Just last month, a new study found that the number of black teachers in the public schools of nine cities dropped between 2002 and 2012. In Washington, D.C., black teachers’ share of the workforce dropped from 77 percent to 49 percent.
Now, a researcher at Stanford, Travis Bristol, is trying to figure out why black men are leaving the profession. Bristol himself taught high school English in New York City public schools; there he grew interested in designing policies that would support his male students, particularly boys of color.
As a Ph.D. candidate at Teachers College, Columbia University, he noticed a disconnect: While lots of attention was being paid to hiring more black male teachers, relatively little was being done to hold onto them.
So Bristol, now a fellow at Stanford’s Center for Opportunity Policy in Education, set out to understand: What can be done in classrooms and break rooms to improve retention? For answers, he designed a survey for black male public school teachers in Boston.
Why is the shortage of black male teachers something we should worry about? Diversity drives innovation. There are more students of color in U.S. public schools than white students. Teachers of color represent 18 percent of the country’s teaching force, and black male teachers less than 2 percent. Teachers of color are well-positioned to support their colleagues in navigating unfamiliar cultural terrain and designing culturally relevant pedagogy. Having a teacher of color, or black male teacher, can serve to disrupt societal preconceptions. And, as Gloria Ladson-Billingsrecently suggested, white students also benefit from having teachers of color.