Teachers of color bring benefits to classrooms beyond content knowledge and pedagogy.”
This is what a recent study from The Education Trust, a national nonprofit advocacy organization that promotes high academic achievement, claims. And it has data to back it up.
Teachers of color represent only 18 percent of the teaching population in the United States, and black teachers are 7 percent of the teaching population, according to Through Our Eyes: Perspectives and Reflection From Black Teachers, a report published late last year that gives voice to black teachers.
And yet today more than ever, the report rings true throughout America’s schools. In the midst of the personal accounts from teachers, the report cites the reasons that continuing to recruit teachers of color, as well as identifying and creating more ways to retain them, is important. It also explains the impact that black teachers have on students and the relevance of establishing relationships with students and parents.
According to its website, The Education Trust promotes high academic achievement for all students at all levels, prekindergarten through college. Its goal is to “close the gaps in opportunity and achievement that consign far too many young people — especially those from low-income families or who are Black, Latino, or American Indian — to lives on the margins of the American mainstream.”
