Are Black Teachers Being Intentionally Pushed Out Of Chicago Public Schools?
April V. Taylor | Courtesy of Your Black World
The Chicago Public School system is no stranger to problems and controversy. One of the current issues the school system is facing has to do with the number of Black teachers. Chicago radio station WBEZ recently ran a story about why the number of Black teachers in the Chicago Public Schools system has been dropping consistently for years. According to WBEZ, the percentage of Black teachers working for CPS has dropped from 40% in 2000 to 23 percent currently. What makes these numbers so significant is that 87 percent of CPS students are Black.
Further quantifying the issue is the fact that there are now 50 schools in the Chicago Public Schools system that to not have any Black teachers on staff, and the number of schools where Black teachers represent less than 10 percent of teachers on staff has jumped from 69 to 223 in the last ten years. In 2011, the Chicago Teachers Union tried to bring attention to the fact that Black teachers were being fired in disproportionate numbers , with Black teachers making up 43 percent of the lay offs despite only making up 30 percent of district teachers.
Robin White Goode reports that only Black teachers were fired or disciplined during the two years she worked at a Chicago school. She also witnessed white colleagues have their performance issues remain unaddressed and unacknowledged. During that same time period, Goode says she saw a principal implement a “Black hiring freeze.” The principal claimed the freeze was put in place because white teachers were easier to work with because they were more passive.
Goode’s experiences underscore the fact that discrimination is not always flagrant; whether conscious or unconscious, it can be much more subtle. Her experiences also highlight the fact that the issue is multi-layered. One of her observations was the fact that, “so many Black students in Chicago are getting a crappy K-12 education it’s effecting the quality of the teaching pool once some of them become teachers.
The Odyssey Project is a reader-supported site. GIVE to ensure that the voices of the marginalized are heard!
In addition to potential teachers being inadequately educated, Black students are not encouraged to choose education as a major in college. Making matters worse, teachers who do choose education as a major have their educational achievement continue to be affected by the achievement gap, with the K-12 achievement gap persisting through college.
Goode believes the percentage of Black teachers in the CPS system should being to correct itself within the next three years due to the face that Common Core will have gone through a full high school cycle. This means that the rigorous new test teachers are required to pass will have been given ample time and opportunity to achieve its goal of improving the quality of teachers hired by CPS.