Ask an African American teen if he wants to be a schoolteacher - and you'll likely hear "No."
Statistics indicate teaching is NOT on the list of preferred occupations for minority youth.... and in Ohio, only six percent of current school teachers, are minorities.
Harold Brown runs the school improvement division of the Ohio-based Knowledgeworks Foundation.
{"The cultural divides in our inner city schools between teachers who are not from those communities, not of the same race, and the young people that they're teaching; continues to be a huge challenge".}
Ohio leads the nation in the proportional increase of black students attending nearly all-minority schools - 28 percent the last decade.
Brown believes those students need to see educators who resemble themselves leading their classes. But he also believes students at predominately white schools would benefit from more minority teachers.
{"You need, even for those kids, diversity at the instructor level as well, so that they don't go out into the world unable to relate to people that are unlike themselves."}
Brown is among those battling to increase the number of minority teachers - and hold onto them. He says schools face the same problem in retaining people of color as they do in recruiting whites: many highly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years - even faster in inner city schools.
Associate Dean Nelson Vincent of the University of Cincinnati's College of Education, Criminal Justice and Human Services agrees that the best and brightest - particularly in the minority population - are attracted to fields away from the classroom.
{"When you have highly qualified students coming out of our schools, they make the same choices - they want to go to engineering, business, and law. So we continue to fight the perception of the status of the teaching profession - and the salaries."}
To help minority students gravitate toward teaching, and particularly toward sciences and math, Ohio's Board of Regents launched a program in 2007 which targets high school kids who 'might' consider a teaching career.
44 such students just completed a year-long Saturday morning academy that provided them three credit hours of college math, mentoring, and college visits, with opportunities to learn about college entrance requirements, and financial aid.
The Southwest Center of Excellence Academy was run by the University of Cincinnati, and Miami University. Vincent says this first group of grads represents a breakthrough.
{"More than 50% of the students in our first cohort of 44 were minority individuals. We were specifically recruiting in the urban area of Cincinnati initially, before we fanned out to the region. And that was a successful process."}
Of the Southwest Center's 44 students - ALL graduated the accelerated course, and virtually all are going on to college. That's energized the program, but Harold Brown says such efforts are far from reaching enough potential teachers.
{"Unless we do some affirmative steps to incentivize young people to go into teaching, particularly people of color, and that it is a noble profession, and that it will provide a career ladder, then you're gonna think that maybe your options are limited going forward.}
Changing those limitations is what the Regent's have asked Ohio's colleges and universities to do, with different colleges focusing on different areas of education; computer sciences, languages, the arts, and so on.
Besides the Miami-Cincinnati campuses, Cleveland State, Baldwin Wallace, Kent State, Hiram College, and The University of Akron are among participants.
Bottom line goals are similar.... getting today's students - to become tomorrow's instructors.
Nelson Vincent everyone believes it will take some time.
{"If you look at the demographics the pattern is already set, we're going to be working the rest of our lives to change the demographics of the teaching force."}
Rick Jackson. 90.3
