Minorities Will Soon Be Majority In The Classroom, Except For The Teacher

April 19, 1996

GAINESVILLE—African-American teachers may be an endangered species by the year 2000, although the majority of the students will be minorities, said a University of Florida researcher.

Audrey McCray, a doctorate student in education, is conducting a survey of African-American women teachers to identify why they became teachers, hoping to use this information to identify future African-American teachers.

“We will have an almost homogenous teaching force teaching a culturally diverse population,” McCray said. “We need to find what is unique to African-American teachers, then help to target these populations to get more African-American teachers.”

There are a number of reasons why smaller numbers of African-Americans are becoming teachers, McCray said.

“The black community no longer views teaching in the same way,” McCray said. “Teaching as a whole has lost prestige.” Before desegregation, teaching was one of the few career choices open to African-Americans.

“Since desegregation, we have lost so many African-American teachers,” McCray said. “After segregation, many African-American teachers were out of a job, were reassigned or left to pursue other careers as other opportunities opened up.

“Today, teacher testing, uncomfortable and unwanted teaching assignments and poor salary are believed to be among the reasons blacks are turning a deaf ear to the nation’s cries for more minorities in teaching,” McCray said.

“This has turned into another form of segregation,” McCray said. “Black students are separated from black teachers who can model for them what it means to strive for success in the face of hardship. So many of our African-American students tell us that they long for more teachers that look like them, and understand the problems that they face every day.”

The issue is not confined to Florida.

“This is a national problem,” said Roderick McDavis, dean of UF’s College of Education. “Because of the increasing number of minorities entering public schools, we are seeing a disparity in the number of minority students and minority teachers.”

UF and the state have programs designed to recruit minorities.

A recent senate bill, along with active recruitment at UF, may help to raise the numbers of minority teachers throughout the state.

“Senate Bill 2822 will hopefully help resolve this problem,” McDavis said. “This bill will create a performance-based scholarship program between community colleges and public and private colleges and universities. If this program is funded, 700 minority students will be able to enroll in teacher education programs this fall as transfer students from community colleges. After seven years we hope to produce 2,450 minority teachers.”

The program will require minority students to teach one year for every year they receive a scholarship.

“There are also other programs in the UF College of Education that are dealing with this problem,” McDavis said. “For instance, we are part of a Ford Foundation grant in Florida that is actively recruiting more minorities for teaching careers.”

McCray said more minority teachers will mean more role models for African-Americans in school.

If there is no change, “what we will end up with is one group educating a totally different group,” McCray said. “I believe that teacher education can prepare caring, interested teachers to teach diverse students. Certainly, I don’t believe that a white woman can’t teach a black boy, but I do believe that black boy needs to see a black man every now and then.”

McCray’s study will identify characteristics shared by African-American teachers to find what can be used to encourage younger African-Americans to enter education.

“Recruiting African-American teachers is so fundamental and yet nearly impossible. I want to understand why,” McCray said. “I still believe that there are a number of African-Americans we can attract, but we have to be able to identify them.”