More than half of the student population in U.S. public schools identify as students of color; yet less than one in five—18 percent— of the teacher workforce identify as teachers of color. Does diversity and inclusion in the teaching profession even matter? And, if so, how can public policy play a constructive role?

To find answers to these questions, Khalid Kaldi (MPP ’21) sat down with two former teachers of color. MPP student, Whitney Parra, explains the importance of cultural understanding in the classroom and provides a window into the personal experiences of a teacher of color. Then, UC Berkeley Assistant Professor of Education, Travis Bristol, shares some of his policy recommendations on how to strengthen the ways we recruit and retain teachers of color.

For more on demographic shifts, check out our episodes on aging and transportation, direct care workers and fertility.

Transcript

Whitney Parra [00:00:00] When you are teaching kids that are you your skin color that grew up with the same culture that you have,and you know of like what are the statistics that represent your people, that sits with you. It just sits with you. I literally showed them all the statistics of what it says, like how many Latinos go to college? How much do they get paid? These are all the statistics that represent our people. Like we need to remember this and we need to like fix these statistics. And like, your education is the number one way to fix these statistics.

Khalid Kaldi [00:00:33] That is Whitney Parra, an MPP student at the Goldman School of Public Policy. Just last year, Miss Parra was a sixth grade bilingual teacher in the Hill, a predominantly Latinx neighborhood in New Haven, Connecticut. All of Ms. Parra's students or her kiddos, as she like to say, had recently immigrated to the U.S., some moved here from Colombia and Ecuador, others from Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Mexico, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. Those kids and their families survived hurricanes and war. They came to America in hopes of finding safety, security and a good education. Those kids found in Ms. Parra a schoolteacher whose lived experience mirrored their own.

Whitney Parra [00:01:20] And it wasn't just like academics being able to relate on that. But it was just something like, did you listen to that new song? They're like "yeah, I did. It was great, right?" And there's just like these jokes of like, "or did you watch that novella?" I was like, oh, my God. I can't beleive that happened last night. And they would just get so excited because it's like, it wasn't even that they saw you as a friend, but they saw you as someone that just understands them. So we crack the same jokes and we understood these idioms that we would say to each other that if another teacher who comes in and doesn't speak the language or even if we weren't English like wouldn't understand these jokes because it's just not their culture.

Khalid Kaldi [00:01:58] That right there, that cultural connection Ms. Parra shared with her students is way too rare in our public schools today. Across the nation, students of color make up more than half of the student population. Teachers of color, on the other hand, make up less than 20 percent of the teacher workforce. Some kids go from kindergarten to senior year without having a single teacher who looks like them. What message does that send them? What effect does that have on their learning? From the Goldman School of Public Policy in the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans, I'm Khalid Kaldi. And this is Talk Policy to Me. This week on the show, we're talking about students and teachers in our public schools. We're talking about race and gender in the space of education. And in particular, we're talking about why it matters for both students and teachers to feel as though they belong in their school and in their country. To help us unpack the racial disparity between teachers and students. I sat down with two former teachers of color. Whitney Parra will be the first voice you hear on today's episode, and she'll provide a window into the personal experiences of a teacher of color. Later on, you'll hear from Assistant Professor of Education at U.C. Berkeley, Travis Bristol, whose work is focused on supporting those who serve in America's classrooms. First, I wanted to understand why Ms. Parra decided to become a teacher in the first place.

