Post-pandemic, the country has been plagued by chronic absenteeism, with some reports finding that two-thirds of students in the country attend a school with high levels of chronic absence (20% of students missing four or more weeks). It is time to get serious about how to re-engage students and get them back to school and that student connection is essential to getting kids to school. We also know that teacher diversity is not just important for student success, but potentially transformative. Research shows higher graduation rates, reduced dropout rates, fewer disciplinary issues, more positive views of schooling and better test scores when students have a Black or Brown teacher during their schooling.

Despite the mountain of evidence that demonstrates positive impacts of diverse teachers on students, as well as their white teaching colleagues, there has been precious little progress in increasing the actual number of Black teachers leading classrooms.  Black teachers make up about 7 percent of our teaching force, Black men comprise less than 2 percent of it. 

Given the widespread and public affirmations of the importance of teacher diversity from education leaders, researchers, students, and their families, across the country, you’d be forgiven if you mistakenly believed those numbers were now better or had improved considerably in recent years.

So how can progress actually, finally begin to match the public narrative?

States and districts need to move from viewing the issue as important to making it a real strategic priority — one they hold themselves publicly accountable for achieving.  To do that, they need to take meaningful actions to create mechanisms that both retain the teachers of color that already work in their systems and bring the next generation of Black and Brown educators into the classroom. 

Systems in motion will stay in motion: they will continue to get the same results as long as the form and function of the system remains the same.  What is required for change in this case is an intentional re-architecturing of retention and recruitment pathways to materially bolster teacher diversity. 

At the Center for Black Educator Development (CBED), we are working with states and districts who have made that leap from “important to priority” through meaningful action. 

These forward-thinking systems start with the educators and future educators already in their schools. 

Schools must be places where Black and Brown teachers already on the job feel respected, supported, validated, and valued. Such a school culture requires leadership that is willing to reflect on and address their own biases on an ongoing basis and work to ensure the school is a place where genuine respect for the authentic identities of all teachers is the norm. That’s more than just saying diversity is important, it’s actively taking steps to ensure that the school demonstrates its value. 

Schools that retain Black and Brown teachers are schools that are attractive for new Black and Brown teachers. They are also the kinds of places where Black or Brown students see teaching as a rewarding potential career pathway–and connected with that pathway while they’re still in school.

Examples from Philadelphia

Philadelphia’s investment in CBED’s Freedom Schools Literacy Academy specifically and the work of bringing more Black teachers into the system generally is a prime example of a district taking real action–moving from important to priority. 

There are nearly 1,200 fewer Black teachers in Philadelphia’s district and charter schools than there were 20 years ago, despite the overall number of teachers remaining relatively unchanged. To address that, leadership in Philadelphia is working to connect more high school students with teacher pipelines that ultimately land them jobs in their hometown schools. 

Through a partnership with the city, high school and college students serve as Servant Leaders in our Freedom Schools Literacy Academy, providing literacy coaching and instruction to younger students. 

The school, Science Leadership Academy- Beeber high school, also has partnered with CBED to establish a Career and Technical Education course specifically designed through a Black pedagogical framework and through a Black historical lens. There are also partnerships with the Pennsylvania Educators Diversity Consortium, which includes local colleges like the Community College of Philadelphia, Arcadia University, and Temple University for supports like education based dual enrollment credits. 

The participants are then part of our pipeline that actively supports their journey during college teacher preparation, actively supports their entry into the profession, and provides intentional support through their early years in the classroom. These students will be welcomed back into the schools that they grew up in, places where they themselves can then have long and rewarding careers. 

Philadelphia has been able to make such meaningful investments because the priority of teacher diversity is being pushed from the highest levels–in the superintendent's office as well as in City Hall, and in the state legislature. Because the priority is driven from the highest levels, real budget authority and change has followed.  In Philadelphia now, thanks to the Philadelphia City Council, the Thursday of every national Teacher Appreciation Week is Black Teacher Appreciation Day, and October is Black Male Educators Month.  That’s public commitment to the priority from top to bottom. 

That’s frequently not the case. Teacher diversity initiatives rest at the level of a manager or director, the work buried in bureaucracy and crowded out by competing priorities.  Sometimes authority is held at the highest level, but it’s a one of many, many areas of responsibility for a C-suite leader, and momentum stalls on even the most well-intentioned plans. 

We still have a ton of work ahead of us in Philadelphia, and these are the things that we should be seeing when education leaders in other places say teacher diversity is an important issue. 

And as we have seen in Philadelphia, moving beyond just describing the problem over and over again and taking concrete actions to address it is possible. It just requires leaders to step up and do it. 

Sharif El-Mekki is a 30-year veteran educator from Philadelphia, PA. As a principal of eleven years at ​Mastery Charter Shoemaker Campus, his team received the prestigious EPIC award for 3 consecutive years for being among the top 3 schools in the nation for accelerating students’ achievement levels. El-Mekki was one quarter of the nationally recognized 8 Black Hands podcast and in 2014, he founded ​The Fellowship – Black Male Educators for Social Justice/BMEC​, an organization dedicated to recruiting and retaining Black men educators. In 2019, El-Mekki launched the Center for Black Educator Development in order to accelerate the mission to rebuild the national Black Teacher Pipeline. El-Mekki is a blogger on ​Phillys7thWard​, is member of the Education Post’s Freedom Friday​ podcast, and a frequent guest speaker and writer. 

Photo by Yan Krukau from Pexels