By Maya Rhodan
Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As the pool of students in American schools grows more diverse, those studying to be teachers remain mostly White.

According to a new report by the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, a national organization that analyzes teacher education programs, 82 percent of people who earned Bachelor’s degrees in education in 2009-2010 school year were White.

The study surveyed more than 700 colleges and universities that train about two-thirds of the teaching force.

Nearly half of the U.S. student population is members of racial or ethnic minorities, yet only about one in five teachers are people of color. Only 6 percent of teacher candidates were Black and 4.2 percent were Hispanic.

Of the 29 million students enrolled in public schools in 2010, 15 percent were Black and 23 percent were Hispanic.

“Unfortunately, we’re seeing a smaller number of racial and ethnic minorities in front of classrooms for a number of reasons,” said Anthony Graham, the chair of the department of elementary education at North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro. “Salaries, for one, are an issue. Also, a lot of students are not interested, based on their own experiences. There are a lot of things that play into this.”

The average starting teacher salary is $30,377 according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Computer engineers make about $70,000 coming out of school.

“We’re finding that college-bound minority students have so many career options,” said Sharon P. Robinson, the president of the association told the New York Times. “We have to develop some specific recruitment strategies to attract our share of those students into those teacher education programs.”

Alternative programs that license teachers, but do not award degrees have a more diverse pool of students, with about 76 percent of the candidates being White, 7 percent Black, and 8 percent Hispanic.

“We have to a better job of a pipeline approach,” says Graham, whose program awards about 60 students with degrees in education per year. “By introducing the career at an earlier age we can better showcase the benefits of returning to a community and uplifting it through teaching.”

Graham, however, notes that despite efforts schools may already have to recruit minority teacher candidates, many fail to pass the Praxis exam, the required teacher certification test.

“Despite the teachers we try to produce, we’re losing a number of them to this exam,” says Graham.

Between 2002-2005, Black teacher candidates had a Praxis passing rate of 52.1 percent, according to a study by the Educational Testing Service, which prepares the Praxis exams as well as the SAT tests. White teacher candidates had a passing rate of 83.5 percent during that same period.

“It causes a ripple effect in terms of their own education,” says Kimberly Garrett, an assistant professor of early childhood education at Dominican University in Chicago. ”They haven’t had proper teaching themselves so they aren’t able to teach. It’s an additional struggle for black and Hispanic students.”

Garrett’s program has 36 candidates in early childhood education right now, only three are Black, two are Hispanic, and one is Asian. Of Chicago Public Schools’ 400,000 students, 41.6 percent of students are African American and 44.1 percent are Latino.

“The race and ethnicity of teachers is important because it supports a child’s developing self-image to see someone of authority they can relate to of have some level of comfort around,” Garret says.

According to a report by the National Collaborative on Diversity in the Teaching Force, teachers of color can not only help close the achievement gap, they also help students of color reach higher academic, personal, and social performance.

Garrett says, however, that although students benefit from having teachers of color, its more important for them to have culturally and intellectually competent adults in these roles than anything else.

“There is an aspect of value that someone from the same ethnic group brings to the classroom that helps to develop students on a deeper level,” says Garrett. “But it’s not just an ethnic match that’s important.”

“There was a special rapport that I had and do have with students of color that added to the experience,” she adds. “But that doesn’t take away from the connection all teachers can have if they’re aware of their students and their varying needs.”

By Freddie Allen
NNPA Washington Correspondent

WASHINGTON (NNPA) – As lawmakers and special interests groups paint immigration reform as a critical component in shaping the future of Latinos living in the United States, Black leaders say that there is too much at stake, economically and politically, for Blacks to allow the debate to be framed in narrow terms.

Despite many reports, the pathway to citizenship for undocumented individuals is just one ingredient in the multi-layered immigration policy, yet to be written, that will have far-reaching impacts for Blacks and African descendants in the United States and abroad.

“This is a very controversial issue on the ground in the Black community,” said Ron Daniels, president of the Institute of the Black World 21st Century, an organization that works to advance the social, political economic growth of the Black community in the United States and around the world. “If you hear the leaders talk about [immigration reform], it sounds like everything is hunky-dory and it’s all kumbaya.”