Whitney Parra [00:03:42] So this is actually one of the main reasons that I got into teaching. So growing up, I tested into a gifted and talented school. I was all like, gifted and talented. And I had a terrible experience at the school. I was just, I always just felt so different because everyone that was at that school for the most part was very well off. Right? Like a lot of my friends were white with blond hair. Their parents were doctors and lawyers. And my dad was just a laborer. My mom, she was a stay at home mom. And my dad would go to the presentation and the parent teacher conferenceswith tar on his jeans. And you would just see, like I will always remember this time where it was a parent teacher conference and we were waiting outside of the door, we were next to go inside. And my dad had just come from work. He's sweating. He has his hat on. He has tar on his pants, his work boots. And my mom is right, right there. And these parents come out to super nicely dressed. And we go into the classroom and had a white teacher and I had to be translating for my parents. And my parents were so excited to talk to her. Like, how is she doing? You know, I want to know everything. And the teacher was just so dismissive. She's doing great. Thank you so much for coming. Goodbye. And it was like this moment where my parents were so used to that. And it was just this moment where they just sat and. Wow. And so I was just so embarrassed. And that moment actually, it made me hate being Latina. All I wanted to do was be white with blond hair because I felt like if I didn't speak Spanish and I was white with blond hair, she would accept me more. And it wasn't until I became a bilingual teacher that, like, I just loved being Latina. I appreciated the culture. Now I want to do is speak Spanish and dance and like, listen to reggaeton when before, like, I never wanted that. And it was just like. I think about how different my life would have been if I just would have had one teacher, two teachers that would speak Spanish to me, who would just appreciate my journey and just understand like what it means to have parents from another country.

Khalid Kaldi [00:06:10] Ms. Parra never had a Latina teacher, but she knew what a difference it would have made in her sense of self-worth and acceptance if she did. And so 12 years after that parent teacher conference, Ms. Parra joined Teach for America. As part of that process, she had to visit Texas and Pennsylvania to shadow and learn from two experienced teachers. And in a twist of fate, one of the teachers, Ms. Parra Shadowed was the very same fourth grade teacher that had traumatized her as a kid. Here's Ms. Parra describing that moment:

Whitney Parra [00:06:43] I went to that same teacher and I shadowed her room and it was so beautiful because I saw this little Latina girl in the corner just talking a lot with all her friends. And it was like, I saw myself, but she was so unapologetic. Like she was so herself, didn't care. And it was like in that moment I was like, wow. I just like, really admired her bravery. And the most powerful part was just there are so many more people of color in that classroom. And so that's what I was like, realizing I'm going to be that teacher that I always wanted. You know, I went and I shook her hand. I was like, hi. Do you remember me? And she was just like, "oh, no." I was like, "oh, I'm Whitney Parra, you were my fourth grade teacher." Then I go just on to say "well, like after I graduated from UT, and now I'm going to be a sixth grade bilingual teacher. She's like, "oh, really? You're gonna be a teacher?" I was like, "yeah, I'm gonna be a teacher. And I'm really excited." But it was like this powerful moment. Like, my thinking was I was gonna go in there and tell her everything that she made me feel and made my parents feel. But I didn't. I just went in there and I just shook her hand. There was that moment. That was my charge. It was just like, this is what I am meant to do. I am meant to go be a teacher.

Khalid Kaldi [00:07:59] In the months and years that followed. It seemed to Miss bartra had found her purpose in life. Teaching would be her life's work. Or at least that's what she thought. You see, before she could start teaching, Ms. Parra had to spend six weeks shadowing a teacher in a predominantly black public school in Philadelphia. It was in that school where Ms. Parra realized where she had to go and what she had to achieve. If she wanted to look out for children like her, if she wanted to lift up the next generation, she would have to aim higher. 

Whitney Parra [00:08:31] When I first went into teaching and I was doing my training in Philadelphia, you know, it was the last day that we were going to be there. We were going off now to teach at our prospective schools. And this black teacher like stands up and, you know, Teach for America has a lot of -- a lot of the teachers are white. You would think that they would be a lot of color, but they're not. This black teacher stands up and she says. She goes, "I just want to give you one piece of advice before you leave. You're going to be standing in front of black and brown students every single day. I just ask you to please don't tell them to try really hard to learn, to read, just so they can go to college and buy a big house and a fancy new car. I want you to tell them to learn really well, to read those books, to go to college so that they can come back into their city and change it from within. She goes, we are too often telling black and brown kids to abandon their communities because it's too ghetto, it's too poor. And if they go to school, they can make it out. No. We need to tell them to return and to change it from within. And that changed my life. And now, like when I graduate from graduate school, I want to go back to my city. And I want to run for office. And I want a change of like how the education is happening in my city.

