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3 US teachers removed over choice of black heroes 03/10/10

teachersofcolor — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 16:56:07 +0000

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Three Los Angeles elementary school teachers accused of giving children portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul to carry in a Black History Month parade have been removed from their classrooms, a school district spokeswoman said Wednesday.

Children from other classes at the school displayed photos of more appropriate black role models, such as Nelson Mandela, Harriet Tubman and President Barack Obama, Los Angeles Unified School District spokeswoman Gayle Pollard-Terry said.

The incident occurred Friday at Wadsworth Avenue Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where the student body is more than 90 percent Latino.

District Superintendent Ramon Cortines placed the teachers — all white men who teach first, second and fourth grades — on administrative leave on Tuesday while an investigation is conducted, Pollard-Terry said.

“The superintendent will not let anyone make a mockery out of Black History Month,” she said.

The issue was brought to district officials’ attention by the Los Angeles chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after the organization received a complaint early Monday, chapter President Leon Jenkins said.

Jenkins said he felt the teachers acted in concert to mock black heroes and children’s innocence.

“These are not the people we want our young people to emulate or believe these people represent the best of the African-American community,” Jenkins said. “It’s hard for the NAACP to believe this was a mistake.”

Simpson, a former American football star, is serving a nine-year prison sentence for robbery and kidnapping. He was famously acquitted in 1995 of murdering his ex-wife and her friend.

RuPaul is a drag queen performer. Rodman, a former basketball star, has gained notoriety for bad boy behavior on and off the basketball court.

Some parents at the school on Wednesday said the issue was overblown.

Sharon Tinson, who has two daughters at the school and attended Friday’s celebration, said she had been surprised to see Simpson displayed in the parade. But she noted that Simpson, like Rodman, was a great athlete before falling from grace. RuPaul simply has an alternative lifestyle, she added.

She noted the event also included a tribute to pop singer Michael Jackson, who has also had a checkered career.

“I kind of laughed at it,” Tinson said. “I wasn’t offended.”

Gabriel Blackson, whose son attends the school, said he also took a larger view of the ruckus.

“These guys were heroes before. People make mistakes,” he said. “I think they show kids they can be somebody, to push them to be somebody.”

Jenkins said he is calling for the teachers to be fired.

34.5% Of Young Black Men Are Unemployed 12/7/09

teachersofcolor — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 14:49:21 +0000

The Washington Post printed an article on the high unemployment statistics for black men. In case you missed, read the article below.By V. Dion Haynes
Washington Post Staff Writer

These days, 24-year-old Delonta Spriggs spends much of his time cooped up in his mother’s one-bedroom apartment in Southwest Washington, the TV blaring soap operas hour after hour, trying to stay out of the streets and out of trouble, held captive by the economy. As a young black man, Spriggs belongs to a group that has been hit much harder than any other by unemployment.

Joblessness for 16-to-24-year-old black men has reached Great Depression proportions — 34.5 percent in October, more than three times the rate for the general U.S. population. And last Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that unemployment in the District, home to many young black men, rose to 11.9 percent from 11.4 percent, even as it stayed relatively stable in Virginia and Maryland.

His work history, Spriggs says, has consisted of dead-end jobs. About a year ago, he lost his job moving office furniture, and he hasn’t been able to find steady work since. This summer he completed a construction apprenticeship program, he says, seeking a career so he could avoid repeating the mistake of selling drugs to support his 3-year-old daughter. So far the most the training program has yielded was a temporary flagger job that lasted a few days.

“I think we’re labeled for not wanting to do nothing — knuckleheads or hardheads,” said Spriggs, whose first name is pronounced Dee-lon-tay. “But all of us ain’t bad.”

Construction, manufacturing and retail experienced the most severe job losses in this down economy, losses that are disproportionately affecting men and young people who populated those sectors. That is especially playing out in the District, where unemployment has risen despite the abundance of jobs in the federal government.

Traditionally the last hired and first fired, workers in Spriggs’s age group have taken the brunt of the difficult economy, with cost-conscious employers wiping out the very apprenticeship, internship and on-the-job-training programs that for generations gave young people a leg up in the work world or a second chance when they made mistakes. Moreover, this generation is being elbowed out of entry-level positions by older, more experienced job seekers on the unemployment rolls who willingly trade down just to put food on the table.

