The National Interest: Once a month, this column is tackling broader questions about what the country should do about gaps in achievement and opportunity, especially for boys of color, in a partnership with The Root.
In recent years, an outburst of national studies and exposés has shown that black teachers produce better academic and behavioral outcomes for black students compared to their white counterparts. This has led to numerous articles calling for the recruitment of more black teachers and/or asking where all the black teachers have gone. But the flipside to those studies isn’t making as many headlines. What’s wrong with white teachers? How do we close the black-white teaching performance gap?
Extolling the need for more black teachers is not the same as demanding white teachers be less racist. Naming what’s wrong with white people’s teaching skills must begin with calling out racism. We certainly need more black teachers, but recruitment isn’t a solution for the racism students and teachers of color face everyday.
The research is overwhelming.
Black teachers on average are better for black students (and in some cases for white students too) and white teachers on average are worse for black students. Black primary-school students who are matched to a same-race teacher performed better on standardized tests and face more favorable teacher perceptions according to recent findings from the German economic research group Institute of Labor Economics. Some of the same researchers found in a separate study published by Johns Hopkins University that low-income black students who have at least one black teacher in elementary school are significantly more likely to graduate from high school and consider attending college.
Focusing on black recruitment insidiously shields white educators from scrutiny and downplays how important it is to provide teachers an anti-racist education before and after they enter the profession.
Is it because black teachers are better educators? Not necessarily, although research suggests that may be part of it. A study by NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development found that students of color and white students viewed minority teachers more highly than white teachers. But one of the key reasons black students tend to perform better with black teachers has to do with expectations.
Related: We need more black and brown teachers but not for the reasons you think
Black teachers are more likely to place high-achieving black students in programs for gifted students. Black teachers suspend and expel black students at lower rates. Singling out recruitment recuses our responsibilities to address the racism that afflicts white teachers and creates conditions that push black teachers out of the profession at an alarming rate. Trying to convince more black teachers to enter a profession they’re likely to abandon after a couple years is not even half a solution.
There’s much at stake for white teachers who represent more than 80 percent of the profession. Research shows that “African American students and white students with the same level of prior achievement make comparable academic progress when they are assigned to teachers of comparable effectiveness.” We need the majority of teachers of this country to improve their practice. An effective teacher must be defined as a teacher who is not racist and who acts on the high expectations she has for every child.
The unconscious bias, racial anxieties and stereotypes that contribute to the criminalization of black people, improper medical diagnoses and employment discrimination also lend themselves to lower expectations of black students and no-tolerance discipline policies in schools.
We can’t put the burden on fixing racist expectations on black teachers. Black teachers are tired of being typecast as disciplinarians. The research shows they are more effective, but expecting them to single-handedly combat the racism prevalent in schools is one of the reasons so many leave the profession early. For these reasons, others have rightly recommended changing the conditions that push teachers of color out the profession.
Focusing on black recruitment insidiously shields white educators from scrutiny and downplays how important it is to provide teachers an anti-racist education before and after they enter the profession. This transcends school type. Charter schools and regular schools alike are implicated in the problem. However, there’s a particular irony in the white reformers who descended upon cities like New Orleans, Newark and Philadelphia to close achievement gaps with an army of young white teachers. If they don’t take seriously the way racism undermines their efforts, they’re the ones who need to be disrupted, taken over and reformed.
Black educators have been focused on the problems associated with racism and bias for generations, but have not had reform systems built around their ideas. A recent offering came from Columbia Teachers College professor Christopher Emdin’s 2016 book “For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all.” Emdin channels the work of University of Wisconsin-Madison professor Gloria Ladson-Billings, who, in her groundbreaking 1994 book “The Dreamkeepers: Successful teaching for African-American students,” coined the term culturally relevant teaching, which Ladson-Billings writes “empowers students intellectually, socially, emotionally, and politically by using cultural referents to impart knowledge, skills, and attitudes.”
There are many others who train white teachers to be less racist, including Sonia Nieto, professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Travis J. Bristol, assistant professor at Boston University and Shaun Harper, professor at the University of Southern California.