Khalid Kaldi [00:09:59] When we come back, we'll hear from UC Berkeley professor of education Travis Bristol. He's spent his entire life in the education system and he knows what it takes to succeed in school, not only as a student and teacher, but also as an educator of teachers and an education policy scholar. All that and more after the break.

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Travis Bristol [00:12:10] I have the honor and privilege of engaging with policymakers, with practitioners. It's not common for the people that I'm interacting with to have also been a student in the kinds of schools that they're looking to improve. So many people have you have had, you know, relatively positive sort of schooling experiences. And so that experience, that sort of in many ways traumatizing experience, in middle school and high school, because I know what it's like to be in those kinds of schools, has definitely informed the kind of policy work and practice work because I've experienced it. I'm not just sort of talking about it without having any lived reality of what that's like.

Khalid Kaldi [00:13:00] That voice belongs to Travis Bristol, Professor of Education at UC Berkeley. He grew up in East New York, a primarily black neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City. As a child, he was fortunate to attend a private Christian elementary school called Grace Christian Educational Center. He described it as an Afrocentric school. All of his teachers were black. The administration was black. The curriculum focused on the history of black people and the contributions black people made to breathe life into America's founding ideals.

Travis Bristol [00:13:35] I would say that that early experience with school and learning and teachers. I saw a vision of myself being successful. I saw myself show up in that space. There was nothing that that harmed me or that damaged me. I didn't leave school damaged. And so I think it's that foundation that I had allowed me to withstand all the other mess and all the dysfunctional schooling. I should say that that happened in middle and high school.

Khalid Kaldi [00:14:08] After the sixth grade, he landed in a public school that felt worlds apart. And like so many black and brown students across the country, the experience he had in a mainly white public school contained a few traumatizing events.

Travis Bristol [00:14:23] I have two younger siblings. I was raised by a single mother. Life became expensive, so I went to a public school and the public school couldn't be more different. I mean, same type of students, same community, but it could not have been more different. The principal was a black man, but most of the teachers were white. It was a it was a horrible place to, I suspect, to teach and also to learn. By the eighth grade, I got into the honors program. And in the in my honors program, my English class, he sat at his desk, gave us work, sat at his desk, did a crossword puzzle. And here I was, you know, in an honors class, not really, not really learning much except for what was in the textbook, and people cheated,so. So that was my school.

Khalid Kaldi [00:15:14] Teachers, both black and white, had a lasting impact, fueling his curiosity and his love for learning. But after all his years in the education system, he could see and feel patterns of malpractise. Now, as a scholar of education policy, he dares to imagine what education could be. He focuses on the school based experiences of black and Latinx men, and he seeks to understand what effects these teachers decisions to leave or stay in the teaching profession. The goal of his research is to find ways to invest in America's teachers and ensure that all of them have the resources, support and tools they need to succeed in their classrooms.

Travis Bristol [00:16:00] Oftentimes, when policymakers have historically framed this mismatch, they frame it as a mismatch between teachers and students. And yes, I think that a part of this problem is that students of color don't have enough teachers of color. But I think if we think more globaly that in this diverse country that representation matters not only for children of color, but also for white children, for the sort of democratic principle that we are that out of many we are we are one right. That thinking about ensuring that we have the many for all is actually really important. So diversity is important, I think, for this country, particularly in the space of education. There's a clear growing body of research that describes and highlights how particularly black and latinx children persist through school, engage in more rigorous courses, are less likely to be suspended if they have the same race teacher. There's also a growing body of research that white children say they also prefer having a teacher of color. So there there is an evidence base that policymakers can turn to. To say that the current mismatch that's not good enough that we owe it to the increasing ethno racial diversity in our country to have a teacher workforce that begins to mirror the ethnic racial diversity of the student body.

