As a recruiter for a large metropolitan school district in Arizona, I repeatedly see a sampling of the U.S. teacher workforce in the mostly female, almost exclusively white, hopeful faces waiting for interviews. Recruiters from across the United States see similar faces.
When we talk about our efforts to increase diversity, some of my colleagues from other states speak about such hiring incentives as offering signing bonuses to minority applicants. Others express their frustration about their efforts to attract and retain teachers of color. Our work might become even more difficult: Ethnic teachers currently represent about 9 percent of U.S. public school teachers, but that number is expected to drop to less than 5 percent in the coming years. Meanwhile, ethnic students constitute 40 percent of the total student body in the United States, and this proportion is expected to increase significantly (American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, 1999).
The Ethnic Teacher Shortage
Ethnic groups have always been underrepresented in the U.S. teaching workforce, but the situation is worsening. The proportion of teachers of color is shrinking, and fewer culturally diverse college students are entering the profession. Most ethnic students in universities are pursuing degrees in business, engineering, and other fields that promise greater financial rewards. Prospective teachers who attended impoverished urban schools are dissuaded from education careers by the low salaries, crowded classrooms, students' lack of respect for teachers, and poor working conditions that they witnessed firsthand. Thus, many urban schools most in need of ethnic teachers are least able to attract them (Budd-Jackson, 1995).
The fundamental causes for the shortage may be observed—and rooted—in our impoverished urban schools themselves, which serve 43 percent of children of color and 35 percent of the United States's poorest youth (Zakariya, 1998). The underprivileged, mostly ethnic students who attend these schools leave with such poor skills and negative experiences that many of them are unlikely to succeed in college, much less aspire to become teachers. In Virginia, for example, only one in 12 African American 4th graders was reading at the proficiency level or better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam; only one in 20 low-income 8th graders reached NAEP proficiency in math (Barth, 1998). In Arizona, results from our new high-stakes graduation test—Arizona's Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS)—have not yet been released, but officials have publicly disclosed that ethnic students scored lower than white students in the first year of the exams. Poverty and educational inequities facing today's children of color, especially those in urban settings, are arguably the most profound causes of the ethnic teacher shortage.
Unfortunately, recent efforts to improve the U.S. teacher corps focus on implementing stricter standards instead of addressing problems of equity and diversity. Such standards may be misguided because public schools need ethnic teachers who are role models for young people in our increasingly diverse society. Constructive interaction between culturally diverse teachers and white and ethnic students teaches young people to tolerate differences and breaks down negative stereotypes (West, 1994). If, through the absence of ethnic teacher role models, children form a distorted vision of authority in our country, cultural isolation will bring to our schools "unparalleled racial, linguistic, economic, and social conflicts, and as a result the nation as a whole will suffer" (Castro & Ingle, 1991, p.1). Given the large increase in the number of children of color in U.S. public schools, the need for ethnic teachers has never been more pressing.
Strategies for Districts
My district's student population is 73 percent white, with 18 percent Hispanic, 3 percent Native American, 3 percent black, and 3 percent Asian students. The demographics of our 85 K–12 schools range widely and are typical of other metropolitan districts. Ten percent of our teachers have ethnic backgrounds. Prior to our current human resources administration—and as in most school systems nationwide—we made little systematic effort to attract ethnic teachers.
To determine ways for our district to attract and retain more ethnically diverse teachers, I searched the professional literature for proven strategies used in districts nationwide. Then I interviewed 59 teachers of color and 10 school administrators who were recently hired in our system and in four nearby districts to determine which attributes of our district encouraged or discouraged teachers of color from applying for jobs with us. I also sought information about how to improve the recruitment and retention of ethnically diverse educators. On the basis of what I learned, I've formulated several strategies for districts who want to increase the number of ethnic teachers in their schools.
Prioritize the recruitment of ethnic educators. Personnel administrators should direct their recruitment efforts toward colleges with high numbers of ethnic students. Our district also includes ethnically diverse professionals in our recruiting teams. Such staff members can speak with authority about how a district takes care of its educators of color. School systems should implement training programs for their interviewers that focus on the good qualities that teachers of color bring to their students and colleagues. Such programs might focus on enabling cross-cultural understandings, providing role models, and breaking down negative stereotypes. Human resources directors can approach the many underutilized, nontraditional networks for ethnic teacher recruitment: sororities and fraternities, campus organizations, the armed forces, community groups, and churches. Another strategy is to advertise in newspapers that have a large circulation in ethnic communities.
