Posted on Wed, Apr

Posted on Wed, Apr. 15, 2009

Schools search for 'agents of change': District needs minority teachers

By MENSAH M. DEANPhiladelphia Daily News [email protected] 215-854-5949

EACH THURSDAY, they dress to impress, gathering in the cafeteria at Cheyney University for a power lunch of sorts.

Despite the business attire, the 25 students are not members of the political-science club at the historically black college, which straddles Delaware and Chester counties in Thornbury Township.

They are members of Call Me MISTER (Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models), which began at Cheyney last fall with the aim of raising the number of black teachers in elementary-school classrooms.

Because that goal is shared by the School District of Philadelphia, district officials are watching the fledgling program closely.

Those officials also are embracing a series of other initiatives designed to stop the decline in the numbers of black teachers, which has become more rapid and perplexing in recent years.

Of the 984 newly hired district teachers this academic year, just 17.2 percent were African-American, while 73 percent were white, according to data provided to the Daily News by the district's Office of Talent and Development.

Meanwhile, student numbers are almost the reverse - 62.4 percent are African-American, 13.3 percent are white.

"It is very difficult for African-American men to envision what their future can look like if the person who stands in front of them throughout their whole [educational] career does not look like them," said Estelle Matthews, chief of the Office of Talent and Development.

"What I'm saying is, it has to be diverse. Students need those role models, someone they can relate to and connect with on so many different levels."

Robert Archie, sworn in last week as chairman of the district's governing School Reform Commission, said that the commitment to diversify the teaching force would be included in the system's five-year strategic plan. That plan, dubbed "Imagine 2014" and released online Monday night, is scheduled to be discussed at today's commission meeting and adopted next Wednesday. It calls for raising the percentage of minority teachers from 33.8 percent to 51 percent by 2014.

Teachers who are of the same race as their students, Archie said, bring something special to the classroom. "There's an affinity that's developed early on," he said. "You don't have to strive to develop that affinity when you're of the same race, culture. You understand the differences and nuances of what may be impacting their ability to learn, if you're from the same race."

Minding the gap

Ameer Blackmon, a Cheyney "MISTER," is working toward getting the chance to be an educator in his hometown.

He graduated from Philadelphia's Central High School in 2000 and earned a business degree from Morehouse College, in Atlanta, but enrolled in graduate school last year after deciding that he preferred the classroom over the financial world. "There's a lot of talk about how the lack of black male teachers affects black male students, but I think it affects black females, too," said Blackmon, 26, who will earn his graduate teaching degree in December.

Anita Norris, 23, a 2004 graduate of Germantown High School, is among the first handful of women in a companion program at Cheyney designed to raise the number of black women teaching math and science.

"I did not have a bad experience at Germantown," she said. "But now that I'm looking back - and I go back every year to see - it's crazy there. The root of all that starts in elementary school. That's why I want to go back and teach in Philadelphia."

Although the percentage of minority teachers - especially African-Americans - is on the decline in many parts of the country, Philadelphia just might be ground zero for the trend.

Of the district's 10,715 teachers, 28.1 percent are black, down slightly from last year and down 8 percent from 1978. White teachers are the largest group in the work force, at 66.1 percent, up slightly from last year, according to the district.

Although the ratio between Asian teachers (2.5 percent) and Asian students (6 percent) is the closest, a significant gap also exists between Latino teachers and Latino students.

Just 2.6 percent of teachers are Latino, yet 17 percent of students are, according to the district. Latinos comprise the fastest-growing student population in the district.

"We have to redouble our efforts at recruiting teachers of color," said Heidi Ramirez, one of two Latino members on the five-member reform commission. "First, we have to get Latinos through college."

She noted a study that found that only 11 of 100 Latino kindergarten children will earn a college degree.

"If we don't do more to improve the overall school system, improve K-12 education, improve the high-school-completion rate and the college-going rate," Ramirez said, "recruiting will be even more difficult."

Ramirez said the fact that people of color have more opportunities in the professional world than they did decades earlier is also hurting recruiting efforts.

Teacher testing at issue A bigger factor, according to education experts, is the Praxis exam, which teachers and teacher candidates must pass to receive state teaching certification.

They get several chances to pass the two-part exam, created by the Educational Testing Service (ETS), the Princeton-based nonprofit organization that's also behind the student SAT exam.

Those who cannot pass are eventually terminated because the federal No Child Left Behind Act requires all teachers to be "highly qualified" in their subjects.

The district dropped 271 teachers who failed to pass the exam over two years beginning in the 2006-07 school year, Matthews said. Most of those - 166, or 61 percent - were black.

"We all know that our number of African-American teachers should be much greater than it is," said Matthews. "Somehow, we have to figure this out."

Linda Tyler, an ETS vice president and its chief of teacher licensure and certification, said that the testing service now ventures to historically black colleges to hold Praxis conferences and workshops, and also offers free Internet seminars and test-preparation materials that can be accessed at www.ets.org/praxis.

"We are definitely working in a concerted fashion with institutions," Tyler said.

Among initiatives under way in the Philadelphia district to boost minority- teacher numbers are:

* A five-Saturday Praxis practice program. Those who pass the exam must agree to teach in the district for five years in exchange for the district paying the $450 testing fee;

* Teach for America, which trains recent college graduates who did not major in education, has pledged that 25 percent to 30 percent of the teachers it sends to the district in 2009-10 will be from minority groups, up from 26 percent this year;

* Academies of Urban Education, which introduces students to the teaching profession, produced 835 graduates last June at Furness, Overbrook and Parkway high schools, according to the district. Of those students, an estimated 84 percent went on to college. Those who graduate from college and earn certification are guaranteed jobs with the district. * The Ruth Wright Hayre "Grow Your Own" Scholarship was created for students who want to become Philadelphia teachers. Recipients receive $10,000 over four years of college, and upon certification agree to work in the district for at least three years.

* Next month, Matthews and her boss, district Superintendent Arlene Ackerman, are scheduled to meet with the presidents of Cheyney and Lincoln universities to strategize about increasing the numbers of education majors at the two historically black institutions.

Clemson to Cheyney

Call Me MISTER, founded 10 years ago at Clemson University, in South Carolina, is now on 26 campuses.

The Cheyney program is funded by a $1.5 million federal grant administered through the state Department of Education, and provides the MISTERs with partial scholarships, Praxis workshops and practice tests, and weekly leadership meetings, said Howard Jean, director of the Cheyney program.

The first group of MISTERs also participated in education conferences in Chicago and Atlanta.

Each will be certified upon graduation and is required to teach in a low- performing public elementary school, said Jean, 26, himself a MISTER alum from Claflin University, in South Carolina.

"We want them to be mentors and leaders," said Jean, who recently created the companion program for women.

"We don't just want them to be in the classroom," he said of the MISTERs. "We want them to be agents of change."

For more information about Call Me MISTER, go to: www.cheyney.edu and click on the blue Call Me MISTER icon, or call 610-399-2353.