The jobless rate for young black men and women is 30.5 percent. For young blacks — who experts say are more likely to grow up in impoverished racially isolated neighborhoods, attend subpar public schools and experience discrimination — race statistically appears to be a bigger factor in their unemployment than age, income or even education. Lower-income white teens were more likely to find work than upper-income black teens, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University, and even blacks who graduate from college suffer from joblessness at twice the rate of their white peers.

Young black women have an unemployment rate of 26.5 percent, while the rate for all 16-to-24-year-old women is 15.4 percent.

Victoria Kirby, 22, has been among that number. In the summer of 2008, a D.C. publishing company where Kirby was interning offered her a job that would start upon her graduation in May 2009 from Howard University. But the company withdrew the offer in the fall of 2008 when the economy collapsed.

Kirby said she applied for administrative jobs on Capitol Hill but was told she was overqualified. She sought a teaching position in the D.C. public schools through the Teach for America program but said she was rejected because of a flood of four times the usual number of applicants.

Finally, she went back to school, enrolling in a master’s of public policy program at Howard. “I decided to stay in school two more years and wait out the recession,” Kirby said.

On a tightrope

The Obama administration is on a tightrope, balancing the desire to spend billions more dollars to create jobs without adding to the $1.4 trillion national deficit. Yet some policy experts say more attention needs to be paid to the intractable problems of underemployed workers — those who like Spriggs may lack a high school diploma, a steady work history, job-readiness skills or a squeaky-clean background.

“Increased involvement in the underground economy, criminal activity, increased poverty, homelessness and teen pregnancy are the things I worry about if we continue to see more years of high unemployment,” said Algernon Austin, a sociologist and director of the race, ethnicity and economy program at the Economic Policy Institute, which studies issues involving low- and middle-income wage earners.

Earlier this month, District officials said they will use $3.9 million in federal stimulus funds to provide 19 weeks of on-the-job training to 500 18-to-24-year-olds. But even those who receive training often don’t get jobs.

“I thought after I finished the [training] program, I’d be working. I only had three jobs with the union and only one of them was longer than a week,” Spriggs, a tall slender man wearing a black Nationals cap, said one afternoon while sitting at the table in the living room/dining room in his mother’s apartment. “It has you wanting to go out and find other ways to make money. . . . [Lack of jobs is why] people go out hustling and doing what they can to get by.”

“Give me a chance to show that I can work. Just give me a chance,” added Spriggs, who is on probation for drug possession. “I don’t want to think negative. I know the economy is slow. You got to crawl before you walk. I got to be patient. My biggest problem [which prompted the effort to sell drugs] is not being patient.”

The economy’s seismic shift has been an equal-opportunity offender, hurting various racial and ethnic groups, economic classes, ages, and white- and blue-collar job categories. Nevertheless, 16-to-24-year-olds face heavier losses, with a 19.1 percent unemployment rate, about nine points higher than the national average for the general population.

Their rate of employment in October was 44.9 percent, the lowest level in 61 years of record keeping, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment for men in their 20s and early 30s is at its lowest level since the Great Depression, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies.

Troubling consequences

Unemployment among young people is particularly troubling, economists say, because the consequences can be long-lasting. This might be the first generation that does not keep up with its parents’ standard of living. Jobless teens are more likely to be jobless twenty-somethings. Once forced onto the sidelines, they likely will not catch up financially for many years. That is the case even for young people of all ethnic groups who graduate from college.

Lisa B. Kahn, an economics professor at Yale University who studied graduates during recessions in the 1980s, determined that the young workers hired during a down economy generally start off with lower wages than they otherwise would have and don’t recover for at least a decade.

“In your first job, you’re accumulating skills on how to do the job, learning by doing and getting training. If you graduate in a recession, you’re in a [lesser] job, wasting your time,” she said. “Once you switch into the job you should be in, you don’t have the skills for that job.”

Some studies examining how employers review black and white job applicants suggest that discrimination may be at play.