Consider nontraditional sources of teacher recruitment. Many studies have found that teacher recruitment should begin in elementary and secondary classrooms. Local junior and community colleges are largely untapped resources for prospective teachers. School boards may consider collaborative scholarship programs with four-year state colleges to pull promising junior college students into university teaching programs.
Expedite the application materials of ethnic applicants. Districts need to make sure that their application process prioritizes the hiring of ethnic candidates so that paperwork is not lost in the shuffle. With so few educators of color in the teacher-supply pipeline and the increasing demand for these individuals in some parts of the country, districts cannot afford to let these candidates fall through the cracks during the screening process.
Discuss the possibility of offering hiring bonuses for ethnic candidates. This is a hotly debated topic in many districts that also face shortages in hard-to-hire subjects, such as speech and language pathology, or in finding male elementary school teachers. District personnel administrators need to study, debate, and prioritize their needs to determine whether bonuses are a practical solution to their hiring needs.
Develop a paraprofessional-to-teacher program. Many ethnic employees are already working in school systems in such positions as secretaries and classroom aides. Given their knowledge of the school, its staff, and the needs of its students, such individuals have the potential to succeed as classroom teachers. Many of them, however, have never been encouraged or guided to become teachers, and they may not have the financial resources to attend a university while supporting their families and maintaining their current jobs.
Paraprofessional-to-teacher programs link a school district with a university's education department to provide guidance, scholarships, and sometimes the promise of a teaching contract upon completion of the training. When I interviewed several recently hired ethnic teachers who had participated in the East Valley Teacher Corps program in Phoenix, Arizona, they told me that they never would have had an opportunity to pursue a college degree without the guidance and financial assistance that the program provided.
Our district is developing a separate "grow your own teachers" program in conjunction with area universities and junior colleges, which will target ethnic paraprofessionals currently in our school system and local college students.
Understand how ethnically diverse employees perceive the district. Districts should engage in dialogues with their teachers of color to determine what these individuals perceive to be the advantages and disadvantages for ethnic staff in the district. In our district, we used surveys and informal interviews to start the dialogue. It is important to conduct these surveys in the strictest confidence and to maximize the trust between the person asking the questions—most likely a district administrator—and the employee. Teachers and other staff members must feel that they can share negative and positive comments without fear of retribution. We fostered this feeling in our district by using personal telephone calls as the initial contact. During the call, we guaranteed that we would practice strict confidentiality with the data that we collected and stressed that participation in the survey was voluntary.
Once trust is established, board members and administrators need to be prepared to confront and address some unpleasant realities. In my district, for example, some ethnic teachers believed that the schools lacked a support network for teachers of color and viewed the surrounding community as unfriendly toward minorities. We realized that we needed to study the issue more and form a plan to reverse this perception. In addition, our recently appointed diversity specialist is spearheading our new "grow your own teachers" program, and the district's priorities for next year include extensive inservice training to help teachers better understand how poverty affects our community and student population.
Create a support network for educators of color. Several of the teachers I interviewed were uncertain whether they could remain in the district because they believed that the schools where they worked and the surrounding community lacked an infrastructure to support ethnic persons. It is crucial, therefore, that districts create a support network for its educators of color that will improve the retention rates of ethnic teachers and underscore the district's commitment to a diversified workforce.
Such a network might include community and district forums and conferences on such topics as diversity in the workplace, multiculturalism, and racism in schools. Districts can organize informal support groups and provide budgets for professional development and personal growth activities. Other ideas include social committees that serve the district's entire ethnic employee population, phone trees, and Internet chat groups. A school system with a reputation for valuing cultural diversity is far more likely to attract ethnic applicants than one that makes little effort to welcome or support them.
Attracting and retaining ethnic teachers can seem daunting. But if public school educators fail to act now, large numbers of future students might complete their K–12 education career without ever having been taught by a teacher of color. The impact of that scenario on our changing society is unfathomable.
