Like any other career path, diversity, or lack of, in the school workplace can have long-reaching effects on the stability and success of the institution. The obvious achievement gaps for ethnic minorities in schools across the nation have continued to draw concern from Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. Considering the low graduation rates of these students, tactics are being promoted by the White House to remedy the situation.
Duncan noted recently:
• Students (that are suffering under the achievement gap) would benefit from strong role models in the classroom.
• He says getting more minority teachers into the mix is key to closing achievement gaps.
• African-American and Latino male teachers make up about 3.5 percent of teachers nationwide.
It should go without saying that all of our schools across the United States need to reflect the melting pot of our countries citizens. However, considering that more than 96% of our teachers are white, the obvious striation from societal norms our schools are supporting is appalling.
This is not to say that we need to replace dedicated and effective white teachers with minority counterparts. More specifically, we still need to increase our accountability expectations for our teachers, no matter their ethnic background.
To increase our ranks of qualified and dedicated minority teachers, we need to recruit more ethnic college students to the education major. Incentive programs are in place across the nation including:
•
http://www.housing4teachers.arkansas.gov/r... •
http://www.cga.ct.gov/2001/rpt/olr/htm/200... •
http://www.ffmt.org/ These programs are in place to draw a higher number of minority teachers into the fold, and need to be emulated across the country, in each and every school district. We need to diversify our education workplaces for the benefit of our kids, no matter their ethnic background.
Posted By: Paul Adams
Thursday, September 9th 2010 at 11:32AM
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