Blake Neff
The Libertarian Republic
09 Sep 2014
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, embarking on a bus tour across the country since taking office, said Monday that the U.S. needs a higher-paid teaching force with with more minorities and men in it.
The tour, Duncan’s fifth annual one since taking office, opened in Atlanta on Monday, where Secretary Duncan addressed students at Spelman College, a historically black women’s liberal arts college.
This year, America’s public schoolchildren are expected to be majority non-white for the first time ever, a shift primarily driven by a drastic rise in the Hispanic population. However, the demographics of teachers are far different, Duncan observed. If the number of black and Hispanic teachers doubled, they still would not reflect the make-up of the student body, he said. Similarly, while boys are half of the student population, the vast majority of teachers are women.
Adjusting the make-up of teachers would improve educational outcomes and ”is doing the right thing for our nation,” Duncan said, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
According to Department of Education data, in the 2011-12 school year 82 percent of schoolteachers were white, while seven percent were black and eight percent were Hispanic. In addition, over 76 percent of teachers are women…
The article continues at The Libertarian Republic.