Khalid Kaldi [00:17:41] The racial diversity of the teacher workforce today is rooted in historical events. So before we go any further, we've got to understand why there are so few teachers of color in the first place. Hint: there is a famous Supreme Court decision at the center of this story.

Khalid Kaldi [00:17:59] Policies created this problem and policies can fix this problem, right? Separate was never equal. Children living in the South. And teachers teaching in the south. And I would also say the north, but we primarily think about de-segregation as only happening in the South. Were teaching in schools with many more students, less resources. And so there needed to be a policy lever that said, we can't give different types of funding to people if we see them as being equal. The policy, however, was to say that let's just move all the black children into the into schools with white children. And so when those black children moved into schools after Brown, once those black children began moving into schools with white children, their black teachers and their black principals did not follow them. Their black teachers and their black principals were fired. I think the numbers, about 30 percent of the educated workforce where we see a reduction, about 30 percent of the educated workforce in the South after Brown. So this was the policy decision. We integrated the students, not the teachers. And so many of those teachers in particular in the south lost their jobs.

Khalid Kaldi [00:19:13] When desegregation began in the mid 60s, Most black teachers were not included. Black and white students filled the seats in the newly integrated public schools, but the faces at the front of the classroom were mostly white. 38,000 black teachers and administrators lost their jobs following the court ruling. Civil rights legislation and federal desegregation guidelines said nothing about black teacher retention. As the years went on, the numbers rose and fell. But overall, the decline of black teachers was devastating. The reasons behind the displacement of black teachers changed over time. At certain points, racist white administrators refused to hire black faculty. At other times, black teachers were placed in situations that set them up for failure and dismissal. In so many ways, the implementation of Brown vs. Board set the stage for the racial inequities we see today in our public schools.

Travis Bristol [00:20:16] More recently, federal policies that tied school improvement with how students performed on a test and then the subsequent decision to close schools that that did not perform well. Those students in those schools who were being taught by primarily black and brown teachers when those students did not perform well on the standardized exam, their schools were closed and those teachers were fired. When federal policies were enacted to improve schools, when those those students migrated to other school buildings, their black teachers and their brown teachers did not follow them. Right. So what happened in Brown, I think and I think what has happened as a result of more recent federal policies has created a greater sort of mismatch. The greatest mismatch that we see is actually between Latinx students and Latinx student teachers. I mean, that is the piece that policymakers are beginning to have now. But I think we've historically focused a lot on the sort of mismatch between black students and black teachers. But actually in the state of California, in Tennessee, across many states, the greatest mismatch is actually between Latinx students and their Latinx teachers.

Khalid Kaldi [00:21:36] All right. We know there's a growing gap between the diversity of the student body and the diversity of the teacher workforce. To think about solutions, we need to consider the path folks take into the teaching profession. We'll call this the teacher pipeline. Today, the rate of black and brown students who graduate high school and get through college is lower than white students. And the reasons why are layered and complex. But we know that these disparities are the result of centuries of racist policies that have excluded people of color and particularly black people from the same opportunities white people have benefited from. American public policy is responsible for the college graduation rates among black and brown students. These disparities in educational outcomes constrain the pool of graduates of color who are eligible for teaching positions. But short of a political revolution, there are steps we can take to help every child in America reach their full potential. Here's Professor Bristol on harm reduction strategies that can help more students of color make it through college.

Travis Bristol [00:22:43] Before this, I was in fact here at Boston University, and I was at the U.S. attorney's office in Massachusetts, Andrew Lelling, the guy who's been prosecuting all these folks who have been sort of cheating on the S.A.T.'s. And so he was in the room and he said, you know, "what do you do to solve this teacher diversity problem?" And I said, "well, the first thing we need to do is we need to stop suspending and expelling black and brown children." Part of this is a supply issue. because we keep on exiting so many children, black and brown children out of schools, the supply becomes limited. So we need to correct harsh disciplinary practices in the state of California. We see some of this movement happening with legislation that has end willful defiance. You can't suspend just because someone isn't listening to you. You know, you can't say that you can't suspend them for for willfully defying you. That's no longer something you can suspend, lots of children of color were being suspended for these sort of subjective beliefs about how they were interacting with school. So we got to address what's happening in K-12.

