Dive Brief:
- New York Mayor Bill de Blasio has allocated $16 million for the NYC Men Teach initiative since launching it in January 2015 as a way to get more black, Latino and Asian men into the city’s schools.
- The Huffington Post reports less than 10% of the city’s teaching force is among that group, and the initiative hopes to add 300 additional underrepresented men to the teaching pipeline in 2016 through programs like Teach for America, the New York City Teaching Fellows and City University of New York teacher training programs.
- To help keep these men of color in the teaching profession, experienced teacher mentors will guide them in their first years, and community programs will foster a sense of community.
Dive Insight:
The teaching force in the United States is dominated by white women while the student population is now majority minority, marked by a growing Latino population. Research has long been clear about how students are more successful if their teachers reflect their own racial backgrounds, yet in many districts, it is nearly impossible to get a teaching force that achieves this. And in all districts, the gender imbalance is insurmountable, especially at the elementary level. Fully 91% of elementary education graduates are women, according to a Georgetown University study. If that is the pool from which schools are pulling, there is no way to get gender parity in the teaching force.
Alternative pathways to education have helped increase diversity in the teacher pipeline, and programs like NYC Men Teach may help get more men of color into the profession in the near-term. The key will be keeping them there and developing a sustainable pipeline that won’t disappear once targeted money runs out.