Cepeda: Hurdles stand in way of recruiting quality teachers

As is well-known, Hispanic parents truly respect teachers. There is a saying that Latinos hold priests, doctors and teachers in the same regard. But if a high school student who understands what it takes to become a teacher goes home and explains to mami and papi that he or she wants to teach, it’s not going to go over well.

As it is, many low-income and minority students and families are frightened of taking out five-figure student loans to finance their education and a lot of them simply don’t. The New York Times recently published data from the National Center for Education Statistics on the “graduation gap” between rich and poor students. The analysis found that 87 percent of high school sophomores from the richest quartile of families expect to get a bachelor’s degree, and 60 percent end up doing so. Of the poorest high school sophomores, 58 percent expect to graduate college, but only 14 percent do. Educational achievement does not explain the gap.

Research has concluded time and again that while many factors keep minority and low-income students from getting through college, money is a major barrier.

Education is broken

Writing on his blog “The White Rhino: A Chicago Latino English Teacher,” Ray Salazar notes that, especially in the years after the Great Recession, “Now, young people have to choose between helping society or supporting themselves. … When a brilliant student says to me, ‘I want to be a teacher,’ these days I say more than ‘Why?’ I tell her about the job shortage. I tell her how our profession is changing and how the work is more challenging.”

The teaching profession is not on firm ground. We’ve gotten to where only high-income families can afford to put a student through teacher-preparation programs.

Education is broken, and it’s in no small part due to a system in which lower-achieving students can become teachers if they can afford it, while high-achieving candidates of all backgrounds are shunted off into careers that offer better pay and stability.

This isn’t a diversity issue — students are being deprived of highly talented, subject-matter-expert teachers of all backgrounds. All students, not just the brown and black ones, need teachers of all colors and socioeconomic statuses who were once top students themselves. They need well-trained experts who have chosen to teach because it offers a decent livelihood, professional respect and the fulfillment of educating others.

Until we fix teaching-preparation programs, the teacher-union fiefdoms they feed, teacher evaluation and the money issues that keep the most talented away from the profession, worrying about the ethnic and racial diversity of our teachers is but fiddling while our kids’ educations burn.