Khalid Kaldi [00:23:45] Step two: enroll in a teacher preparation program. At this stage, you've got options. You could study education at a university or community college, or as an alternative, uou could sign up for a certification program like Teach for America. But either way, you first have to decide that you want a career in education and for a whole host of reasons, Black and Latinx students choose to pursue a career in teaching at lower rates than white students. Part of this is because teacher preparation programs are expensive and the payoff is low. We as a society just don't pay teachers a whole lot. And so the teaching profession is not attractive or viable for a lot of black and Latinx students who don't have the same intergenerational wealth that their white peers do. Fortunately, Professor Bristol has an answer for that.

Travis Bristol [00:24:40] With the reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which is currently being debated now in the Congress. I think one policy lever. I wrote a piece in Brookings on this around the reauthorization of this could be actually funding, providing full support for people who want to pursue a career in education. When I talked about my own experience, I said, you know, because I was debt free as an undergrad. I made the choice that if someone's going to give me thirty thousand dollars to go to a master's program that I was going to take that right. So I think that that that idea of loan forgiveness, or grants for a master's program could be one specific policy lever to open up the pipeline for people of color.

Khalid Kaldi [00:25:32] Great. Let's do it, right? But let's not forget that there are also nonfinancial barriers we need to address. These barriers have to do with the way teaching is perceived in our culture. Because teaching is often thought of as a female profession, men of color are often steered away. So in addition to financial support, we actually need to talk about how to change this narrative, how to shift the culture.

Travis Bristol [00:25:58] From 2016 to 2019, I studied New York City's teacher diversity effort. It's called NYC Men Teach. And one of the pieces that allowed the city, the cities had this ambitious goal of getting a thousand men of color into the teaching pipeline, of course, New York City has has about seventy thousand plus teachers. But one of the things that New York City did was they actually engaged in a full-on marketing campaign where they had folks like Charlamagne tha God, like radio personalities, talk about the benefits of being a teacher. Right. And so when when I interviewed some of these teachers, they talked about like driving in their car, listening on the radio and hearing Charlamagne say, why do you consider career in teaching? And so I think that how we market to how people consume products, we need to market to have people consume the profession of teaching, and marketing can be a lever. And we see that with TFA. Right. I mean, Wendy Kopp and TFA, you know, they were able to market teaching to, on average, high students attending the most elite schools in the country. Right. Because they marketed as being right, doing quote unquote, service. So I think that we need to rebrand and we imagine how we talk about the teaching profession to open up that pipeline.

Khalid Kaldi [00:27:21] Moving forward in the pipeline brings us to step three, hiring and recruitment. Now, the practices and policies that determine who gets offered a teaching position are primarily situated at the local school district level. And although a lot of school leaders speak the language of diversity, equity and inclusion, what matters more than how they talk is how they act and where they invest.

Travis Bristol [00:27:45] The successful districts have been ones in which the superintendent has said. "This is a priority." And they have put in the resources, right, because resources matter. And so in New York City, like I mentioned, this ambitious goal of recruiting a thousand male teachers of color. Not only did the mayor talk about this priority, but he committed 16 million dollars.

Khalid Kaldi [00:28:11] Resources matter, fair hiring practices matter. But it's important to recognize the limits of what can be achieved through changes in the hiring and recruitment process. School districts are limited by the pool of applicants who are qualified to teach. So achieving greater representation in teaching is largely about increasing college completion and making the profession more accessible. That means policy changes are most impactful when they're focused on creating the conditions in which a student can thrive in school and begin to consider a career in teaching.

