As nation searches for solution to teacher of color shortage, local schools don’t fare any better Mark Space Ratio

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As nation searches for solution to teacher of color shortage, local schools don’t fare any better

In Pittsylvania County Schools, it is unlikely that most students will interact a teacher of color, let alone find an African-American student taught by an African-American teacher — which can affect everything from self-esteem to drop-out rates for students of color.

Although 22-percent of the nearly 9,000 students enrolled in Pittsylvania County Schools identified as African-American for the 2017-18 school year, African-American teachers make up around seven percent of the total 724 county teachers for 2018-19. About 12 percent of administrators are African-American at eight out of 65.

Looking at all students of color, the gap widens as 31 percent of county students were non-white while 7.7 percent of the teachers are non-white.

According to a 2017 report from the Virginia’s Task Force on Diversifying Virginia’s Educator Pipeline, there were 27 percent less teachers of color across the commonwealth than students of color in the 2014-15 school year.

The task force itself was developed under former Gov. Terry McAuliffe’s administration in response to the commonwealth’s recognition of the severe lack of diversity among its public school teachers and shortage of teachers of color to fill the positions.

Nationally, the disparity reaches similar proportions. A 2014 report by the Center for American Progress found that although students of color made up nearly half of the public school population across the country, teachers of color comprised 18 percent.

For the 2018-19 school year, African-Americans accounted for just under 10 percent of the county school system’s new hires, six out of 63. All six of them were for teacher positions, not administrative, according to Pittsylvania County Schools hiring data.

Compared to new hires for 2017-18, county schools hired the same total number of African-Americans to those positions. Four were teachers and two were administrators, however.

Pittsylvania Educator Association Executive Vice President of Minority Concerns Willie Sherman said increasing diversity “ought to be a concern to all of us who are concerned about our students’ future.”

Sherman, who teaches business education and chairs the business department at Chatham High School, noted that African-American males receive a higher rate of discipline in both Pittsylvania and the commonwealth.

Studies published by research organizations found that students taught by a teacher who looks like them can have a statistically significant effect on how the student is perceived, the severity of disciplinary actions taken against them and their academic achievement.

A 2017 Institute of Labor Economics study that looked at data from North Carolina found that 39 percent fewer African-American males dropped out of high school if they had a teacher of the same race between third and fifth grade.

“It comes from teachers who not only look like you but understand you and your experiences and kind of relate and connect with you perhaps in ways other teachers may not be able to,” said Sherman.

For African-American students, Sherman noted that usually, white teachers have a different cultural background.

Sherman, a Georgia native, said his favorite teachers — the ones who inspired him to one day go into teaching — happened to be African-American. He said he believed students should be taught by teachers of all colors, but it’s important to have someone who looks like them as a role model.

The taskforce report set benchmarks for increasing the percentage of minority teachers in the commonwealth, targeting a 3 percent increase by 2020 to reach 21 percent. Every five years until 2040 the goal increases by 3 to 4 percent until minority teachers makeup 35 percent of all Virginia educators.

According to the Pittsylvania County Schools 2018-24 comprehensive plan, the school system is aiming to see minorities make up at least 30 percent of its staff by 2024.

Pittsylvania County Schools Superintendent Mark Jones said the county is making an effort toward reaching that benchmark. He said “looking at the makeup of our staff” is one of their priorities in their recruiting.

He said the county has worked on the needs of the minority community since at least the early 2000s. Since then, they’ve established an overall advisory council for minority concerns, and smaller versions of the council at each school.

“We want to be sure that we’re meeting the needs of all our students,” he said.

Several challenges compound and limit the school systems’ ability to improve its ratio — including the shortage of teachers in general.

Over the past 10 years, the taskforce report stated, there has been a 30-percent drop of people enrolling in teacher preparation programs nationally.

Virginia Department of Education Community and Minority Affairs Liaison Leah Walker, who served on the commonwealth’s task force in 2017, said such issues as low salaries, high student debt and a general feeling of a lack of respect for the occupation has factored into the decline of people entering the teacher preparation pipeline. It has hit the population of non-white teachers even harder.

“That disproportionately impacts minority teachers because there were less of them in the first place,” she said.

Virginia Department of Education and State Council for Higher Education data showed minority enrollment in Virginia teacher programs dropped by more than 50 percent in seven years, between 2010-11 and 2016-17.

Jones said the school system is fully staffed thanks to such recruitment efforts as their annual spring career fair, but noted that “finding the minority candidate applicants is very difficult.”

Pittsylvania County Schools Assistant Superintendent for Administration Steven Mayhew said, “The application pool is very small for some of those particular areas.”

When the county representatives attend different fairs at historically black colleges and universities, their offer isn’t as competitive at some of the institutions near such larger districts as Richmond, northern Virginia or the Tidewater region.

“We’re all kind of competing for a small number of teacher candidates,” said Mark Jones.

Mayhew said other schools may offer positions on the spot at fairs or have better salaries and lower health insurance costs.

“They have to look at what’s best for their families as well,” he said.

Nevertheless, Mayhew said the county school system is looking at ways to recruit from more historically black colleges and universities, like North Carolina AT&T State University and Virginia University of Lynchburg.

On top of the already small pool, Mayhew said candidates require certain qualifications for the positions.

Mayhew and Walker noted the effect that the tight specifications have on attracting and retaining teachers of color who may have received their provisional license at first, which is cheaper than the traditional pathway of a five-year program at a university.

