Letters to the Editor

To solve the teach to the test, achievement Gap and other issues in Educating children of color, in our case Black children, the Black community needs to take ownership and leadership of our Black children’s education. As a Black educator of color who was in the classroom for over 25 years, I believe more effort and money could be spent towards extra direct services. Enrichment activities through after school, weekend and summer programs by and from Black leaders and professionals in all  Black communities - Gateway, sub/urban, urban and Black immigrant settings could be piloted. As we have seen in the past when Black teachers were teaching Black kids, we did not have the pipe line from school to jail the Black community is currently experiencing.  Moreover, ethnologists would agree that culture has significant  impact  in everything in one’s life including learning.  Given the lack of exposure ob Black children to their own African culture, the scarcity of Black staff and teachers  in the schools, all children including Black youth would benefit exponentially from a learning experience and positive relationship from professionals of their African culture.  Hence, I would suggest  investing in piloting  in Expanded  Learning Opportunity programs in churches and community centers in collaboration with  school districts and why not with other cultures that run enrichment and academic for their own children and youth.  Meanwhile I believe small group instruction in the schools and culturally relevant ways to respond to emotional and social issues would have positive academic results as well.

In terms of scarcity of Black and teachers of color, based on the 2010 -2011 Department of Elementary or Secondary Education’s or DESE's website, there are 1,554 Black, 697.2 Asian, and 1,414.5 Latino full time teachers in the Commonwealth.  The total full time teachers is 59,213.1 and 55,189.9 are Caucasian. There are all together 87 Black principals statewide. The national level is 2.6%  of minorities in administration. There are about 682 Black teachers in the 350 cities outside of Boston. Most of the 1,554 Black teachers teach  in the city Boston (872 based on DESE’s website) . Newton has 21 Black teachers whereas a city of close to 10,000 Blacks only has 3 Black teachers, other Gateway cities of 2,000 to 5,000 Blacks have 2 teachers of African descent, of 10,000 have 10 Black teachers. Given these numbers, Blacks and people of color are underrepresented in the fields of Education and Human services in  Massachusetts and increasing them is not often part of the Achievement Gap dialogue. 

The aforementioned data are more urgent factors why Black professionals, clergy, nonprofits and other stakeholders need to get involved in putting  in practice the African proverb, "It takes a village to raise a child.”  'The village" can not afford losing the next generation of our Black children anymore.

 Nekita Lamour