Black History month is a time to commemorate the accomplishments of Black people. It must also be a time to reflect on the strivings of Black people—because, sadly, many of the same battles launched generations before continue to be fought today.
An enduring legacy of the Brown v. Board decision is that it led to the mass firing of Black educators.
One of those enduring battles is the systematic erasure of Black teachers from U.S. schools.
An enduring legacy of the Brown v. Board decision, which ordered the racial desegregation of white-only schools, is that it led to the mass firing of Black educators. Integration was largely led by white superintendents, who often refused to place Black educators in positions of authority over white teachers or students. As a result, more than 38,000 Black teachers in the South and border states lost their jobs.
Author Vanessa Siddle Walker provides details of this history, via the stories of Black educators, in her 2018 book, The Lost Education of Horace Tate.
Today, well over a half-century after Brown, Black teachers make up a miniscule fraction of the teaching force—less than 7 percent, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The lack of Black teachers has negatively impacted many Black students in terms of test scores and graduation rates. And this is particularly unfortunate because there’s abundant research that Black teachers positively impact the academic progress and experiences of Black students.
Although the erasure of Black teachers largely happened in the South, the North was never a haven for Black teachers. More than thirty years ago, in 1987, the population of Black teachers nationwide was only 8 percent, which is one percent more than it is today.
In Camden, New Jersey, where I taught at charter schools for six years where I was often the only Black male teacher, not only are the city’s public schools closing, the district’s population of Black teachers is dwindling, too. A new report released by the New Jersey Policy Perspective highlights how, as charter school enrollment grows, Camden becomes home to fewer and fewer Black teachers.
This downward trend has only gotten worse as more renaissance schools open up in Camden. A renaissance school, according to New Jersey state law, is a school that is led and operated by a nonprofit entity—usually a charter management organization—that is established in a traditional public school labeled as “failing.”
Charter schools have existed in Camden for more than twenty years, but the Urban Hope Act passed in 2012 (along with the state’s takeover of Camden City Schools), facilitated a mass student exodus. To be clear, my issue isn’t with where parents decided to send their children to school.
Rather, my contention is with a “strategy” that removes Black and brown children from a school system where parents have a say in how it’s governed, via school board elections, and the consequences, unintended, or intended, of reducing the Black teacher workforce.
Neither the dissolution of a governing power over a district nor the mass removal of white teachers is likely to happen in the New Jersey suburbs.
I’ve stated previously that, since 2013, the Camden City School District has lost 448 educators, 62 percent of whom were African American or Latinx. At renaissance schools, Black and Latinx teachers were never more than 35 percent of new hires.
The question it comes down to is this: Do we place higher value on the system of how people are educated or in the people who are being educated?
The New Jersey Policy Perspective report affirms that Camden’s teachers are “whitening” because, as the number of faculty jobs continue to shift from the Camden City School District to charter schools in the city, fewer Black teachers are being hired by those charter schools. This translates to Black charter school students, who outnumber Black students in the district, lacking access to Black teachers. The same is true for Latinx students.
Recently, national attention has pointed to the number of Black teachers leaving the profession. But Black teachers must be hired in order to be retained. If increasing Black student graduation and college attendance rates, and lowering Black student suspensions, school arrests, and student dropout rates are priorities—as they should be—then hiring and retaining Black teachers must be a priority.
The question it comes down to is this: Do we place higher value on the system of how people are educated or in the people who are being educated? If the highest value is on the children, then we must provide students with what they need to be successful.
It’s not that Black children cannot succeed without Black teachers. It’s that Black teachers, according to the research, can best assure Black student success.