt and regressive as to be literally unbelievable. In focus groups, Democratic operatives have found that swing voters will often dismiss simple descriptions of the GOP’s self-avowed fiscal priorities as partisan attacks — after all, how could any major political party actually favor slashing Medicare benefits to lower taxes on the one percent?

Alas, a plain recitation of the Trump administration’s agenda on student debt is sure to strike many Americans as even more implausible.

But before we examine the president’s (absurdly corrupt) “college affordability” policies, let’s take a quick tour of the crisis that he inherited.

In the United States today, 44 million people carry $1.4 trillion in student debt. That giant pile of financial obligations isn’t just a burden on individual borrowers, but on the nation’s entire economy. The concomitant rise in the cost of college tuition — and stagnation of entry-level wages for college graduates — has depressed the purchasing power of a broad, and growing, part of the labor force. Many of these workers are struggling to keep their heads above water; recent research suggests that 11 percent of aggregate student-loan debt is more than 90 days past due or delinquent. Other borrowers are unable to invest in a home, vehicle, or start a family (and engage in all the myriad acts of consumption that go with that).

The full scale of this disaster is still coming into view. Just this week, the Center for American Progress (CAP) revealed that official government statistics have been hiding the depths of our student-debt problem. Federal law requires colleges that participate in student-loan programs to keep their borrowers’ default rates under 30 percent for three years after they begin repayment. But once those three years are up, federal tracking ends. Using a Freedom of Information Act request, CAP’s Ben Miller secured never-before-released data on what happens to default rates after Uncle Sam stops watching.

He found that many colleges (especially for-profit ones) have been artificially depressing their default rates during the three-year window by showering their borrowers in deferments — essentially, special allowances that empower debtors to temporarily stop making debt payments without going into delinquency. After the three years are up, the deferments disappear — and the default rates skyrocket.

Photo: Department of Education

Photo: Department of Education

Just about all of America’s institutions of higher learning are complicit in this sorry state of affairs. But for-profit colleges have been far and away the most malevolent actors. The entrepreneurs behind such schools looked at Continue reading: CFPB’s Student Loan Watchdog Resigns In Protest of Trump

How Betsy DeVos could trigger another financial meltdown - The Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/08/29/how-betsy-devos-could-trigger-another-financial-meltdown/?utm_term=.8ec158e9ea36

Betsy DeVos's Program Scorecard Isn't Going To Work - https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2018/08/28/betsy-devoss-program-scorecard-isnt-going-to-work/#6a4a25ee4418 by @dereknewton on @forbes

RANDI WEINGARTEN: There are many ways to make schools safer, arming teachers is the last thing we should do | TheHill

There are many ways to make schools safer, arming teachers is the last thing we should do | TheHill

There are many ways to make schools safer, arming teachers is the last thing we should do

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wants to take away money used for after-school programs and school counselors in order to arm our children’s teachers.

We’ve known DeVos has wanted to do many things that would hurt students—including cutting federal spending for public schools and undermining the rights of vulnerable students or those who have student loans—but this idea is one of the most reckless and dangerous ideas I’ve heard from her.

Under the plan exposed by the New York Times, DeVos would divert funding that goes principally to vulnerable and poor kids through community schools, mental health programs, college and career counseling, after-school programs, and other services that help keep kids safe and help them learn. Instead, the plan would allow states to use that money to buy guns for educators. Regardless of where you fall on the debate on guns, everyone agrees we need more mental health services. Everyone agrees we need more counselors. But DeVos is trying to take them away from our kids.

We knew DeVos would try to do the bidding of the National Rifle Association and the gun manufacturers, but to even consider diverting resources used to support poor kids to flood schools with more guns is beyond the recklessness we believed she was willing to pursue. Put simply, it’s insane.

Does DeVos want a kindergarten teacher interacting with her students with a holstered gun on her hip? Would the teacher need to engage in gunfire instead of getting her students to a safe place? How could teachers ever receive enough training to engage in a shootout with someone who has a military weapon, especially in the chaos of students and other educators fleeing for safety? The more you think it through, the crazier the plan sounds.

Beyond the insanity of it, beyond the fact that arming teachers would make our children’s classrooms less safe, it’s also not what educators and students want. Educators, students and parents have made clear that they don’t want more guns in schools; teachers want to teach and students want to learn. They want their schools to be safe sanctuaries, not armed fortresses.

In her testimony before the Federal Commission on School Safety, Newtown, Conn., teacher Abbey Clements said, “I would like to make something perfectly clear: Had school employees been carrying guns at Sandy Hook School, it would not have made us or our students any safer.”

Equally astounding is that DeVos has no authority to use these funds for Continue reading: There are many ways to make schools safer, arming teachers is the last thing we should do | TheHill

The Daily Devil’s Dictionary: Betsy DeVos Uses Her “Discretion”

 - https://www.fairobserver.com/?p=71768 by @pisackson on @myfairobserver