Why are there fewer black teachers in CPS?

Porter, a teacher for 14 years, is black and comes from a family of Chicago Public Schools educators.

Just 15 years go, 40 percent teachers in CPS schools were black. Today, it’s 23 percent. Many black students are segregated into majority black schools—like National Teachers Academy in the South Loop, where Porter teaches.

The fact that she’s among a dwindling demographic isn’t lost on Porter. And all this change didn’t occur in a vacuum. Modern education reform in Chicago started in 1995 and ramped up in the following years.

“What I noticed was the recruitment of non-black teachers outside of the state of Illinois and even within the state,” Porter said. “Somewhere midway in my career I think I noticed that there were a lot of alternative certification programs popping up. People did alternative certification but didn’t last long once they became full-fledged teachers. And a lot of times they had to work in inner-city schools with African-American children and it seems no matter what the training, they weren’t prepared.”

The face of Chicago Public Schools teachers is changing: the teaching workforce is whiter and less experienced. Meanwhile, most of the students in Chicago’s public schools are Hispanic and African American. Black enrollment has gone down, but black students still make up 39 percent of the district.

Chicago Teachers Union researcher Pavlyn Jankov says more and more schools are like Porter’s — mostly black students, mostly white teachers. And he said it didn’t happen by chance.

“It lines up with the huge proliferation of charter schools and those schools along with the AUSL turnaround schools are mainly responsible for the staff who are predominately teachers with perhaps one to five years experience and predominantly white teachers,” Jankov said.

He said, at the same time, the numbers also show how stubbornly the segregation of teachers and students holds on.

“We’ve looked at how the percentage of schools across CPS that are segregated on both ends in terms of schools that have a majority black teaching staff and a hyper-segregated black student population has actually maintained despite the fact that there’ve been these closings,” Jankov said.

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