According to Daniels, everything isn’t hunky-dory and Blacks aren’t singing old feel-good songs. He hears the grumbling voices opposing immigration and the misconception that “illegals” flood the job market crowding out American-born workers, driving down wages and contributing to high rates of unemployment, nationally and in the Black community.

It’s not just disgruntled, out-of-work Blacks that feel that way.

According to a recent Angus Reid Public Opinion poll, more than half of Americans oppose immigration and say that illegal immigrants “take jobs from American workers.” Thirty-nine percent said that the number legal immigrants should be decreased.

The Labor Department reported that the national unemployment rate was 7.7 percent and the Black unemployment rate was 13.8 percent in February. The jobless rate was 6.8 percent for Whites and 9.6 percent for Latino workers over the same period.

According to Daniels, opposition to immigration and the misconception that immigrants are to blame for depressing wages and taking jobs could hinder progress and support for any immigration bill that is crafted by Congress.

Daniels and the Institute partnered with a number of groups from the African diaspora to form the Pan-African Unity Dialogue to develop an immigration agenda tailored to meet the needs of Black Americans and Blacks of African descent in the U.S. and abroad.

“Immigration affects us all, immigration is local, national and international,” said Waldaba Stewart, economic advisor for Southern Caucus of Non-Governmental Organizations for Sustainable Development. “Immigration involves economics and political power.”

Stewart said that right now Blacks and African descendants are not being considered and it’s the fault of the Black leadership for not explaining the significance of the legislation.

“That was our fault,” said Stewart. “We as a people acted as if immigration was someone else’s concern.”

The group said that any immigration reform needs to address a number of key issues important to the economic and political future of Blacks and people of African descent that reside in the United States.

The group wants the U.S. Commerce and Agriculture departments to foster partnerships between Blacks in the United States and Blacks in the countries where the federal government is already working to advance it’s own interests in agriculture.

The group said that all legislation for immigration reform must include provisions that “are applicable to Blacks and other groups that are historically victims of racism.”

Companies and organizations that utilize the special visa and guest worker programs must make those same opportunities available to Blacks and documented workers before new permits are granted, stated the group. The group also wants to make sure that the immigration process provides equitable allocation of visas to Sub Saharan African countries, to the Caribbean and to countries in Latin America that are underrepresented.

Experts say that both the powerful business lobby and labor groups want to change the way the guest worker program works. Business owners want more visas and a streamlined process, while unions want more control over the number of special visas that are allocated during tough economic times.

Utilizing the special visas, companies import foreign workers to perform housekeeping, landscaping, food processing and other low-wage jobs that they claim that Americans no longer want. PAUD said that the government needs to apply more pressure on those companies to pay a living wage and hire American workers.

The group also asserted that the immigration process should provide equitable allocation of visa quotas to Sub Saharan African countries, to the Caribbean and to countries in Latin America that have a disparity in processing of visa applications by people of African descent.

Daniels and the PAUD group also want provisions included in the immigration bill that will protect the interests of Black farmers in the United States and around the world. Stewart said that because of globalization and discrimination in the industry, Black farmers who once controlled a quarter of agriculture industry in the U.S. now only make up about 7 percent.

Although Daniels said that he looks forward to working with leading Latino and Asian groups to address immigration reform, it was important for Blacks and African descendants to develop their own agenda first, so that all parties can benefit from a future coalition.

Latino interest groups are greatly concerned with any pathway to citizenship language that will ultimately go into the final bill.

According to 2009 Pew Research study, Hispanics account for 76 percent of the 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including 7 million from Mexico alone. If those immigrants became legal citizens, the nation could see a dramatic shift in economic and political power.

Daniels acknowledged that the road ahead isn’t going to be easy and that educating the Black community about immigration reform will be important in gaining their support, but it’s something that must be done.

