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US Dept. of Education Teams With Microsoft-Led Teach.org On Teacher Diversity

Posted by Soulskill on from the no-politically-correct-dept-lines-found dept.

theodp writes: Citing a new study that suggests academic achievement can benefit when children are taught by a teacher of their own race, the NY Times asks, Where Are the Teachers of Color? Towards that end, the Times reports that "Teach.org, a partnership between the Department of Education and several companies, teachers unions and other groups, is specifically targeting racial minorities for recruitment." Teach.org describes itself as a "public-private partnership led by Microsoft, State Farm and the U.S. Department of Education." To the consternation of some, the U.S. Dept. of Education delegated teacher recruitment to Microsoft in 2011. With its 2.2% African American/Black and 3.9% Latino/Hispanic tech workforce, who better to increase diversity than Microsoft, right?

4 of 148 comments (clear)

  1. Race but not Gender? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So they are worried about race and not Gender. While boys are failing school more now than ever. They too can benefit from a system that caters to them as well. Where have all the male teachers gone. They have gone else where out of fear of being on a sex registry. And this with a female teacher being the face of high school and middle school sex scandal for years now.

    1. Re:Race but not Gender? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      With no male teachers to do more hand on labs and the like, imagine my surprise that the curriculum has been changed.

      Not to mention in male prisons, they justify having women around as a normalizing effect. Yet in women's prisons, males are also taboo for possible sexual impropriety, nevermind the fact female guards are as likely to engage in sexual misconduct (although curiously absent from prosecution).

  2. Cherry-picked correlations by bradley13 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yet another call for racial discrimination, based on nothing much. I skimmed the paper, and looked particularly at the results sections. The authors cherry-pick the positive correlations, and ignore the negative ones.

    It happens that they have a weak positive correlation for black students taught by black teachers, but the correlation for hispanics is universally negative and for asians the correlation is negative everywhere except math. Somehow, the authors forgot to mention the negative correlations in their abstract, and TFA certainly doesn't pick up on them.

    Overall, the number of positive and negative correlations is very nearly equal, which leads to the suspicion that the paper represents a careful analysis of random noise.

    --
    Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
  3. Re:That 'study' is full of shit ! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm simply saying that we should not reject out-of-hand the notion that some groups learn better/more effectively from a member of their own race

    Especially since TFA cites data that show it is true. Gender also matters. Boys learn better from male teachers. If a boy squirms in his seat, and has problems sitting still, a female teacher is four times more likely to recommend he be tested for ADHD. A male teacher is more likely to make him run laps around the playground.