Minority Teacher Shortage Plagues Region, Nation

We would like to match the demographics of our student population with our teaching population — or at least get closer," reported the superintendent for schools in Austin, Texas, Dr. Pascal "Pat" Forgione. "But," he added, "over the last four years, while our Hispanic student population has continued to grow, three-fourths of our new teacher hires over the same period have been Anglo. It’s not because we’re not trying to increase minority teacher hiring. Few minorities are entering teaching." Forgione made these comments at last year’s Symposium on Supply and Quality of Teachers, sponsored by the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education (AACTE).

The need to increase the diversity in the teaching workforce is an issue teacher preparation institutions have been dealing with since the seventies, according to Dr. Carl A. Grant, professor of teacher education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who is nationally known for his work in multicultural education. But the argument behind it, says Grant, is different today than it was three decades ago.

"Back in the seventies, we needed teachers of color for students of color," explained Grant before a recent gathering of teacher educators at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. "The point is we need teachers of color for all children in this country, and until we begin to visualize this fact and think with a larger sweep, we reduce our argument."

Stephen Marble, director of SEDL’s Eisenhower Southwest Consortium for the Improvement of Mathematics and Science Teaching (SCIMAST), explains, "We must change the way we think about diversity — from thinking about it as a problem to thinking about it as a virtue. Diversity creates more opportunities for everyone."

For white students, having a teacher from a different culture or of a different race or ethnicity is an opportunity to learn about others and experience the cultural and social diversity that form the basis of our democracy. For culturally, linguistically, and racially diverse students, there are important pedagogical reasons for ensuring that students have the opportunity to be taught by teachers who reflect their ethnicity and culture. Kenneth J. Meier, professor of political science at Texas A&M University and author of The Politics of Hispanic Education: Un paso pa’lante y dos pa’tras (one step forward, two steps back), emphasizes that minority teachers have a positive influence on minority students, specifically in the areas of teaching styles, in serving as role models, and in the decisions about grouping, tracking, and disciplining students.

Phillip G. Eaglin, a SEDL program specialist with SCIMAST, says, "Teachers with a genuine understanding of the culture of the day-to-day lives of their students can introduce topics and examples that are important and meaningful to students’ experiences. In other words, instruction and content can be made more culturally relevant to students when their teacher has shared or lived similar cultural experiences." He adds, "Becoming familiar with students’ backgrounds or creating open-ended lessons and waiting for students to connect their cultural knowledge does not compare to teachers’ incorporating lived, shared, genuine cultural experiences into their instruction. Thus having shared backgrounds and cultures helps teachers construct authentic, meaningful opportunities for students."

Eaglin describes opportunities that many of our minority students have yet to experience. The National Education Association (NEA) claims that, despite the success that some of the teacher preparation programs are having in recruiting minority teacher candidates, the current shortage in minority teachers presents a more difficult dilemma than in the past because the demand is rising and the supply is falling. Not only are there fewer minority teachers in schools today, but the shortage is more critical in certain geographical and subject matter areas.

It is no surprise that education-related occupations are currently among the fastest growing occupations and, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, are expected to grow 27 percent by 2005. However, only six out of ten trained teachers actually take teaching positions. Of those that do end up teaching, approximately half leave the profession within the first five years; some teachers leave to take jobs in the fields of engineering, natural science, mathematics, and computer science where better-paying job markets lure them from the classroom.

And it’s precisely in the subject areas of science and mathematics that high-poverty schools are in greatest need of minority teachers, especially in states experiencing the largest population increases. Across the nation, between 1996 and 2008, total enrollment in public high schools (grades 9 through 12) is expected to increase by 15 percent. In the Southwest, the expected increases in enrollment for the states of New Mexico and Texas are 16 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

"Our region — the U.S. Southwest — faces a growing shortage of qualified science and mathematics teachers and an even more critical shortage of teachers representing the language, ethnic, and cultural diversity of the broader student population," says Marble.

To begin rectifying the low number of minority teachers Grant says, "We need to develop policies and programs that seek to increase the rate in which underrepresented populations enter four-year colleges, or transfer from two-year colleges to four year colleges; increase special programs for teacher aides who have worked in the school and getting them to move on and get their degrees."

A review of the publication Promising Practices: New Ways to Improve Teacher Quality, produced in 1998 by the U.S. Department of Education, reveals that excellent examples of initiatives in recruitment for the teaching profession are emerging or currently exist as part of state programs.

Many of these initiatives include strategies that target diverse and talented middle and high school students as potential teaching candidates. These initiatives also stress the importance of providing support for teacher candidates in the critical first years and offering ongoing learning opportunities. Simply put, the strategies support the teaching career as a continuum, not a series of disconnected steps stacked on top of each other.

One of Grant’s stronger recommendations is that the conversation on diversity in the teaching work force be taken to a national level. "We need to frame this in a much larger discourse, it’s not about this state and that state; I think we need to come together and say how can we make a sustained, systemic argument," claims Grant. To that end, organizations such as the Association of Teacher Educators, the NEA, the AACTE, the American Council on Education, the National Association for Multicultural Education, and others are supporting the need to create a national comprehensive and long range strategy to address the issue. These organizations are calling for a summit on teacher diversity to be held in Washington, D.C. for the purpose of involving educational organizations, the federal government, ethnic/racial minority organizations, national foundations and others in the development of a comprehensive and nationally supported plan.

As changes in demographics and economic forces continue to impact the teaching work force, and as American public schools continue to struggle with the limited supply of qualified teachers, teacher preparation institutions must refocus their efforts, not only on increasing the quantity of teachers, but recruiting and retaining qualified and diverse candidates for the teaching work force.

Next Article: Diversifying the Science and Mathematics Teaching Work Force in the Southwest