“The worst thing that we can do is to not have this conversation or have this struggle because the power elites, the business community will end up pitting, the different groups against each other,” said Daniels. “But to act as if there are no consequences, politically or economically, would be disastrous.”

Special to the NNPA from the Greene County Democrat

Thousands of children in Sierra Leone are paying for their own education or helping their families make ends meet by working as rock-breakers for the country’s construction industry.

Labour is nothing new in Sierra Leone, but the brutal job of breaking stones with a hammer for hours on end in the baking heat has raised particular concern. Even for adults, the work is extremely tough, and injuries are common.

The rock-breakers are paid for finished gravel, or aggregate – sold at 5,000 leones (about US$1) per large plastic tub – but sales are sporadic and unpredictable.

Education and child labour are often closely entwined in Sierra Leone, where schooling can impose a severe financial strain. Although primary education is nominally free, parents must pay for uniforms, books, pens, transport and in some cases contributions to teachers’ salaries. To send their children to school, therefore, many parents must also send them to work.

In 2007 Foday Mansaray, a former mobile-phone salesman, set up a completely free school in the village of Adonkia, a few kilometres outside the capital Freetown, in a bid to get children out of the quarries.

The severely under-funded Borbor Pain Charity School of Hope currently has 380 students, all of whom have worked as stone-breakers, but Mansaray estimates there are up to 3,000 more children engaged in the practice throughout the country.

However, such is the level of poverty among many local families that despite paying nothing for their education most of the school’s children still have to work, and will often have to continue to do so once they move on to more senior schools.

Sierra Leone’s economy grew by over 20 percent last year, fuelled by the resumption of iron-ore mining, but the mineral boom has yet to be felt by most Sierra Leoneans. [This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.]

By Bert Wilkinson
Special to the NNPA from the New York Amsterdam News

Caribbean trade bloc governments have been so worried about the stark increase in chronic diseases like diabetes and hypertension among citizens that they have twice organized special summits to address the issue and even pushed the United Nations into holding a high-level meeting to find ways of reducing these numbers.

In the past week, a respected Caribbean academic has sought to directly link what he calls the “epidemic” of chronic, non-communicable diseases in the Afro-Caribbean community to the history of violently removing Africans from the continent to work as slaves in the Caribbean and Americas.

The result, says Hilary Beckles, principal and pro vice chancellor of the University of the West Indies’ Barbados campus, is that Blacks are accounting for a disproportionate level of regional citizens affected with all forms of diabetes and elevated blood pressure on a daily basis.

Speaking at a weekend forum to ramp up governmental support for reparations for Africans who are still suffering from the results of the cruel and inhuman Transatlantic Slave Trade, Beckles said that studies now show that up to 60 percent of Afro-Caribbean citizens aged 60 and over are now affected by these two diseases, and much of it has to do with slavery.

“Over 300 years, every day you are eating salted fish or salted pork. You are overworked and underfed, you are malnourished and overworked, and your body reacts to this. So now we have a major economic crisis on our hands relating to chronic diseases. Something has happened in the Caribbean Black community that has led to this explosion of such chronic diseases.”

He even argued that Africans who were accustomed to too a much of a different diet on the continent before slavery found it difficult to metabolize sugars and salts in amounts they absorbed while eating plantation food during slavery, hence their frightening health status today.

But even as Beckles was speaking, Ralph Gonsalves, the prime minister of neighboring St. Vincent, was making a spirited case for the British in particular to own up to the horrors of the slave trade as he called on regional governments to establish a committee to demand reparation payments from London.

Mentioning that the average lifespan for a Vincentian national is 74, 67-year-old Gonsalves went on to say, “I have seven more years to talk like this—with the help of Almighty God—and to demand a proper historical recompense for genocide, for the land, for African slavery and for us to reclaim our history. I want to say that the quantification of what we are owed as reparations, that quantification has to be complete with the appropriate technical work. Great homes in England—lord this and lord that—were financed by the compensation money for the slaves.

So when I talk like this, you have some people saying, ‘Ralph is against the British.’ I have nothing against the British. I have nothing but admiration for the British and their achievements, but there are some things for which we must take account.”