“Black men were less likely to receive a call back or job offer than equally qualified white men,” said Devah Pager, a sociology professor at Princeton University, referring to her studies a few years ago of white and black male job applicants in their 20s in Milwaukee and New York. “Black men with a clean record fare no better than white men just released from prison.”

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Asian Students Suspend Boycott at Philly School 12/17/09

teachersofcolor — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:55:46 +0000

By The Associated Press
Philadelphia

Dozens of Asian students plan to head back to class at a Philadelphia high school after boycotting for eight days in response to a series of racial attacks.

The students met with Superintendent Arlene Ackerman and other school officials for more than two hours Tuesday.

Organizers say they made a strong statement with their boycott.

Dozens of students had been boycotting since Dec. 4, saying the school has not done enough to prevent violence.

School officials announced Friday that they will add four security officers and more than 60 security cameras after the series of attacks on about 30 Asian students earlier this month.

School officials say 10 students have been suspended over the attacks.

A national Asian American advocacy group is planning to file a federal civil rights complaint.

Colo. lawmaker backs off Indian tuition plan 01/26/10

teachersofcolor — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 16:07:50 +0000

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado lawmaker who suggested changing a waiver for American Indian students at Fort Lewis College said Friday she will kill the bill on Monday, but she insisted her measure would not have hurt Native American students.

Democratic Rep. Karen Middleton of Aurora sponsored a bill to have cut $1.8 million from the college’s budget, based on reducing reimbursement for out-of-state tuition for Native American students.

Under her bill, students would still have been able to attend free, but college officials argued they would have to cut staff and courses, providing less of an education.

Middleton said all colleges and universities are being affected by budget cuts as the state tries to cope with a projected $1 billion shortfall next year, but she said the cuts to Fort Lewis College were unique and required a policy change.

“This was never about Native American students,” she said.

The state tuition waiver began in 1911 as a condition for accepting thousands of acres of land in Hesperus in southwest Colorado. In exchange for the land, the federal government and state lawmakers agreed to provide a free education for all Native American students.

This year, 608 out-of-state American Indian students and 130 in-state American Indian students accepted the offer.

Rico Munn, director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, rejected suggestions that the bill would violate the agreement.

“It never had anything to do with Native American students,” Munn said.

Ernest House Jr., a member of the Colorado Commission on Indian Affairs, said he also believes the cuts would not have hurt Native American students. He also said it would not violate the agreement between Native Americans and the state government.

Debate grows over NM Hispanic Education Act 12/11/09

teachersofcolor — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:04:36 +0000

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) —

Some legislators are asking whether a Hispanic Education Act proposed by Gov. Bill Richardson this week is even necessary.

Public Education Secretary Veronica Garcia says the proposed act is needed to close an achievement gap for Hispanics. They make up 56 percent of New Mexican students.

Should the proposal become law, the Public Education Department says it would be the first of its kind in the nation.

Republican Sen. Vernon Asbill of Carlsbad says the department already has authority to focus on Hispanic students. He says a separate act is unnecessary.

Republican Rep. Dennis Roch of Tucumcari says much of what is proposed is already being done by schools.

Garcia says she hopes to have a proposal ready for the Legislature by January.

Decade After Decatur, Ill. Racial Discipline Gap Widens 12/2/09

teachersofcolor — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:06:54 +0000

By The Associated Press
Springfield, Ill.

In the decade since mass protests over the punishment of six black students in Decatur, the state’s racial gap in discipline has split wide open. It’s such a gaping hole that now more than half of all Illinois children suspended from public schools are black, even though they represent less than one-fifth of the enrollment, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Expulsions also have disproportionately hit blacks, worrying education experts and state lawmakers about the effect of so many minority students missing classroom time.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson fixed the nation’s attention on the disparity when he led protests in November 1999 over two-year expulsions of six Eisenhower High School students for brawling in the bleachers at a football game. Joined by thousands of people who marched the streets of Decatur, the civil rights leader questioned whether discipline policies were fair to all students.

