GROWING up in the 1970s and ’80s in the Chicago suburb of Blue Island, Ill., Gladys Marquez, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, never once had a Hispanic teacher. Sometimes, when trying to explain to her parents her plans for college — or even why she wanted to play softball or try out for the cheerleading team — she wished she had a mentor who shared her background.
“It would have been nice to have a teacher in the classroom who could help you bridge over and help you become a better version of yourself,” she said in a recent interview.
Now Ms. Marquez is herself a high school teacher in Blue Island. But while nearly half of the students at the school are Hispanic, Ms. Marquez is still one of a small minority of Latino teachers in the building.
Across the country, government estimates show that minority students have become a majority in public schools. Yet the proportion of teachers who are racial minorities has not kept up: More than 80 percent of teachers are white.
In some school districts, the disparities are striking. In Boston, for example, there is just one Hispanic teacher for every 52 Latino students, and one black teacher for every 22 African-American students. The ratio of white teachers to white students: one to fewer than three.
In New York City, where more than 85 percent of the students are racial minorities, 60 percent of the teachers are white. In Washington, black teachers represent close to half of all teachers — in a district where two-thirds of the students are black — but the Latino teaching force lags behind the growing Hispanic enrollment.
Few would say that a black child needs to be taught by a black teacher or that a Latino or Asian child cannot thrive in a class with a white teacher. “Ultimately, parents are going to respect anybody who they think cares for their kids,” said Andres Antonio Alonso, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. “But if there are no people who somehow mirror the parents and the kids, then I think there could be a problem.”
A few studies have suggested a link between academic performance and children being taught by a teacher of their own race, although the effects are quite small. According to Anna Jacob Egalite, a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard and an author of a new study, the largest improvements amounted to about one month of additional learning within a school year.
Other researchers who have found similar academic effects say more than test scores are at stake. “When minority students see someone at the blackboard that looks like you, it helps you reconceive what’s possible for you,” said Thomas S. Dee, a professor of education at Stanford University.
With the population of Hispanic students exploding relatively recently, it will take some time for the population of Latino college graduates — and future teachers — to catch up.
Read the full article in The New York Times.
Thomas Dee is a professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Education. He did a study of the effect on student performance of having a teacher of the same race.
© Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305.
