Boston newspaper Bay State Banner is covering the current investigation in Boston, Mass. that is looking into why the lack of Black teachers in the Boston public school district.
“The district court order — issued by Judge W. Arthur Garrity Jr. as part of his 1974 ruling in Boston’s landmark school desegregation case — calls for at least one-quarter of the city’s teaching staff to be comprised of black educators. It also requires at least 10 percent of the staff to be made up of teachers from other ethnic and minority groups.
While the proportion of Latino and Asian teachers has risen to 15 percent, the share of black teachers dropped to 23 percent two years ago and has remained at that level. William Horwath, assistant superintendent of human resources for the BPS, said that black teachers made up 23.6 percent of the district’s teachers in the 2008-2009 school year. Pending some new hires into the system, the figure will likely be closer to 23.75 percent by the time schools open on Sept. 10, he said.
City Councilor Chuck Turner called for the hearing to explore not only what the BPS is doing to ensure federal compliance, but also what steps can be taken to achieve a greater level of diversity in city classrooms.
“I think the issue is very clear in terms of the need to work together so that we don’t just meet the minimums, but that we create an increasing flow of teachers of color — black, Latino, Asian, Cape Verdean — into the Boston Public Schools system,” he said. “
But then check this out.
“According to Horwath, 34 percent of new black teachers, and 20 percent of all new teachers, in the BPS system were not brought back for the coming school year because either they had not passed the state-administered Massachusetts Test for Educator Licensure (MTEL) exam or they did not receive a waiver of the licensure requirement. About two-thirds of participants in BPS-offered prep classes for the tests are teachers of color.”
Translation: a significant percentage of them are not meeting the basic requirements to become full-fledged teachers in the first place.
But no matter what, we MUST meet the diversity quota. Quality? Ehh!
A Boston teacher shares why she is leaving BPS.
Why teachers like me can’t stay
Earlier this year, Teach for America (an organization that recruits aspiring teachers from schools like Harvard, Yale, etc. who have a special interest in teaching in low-income areas) was blocked by the Boston Teacher’s Union. Why? Because the district was in the middle of a layoff and the union wanted to ensure that existing members had first preference.
Hub teachers reject public service corps
But despite all of this, the diversity mandate must come first.
Figure that one out and get back to me.
