In 2013, the city of Philadelphia closed 24 of its schools. There were many reasons cited for the closures — among them the challenge of meeting test score requirements, an education policy staple since 2002. Whether it was the cause or the effect, in the 11 years between 2001 and 2012, that city’s population of black teachers fell by 18.5 percent.
In President Obama’s old stomping grounds of Chicago, the count of black teachers dropped by a staggering 40 percent during that same period, and in 2013, Chicago handily beat even Philly’s record, by closing 49 schools, which amounted to a significant portion of the 500 in total that were closed in 2013. Even in our nation’s capital, Washington, D.C., the effects are being felt, as 38 schools were shuttered in 2008, out of a total of 111.
Then and Now
Back in the 1970s, local, state and federal governments were better equipped — and more willing — to funnel the appropriate resources to school districts plagued by generations-old problems. The areas most affected by the closings and departures described above are located in predominantly African American communities, and there was a time when they had the resources they needed to beat the odds stacked heavily against them.
This is no longer the case. With inflation and the ever-higher cost of living in the United States, the federal government has struggled for decades to keep our schools adequately funded. And when schools don’t get the funding they need, institutions in minority-heavy areas are disproportionately affected, when compared with schools in whiter communities.
And then, of course, there’s America’s war on drugs, which has seen government spending on corrections grow at more than triple the rate of spending on education. Up and down the campaign trail this year, the more progressive-minded candidates have spoken out against the “school-to-prison” pipeline and the “revolving door” of recidivism which, again, disproportionately affects African Americans.
This is what comes of turning criminal justice over to profit-driven corporations. It’s also the treatment that more and more American schools can expect if we give in to the conservative and libertarian fairy tales of “school vouchers” and “privatized education.” It’s time for money to stop holding knowledge hostage.
The Solutions
Before you say it: yes, it’s perfectly clear that affirmative action alone is not going to solve this problem. If we had two thousand new black teachers tomorrow, we’d still need schools to put them in.
It would also be a mere drop in the bucket, as 26,000 African American teachers have departed from America’s public schools since 1990, despite growth in the teaching workforce totaling 134,000 teachers. In other words, as America has become a more diverse place to live, our schools have grown ever less diverse.
We’re seeing increasing attention to the systemic, racially charged problems that lead to the killings of innocent black Americans on an almost weekly basis, but the crisis in the classroom is a much quieter issue.
It’s a fact that white teachers are far more likely to find black students’ behavior problematic and levy unnecessarily harsh penalties, such as suspensions or expulsions than black teachers are. That’s according to a study conducted by Adam Wright, who does social research at the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Nevertheless, the problem won’t be solved merely by throwing more money at the problem, and it won’t be solved with some anti-bigotry silver bullet. Instead, we’re witnessing a key moment of clarity, as social and economic justice, trade and economic policies and racial equality all come together to create a perfect storm. When that storm finally settles, we’ll have changed our country for good.
Benefits of Hiring More Black Teachers
What does this mean? For a start, it means that, yes, we do need to encourage more African Americans to become teachers — and that means deliberately targeting each of the above problems in turn.
Black children have every bit as much potential to become world-class educators, but if they grow up in racially divided communities with struggling schools, they may never realize that potential. In addition, African Americans caught in the school-to-prison pipeline may never be given the chance for redemption that they deserve.
At every level of society, we’re not done dealing with slavery’s aftermath. That might sound dramatic, but hopefully less so now that we’ve got data to back up a simple fact. The color of your skin still profoundly affects your ability to live a whole and worthwhile life, whether you’re a struggling student or a troubled youth who wants to grow up to teach someday.
Let’s make this concrete, shall we? The study mentioned above by Adam Wright made another interesting discovery. If schools doubled the number of black teachers in their employ, we could, as a nation, cut the white-black “suspension disparity” in half. An additional study revealed that white teachers have a tendency to grade minority students more harshly — sometimes skewing results by as much as 22 percent — than white students.
No Smoking Gun
No, there’s no one smoking gun here — just a collection of very old problems in need of new solutions. If there’s a lesson here, it’s to be wary of any pasty-faced politician who insists racism is dead, or that taking offense at another killing, or another failing, of a minority-heavy school, is just business-as-usual. And when conservative-minded folks campaign on a platform promising education “reform” of any kind, treat what they say with the skepticism it’s due.
In the meantime, visibility is our greatest weapon against these problems, as #BlackLivesMatter continues to demonstrate. Once we understand the problem, we can get to work making sure the next generation doesn’t inherit our prejudice the way we inherited our parents’.