Travis Bristol [00:28:47] If we actually funded K-12 schools right. California systematically does not fund schools like other states. I mean, that's why there's so much money into this. This proposed budget, if we created conditions in schools where children could learn and matriculate into college, if we provided financial aid for people like myself was a program recipient right to graduate from college. If we create that ecosystem of support right, then people will make the decision. I think in large numbers to enter the teaching profession. I mean, there's a there's some research that suggests that people of color are more likely than their white peers to enter the public sector, because very much like how I started how we started this. Right, I felt this need I felt compelled to give back. Right. And I was operating in an ecosystem in higher education. Right. Where I didn't have any loans in undergrad. I hadn't you know, I had a large sum of money for my master's program. There were the conditions where I could enter the teaching workforce. I think we need to create those conditions here. And we are beginning to see some of those conditions created here in the state.

Khalid Kaldi [00:29:57] After hiring, we've got to think about whether or not teachers choose to stay in their classrooms year after year. The fourth and final step is all about retention. This area in particular has been the main focus of Professor Bristol's research. Here's what he had to say about retention.

Travis Bristol [00:30:17] Teachers of color turnover at higher rates than their peers. The easiest policy lever is to throw a whole lot of money into a splashy recruitment campaign. The hardest work is actually to make people stay. If we paid attention to retention, creating the working conditions for teachers of color to stay, then we then we would be able to slowly increase the number of people of color in the educated workforce. Policymakers have pointed to simply thinking about human capital issues such as just getting. Certain types of people in the door. So an example of this, I'd say is, you know, when Wendy Kopp started TFA, there was this idea that if we just got America's best and brightest, if we just got a certain type of person in the building, then that would improve everything. Right. More recently, a lot of policymakers have said, well, if we just get teachers of color, black teachers in the building. It'll help black students. One of the things that I found in my research was that. Black men who were concentrated who in school with many more black male teachers, even though they had a camaraderie with each other, that those teachers were more likely to actually leave their schools because the working conditions in their schools did not allow them to teach. And so if you just. Think about improving schools by just getting a certain type of people without really thinking about the organizational context in the school that needs to be improved. For example, ensuring that the principal has the training to support novice teachers, ensuring that if you're going to place the most novice teachers in schools with children who because of historic racist policies, if you are going to place these students in schools with a particular type of teacher, you just can't expect the teacher to address all the problems that students have had historically, that those children also need wraparound services. They need social workers. They need nurses. Right. And so what the black men in my study said to me was that the school, people believe that if we just hired people who look like me, a black man, then I could be a Superman. Without thinking about all of the other conditions in the school that needed to be present for teachers to teach and for students to learn. As it relates to this idea of support and what I've termed differences support, we have not yet in the K-12 space thought about how we differentiate learning for adults like we differentiate learning for students. Some of the work that I'm doing, like this project I have in Compton, working with a group of male teachers of color and principals, is that we say, by dint of your social location, you experience school differently than your colleagues. And so what might it mean to create a professional learning community where where you can talk about some of the challenges that that are unique to you and and get some tools and strategies around how to navigate the school organizational context based on your social location. And so that's some of the some of the work. I think it's also important to think about professional learning that honors the unique differences that people of color have relative to the white peers and create the space for them to enter into those spaces and to learn.

Khalid Kaldi [00:34:02] Turnover and retention have a lot to do with organizational context. Teachers make decisions about whether to stay or leave based on their working conditions. Do they feel respected, supported and empowered? Do they have colleagues they can relate to? Do they have opportunities for personal growth and professional development? These are the questions school leaders have to ask if they want to increase retention in their schools. So the main message of today's episode: diversity is precious, representation matters. The task of transformation is waiting. And maybe one of you is going to be the one who finds a way to deliver that change.

 [00:34:54] Thank you to Whitney Parra and Travis Bristol. Talk Policy to Me is a production of UC Berkeley's Goldman School of Public Policy and the Berkeley Institute for Young Americans. For Show Notes. Visit talkpolicytome.org. Music heard on today's episode is by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Our executive producers are Bora Lee Reed and Sarah Swanbeck. Michael Quiroz is our audio engineer. I'm Khalid Kaldi, thank you, and be well.