But the outpouring of articles on recruiting black teachers has drowned out the scholars who aren’t afraid to name racism as the main reason black students aren’t as successful as they should be in school.
Make no mistake: All students benefit from having black teachers. Black children just have the additional benefit of seeing themselves represented in positions of leadership and to learn from someone who isn’t just visiting their culture— if they even make the attempt.
Still, white teachers aren’t going anywhere, which means that black students need for white teachers to stop being racist as much as they need new, effective black teachers.
Whiteness can no longer be a hall pass.
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.
Dr. Perry,
Wow! Your column was both insightful and convicting. As a teacher and a parent with a child in an urban school district, I understand clearly why you confirm that black students benefit from black teachers. It is true that that there is an increased likelihood that a black teacher would see a black students’ gifts and talents and act on them. I have found myself pushing my child’s conspicuous gifts and God given talents in the faces of non- black teachers so that they might be acknowledged for 3 consecutive years.
The resulting problem is the inevitable “end of the line” scenario where there is “nothing more they can do” for students who achieve above the bar. When the school system is focused on mainstreaming education to meet the middle, gifted and talented programs continue to be things of the past. With any luck, teachers will see this an an opportunity where teachers both black and white must differentiate instruction for students in the classroom and seek out programs after school or outside of school that may benefit or interest high achieving students.
As a teacher who has worked in four Baltimore City Public Schools, many parents and students do reveal that they are inspired by me and other African American teachers and administrators in positions of leadership. To parents and students, leadership equals love and respect for the their own well-being. If we can not recruit faster, we must make sure we retain the good ones we have. Everyday for me is a deliberate attempt to move my students one step higher and to tap into the potential that parents and I agree that their child possesses.
I appreciate your honesty and concern for the next generation.
K.Rainey
Andre Perry need to look at the problem without resorting to the simple RACISM red herring. Brown vs. The Board of education ruling missed the entire point. Had the Supreme Court looked at the case without being blinded by racism, they would have rightly determined that blacks COULD NOT be told what schools they can or cannot attend. Blacks would have been free to go to whatever school they wanted and bias should not be tolerated anywhere in the education system. But forced integration had one serious problem that devastated the entire education system. Black students were sent to white schools where they were a minority. Did the black teachers go with them? In many cases no. The black teachers were deemed the least qualified and were let go. How could this be? For Blacks teaching was one of the best jobs they could aspire to in 1954. The Best and Brightest Blacks were attracted to teaching and WERE some of the BEST teachers in the system. But those teachers were fired and Brown vs. the Board had the opposite of it’s attended result. Not that the NAACP gave a damn about that when they brought the suit. Economists are trained to look for the unintended consequences. Not so much the NAACP. The Black teachers have still not recovered from their own “Night of the Long Knives” that followed BROWN. And who suffered most/ Black students. And why? Were white teachers racist? Of course there was some resentment. Classes got larger because the Black teachers were not typically replaced. Their salaries whent to transportation costs. Most white teachers were not racist. They simply lacked the context. The did not understand the differences between the students who were black and those who were white, They did not know the black students families. To the black students, it seemed they had gone from schools where the teachers knew their families, went to the same churches, and genuinely cared about them and their future. They were right. Students, any color of student, does better when the teacher genuinely takes an interest in the whole life of the student. Lacking that, black students fell in results. Subtle racism did keep them out of gifted and talented programs. Probably not from malicious intent, but because the white teachers did have an interest in the whole life of the student, the white students who they knew their families, went to the same churches, and genuinely cared about them and their future. Many Blacks had wonderful Schools and Teachers before they were segregated. They wanted the right to go to any school they wanted. Many would have chosen to stay in the school they were in. Tragically, the Supreme Court and the NAACP took that away from them, It was one of the saddest things to happen to education in America.
I would like to apologize to the author of this article for being a white teacher. Apparently being white and a teacher makes me inherently racist. I never knew that before reading this article, so I guess after 30 years of teaching many different races I must apologize for my guilt. I feel as if I have stood in the way of many a quality education that could have been had by the many minority students that I have taught through the years.