Before the 2018-19 school year, provisional licenses received by state-approved or alternative teacher preparation programs allowed individuals to teach for up to three years, but within that time span, they had to become fully certified by taking several teaching assessments, including the Praxis II.

Although the provisional license is a cheaper way to begin teaching, the cost of the tests necessary to achieve full licensure can be a barrier to retaining teachers of color, Although the provisional license is a cheaper way to begin teaching Mark Space Ratio

As a result of the taskforce, individuals with a provisional license now have five years to achieve full licensure and the state is considering providing more funding to help subsidize the cost of the assessments for low-income and minority teachers with provisional licenses, said Walker.

“There’s individuals that come in that we’d really like to hire sometimes and that we think come in and present some very good qualities,” said Mayhew. “But unfortunately, if the Department of Education will not be able to offer them a license in some areas then we can’t employ them in a full-time position. … We have to go by those guidelines.”

Jones said the state also expanded the pool of teacher candidates by allowing the acceptance of more out-of-state licenses.

Danville Public Schools Superintendent Stanley Jones said their location in a more urban area assists with recruiting teachers of color and they’re “intentional” about hiring qualified candidates while insuring they have a “diverse workforce.”

“We want to hire the best candidate we can regardless of race, but we also want to have candidates that reflect the makeup of our school division,” said Stanley Jones.

Yet even in Danville Public Schools, the number of teachers of color isn’t representative of the student population which is 68 percent African-American — double the proportion of teachers — though the percentage of African-American teachers is above average at 34 percent, according to 2018 hiring data.

Nearly half of Danville Public Schools administrators identify as African-American as well, narrowing the administrator-student disparity to 20 percent.

Stanley Jones said school systems also grapple with the issue of equity when trying to hire for teachers to fit certain categories, having to remove incentives like increased salaries or bonuses from the equation.

“When people criticize us for not being able to find African-American teachers for example, we don’t want to do anything to make one teacher feel more valued than the other,” Stanley Jones.

He added, “And the last thing we want to do is create inequity.”

When asked if integration played a role in the issue, Walker said the task force didn’t analyze that data, but noted that compared to 50 years ago, African-American professionals now have more career options.

“What we need to do for the teacher profession is make sure that it remains competitive to other careers,” she said. “Our best and brightest need to view education just as desirably as being a lawyer or a marketing executive or a programmer.”

Stanley Jones emphasized his belief that teachers have to view the profession as a “calling.”

“I don’t want anybody to pursue this as a job. I want people who are interested in changing the lives of young people,” he said.

As an African-American man himself, Stanley Jones said he found his passion for education as he pursued his bachelor’s degree at Radford University. He said he realized his “gift” was working with young people.

Similar to one of the recommendations made by the 2017 taskforce, Sherman developed a proposal for a local program in attempts to increase the number of black men in the teaching field in particular.

The taskforce suggested for the state to encourage localities to create “Grow Your Programs” that would put interested students on a path toward teaching earlier in life, growing the pool.

Sherman’s program, proposed to county schools in December 2017 and created in partnership with the Pittsylvania County NAACP, is dubbed the Pittsylvania County Schools Empowering African-American Males Initiative.

It would provide students field trip experiences, mentorship and tutoring opportunities, to “create a system, structure and space that guarantees success for all male students of color,” according to Sherman’s proposal.

The proposal also suggested for “outstanding” program students to be offered a full scholarship to a university provided they sign an agreement to return to Pittsylvania County Schools and teach for at least four years.

“When people leave, they don’t want to come back so we have to make it attractive for individuals to come back to the area and teach,” said Sherman.

Sherman said his proposal focuses on African-American male students because, statistically, it’s the population in need of the most improvement.

“When you look at test scores, their scores tend to be lower. When you look at disciplinary measures, they receive a higher rate of discipline than others,” said Sherman.

The proposed initiative would require extensive fundraising, the creation of a council and additional staff — all African-American males — to coordinate the program.

Mark Jones said Sherman’s initiative and other programs of a similar kind are difficult to fund, especially on a county-wide scale.

“The costs associated with these things are somewhat prohibitive in what we can do. It’s very expensive,” he said. “We have 20 schools and you have to be equitable for all your schools.”

Pittsylvania’s superintendent recalled a program just for boys that had existed for a few years at Dan River Middle School that was sponsored by a larger organization. The program ended in time with the grant funding.

Currently, the Pittsylvania County Career and Technical Center houses a Teachers for Tomorrow program that gives students hands-on experience developing lessons and observing classrooms.

“We have a lot of good graduates, and we encourage them to come back to the area,” said Mark Jones.

Stanley Jones said Danville Public Schools students also have access to their own Teachers for Tomorrow program.

On a state-level, Walker said although there’s been a change in administrations, the Department of Education is still committed to strengthening the pathways for more high-quality minority teachers to enter the workforce and improve retention.

In the county, Mark Jones and Mayhew said the school system is continuing to look at more ways to expand its pool of highly qualified candidates and will continue to host job fairs, maintain an accessible and efficient online application system and work with colleges to recruit potential applicants.

Sherman said the proposal hadn’t gain traction with the PCS administration, but the Pittsylvania Educator Association and local NAACP are still working on a solution.

Sherman said, “We just need to continue to work. It’s a hard issue and a challenging issue. It’s going to take collaborative partners so that we turn around this pipeline.”

Halle Parker reports for the Danville Register & Bee. Contact her at

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