I heard from NPR radio Thursday night about Fairfax public school teacher hiring issue (https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/black-teacher-applicants-face-discrimination-in-a-wealthy-school-district-study-finds/2017/05/04/ea192b50-2a90-11e7-a616-d7c8a68c1a66_story.html?utm_term=.832126065eb3).
This radio program prompted me to go back to look at HCPSS school staff number by race. This does not imply anything wrong at HCPSS.
Number and Percentage of Certified, Management and Technical Staff by Race
Race and Ethnicity of School-based Administrators by Level and Position
Number of Employees by Race and Ethnicity
The original document is attached here
01 27 2017 Human Resources 2016 Annual BR
It is pretty easy to get the above graph from the original data.
My questions are:
*If the most qualified person is in place, doing the job efficiently, how important is being equal/diverse?
*What scientific proof is there that shows that students learn better because they are taught by someone of ethnicity?
*Are we doing justice to students by hiring people of color or different ethnicity just to show we can hire them if they aren’t as qualified as a person who is Caucasian?
*If we hire for diversity and they aren’t as qualified, aren’t we failing the students? *Isn’t better to have a lack of racial balance, but making sure that these staff are truly encouraging and educating our students? *Are we looking at the students of ethnicity and seeing what career paths they are taking (as in, as educators, are we doing a good job in encouraging them to seek a profession in which they are successful and happy)?
*If HCPSS has such high standings in the US and in MD, why are we so overly concerned with the balancing of racial numbers of educators/administration (don’t we have more pressing issues which should be addressed)?
Please know, I am not being rude, just truly trying to understand. I haven’t heard a great deal about why we don’t have more males in the system. No one is upset about the number of males teaching FACS, or the number of females teaching Tech Ed. Or is there a fair balance of males/females in guidance (why is my middle school son not able to have a male guidance counselor)? What about age? We have staff who are nearing retirement and they refuse to accept we are in a technological age. Aren’t these issues critical to ALL students?
Thank you for enlightening me.
Kind of seems a little unfair with Howard County having such a diverse population?