By the Numbers

Here is a summary of findings after an Associated Press analysis of state data for public school suspensions and expulsions the last 10 years:

SUSPENSIONS

From 1999-00 to 2007-08:Overall suspensions have increased 47 percent• White suspensions have declined (5.4) percent• Black suspensions have increased 74.5 percent• Hispanic suspensions have increased 114.7 percent

In 1999-00:• Whites made up 44 percent of the suspensions• Blacks made up 43.2 percent• Hispanics made up 11.7 percent

In 2007-08:• Whites made up 28.3 percent of the suspensions• Blacks made up 51.3 percent• Hispanics made up 17.1 percent

Of all suspensions from 1999-00 to 2007-08:• Whites made up 34.4 percent• Blacks made up 49.4 percent• Hispanics made up 14.5 percent

EXPULSIONS

From 1999-00 to 2007-08:Overall expulsions increased 43.7 percent• White expulsions increased 16.2 percent• Black expulsions increased 56.1 percent• Hispanic expulsions increased 81.2 percent

In 1999-00:• Whites made up 41.2 percent of the expulsions• Blacks made up 44.6 percent• Hispanics made up 12.9 percent

In 2007-08:• Whites made up 33.3 percent of the expulsions• Blacks made up 48.4 percent• Hispanics made up 16.3 percent

Of all expulsions from 1999-00 to 2007-08:• Whites made up 37.7 percent• Blacks made up 45.7 percent• Hispanics made up 14.9 percent

Note: The average school population from 1999-00 to 2007-08 was 57.0 percent white, 20.1 percent black and 17.1 percent Hispanic. Not all racial groups are represented in the above figures.Source: Illinois State Board of Education

The AP analysis of state discipline records shows the racial divide has only worsened since then, from Chicago’s troubled schools to rural areas with few minority students:

• Suspensions of black students have escalated by 75 percent since 1999, while those of white students have dropped more than 5 percent.

• When it comes to the more serious punishment of expulsion, white students are kicked out 16 percent more often than a decade ago, but black students are expelled 56 percent more often.

• Whites make up nearly three-fifths of public school enrollment, yet in the most recent data, they account for one-third or fewer of both suspensions and expulsions.

The proportion of blacks facing discipline has soared in all parts of the state even though the percentage of Illinois’ black enrollment has steadily fallen in the past decade.

Hispanic suspensions are up too, but so is Illinois’ Hispanic population. Latino students now slightly outnumber blacks with 20 percent of school enrollment, but account for just over 17 percent of all suspensions in the latest data, compared to 51.3 percent for blacks.

Experts see many factors at work: cultural differences between students and teachers, poverty, academic achievement, problems with classroom management and teacher training. They also see the possibility of racial bias in the way students are treated.

“There’s a lot more going on than poverty and the characteristics of kids,” said Russell Skiba, an Indiana University researcher who studies school discipline.

State Rep. Marlow Colvin, D-Chicago, predicting a legislative response next spring, said the numbers show not “an ounce of objectivity in terms of how these policies are applied to children of color. The facts are overwhelming in terms of who’s being targeted.”

It matters little where in the state a child answers the bell. Whether it’s a poor urban district, a rich suburban district, or a rural area, blacks are getting written up in proportions far exceeding their white classmates.

In the largely black and Latino Chicago Public Schools, for example, suspensions for those groups jumped more than 150 percent in a decade; white suspensions were up 44 percent.

In the suburban counties surrounding Chicago, white suspensions fell while black ousters soared 94 percent. White suspensions fell in downstate schools too, while black suspensions increased 37 percent.

Putting students out of school has an obvious downside — lost education. Even if administrators offer schooling at “alternative” schools for pupils with problems, there are disruptions.

Missed class time can lead to dropouts, joblessness and prison, Jordan said.

Skiba said a predominantly white teaching corps — 85 percent in Illinois, compared to 9 percent black — may be culturally mismatched with minority students. White teachers without proper training, he said, can misinterpret student actions that aren’t meant to be disruptive or threatening.

He has found little difference in the numbers of whites and blacks suspended for fighting, but punishment for “noncompliance” and “defiance” overwhelmingly is doled out to blacks, a more subjective transgression that might mean there’s a cultural misunderstanding between a teacher and a student.

Julie Woestehoff, director of the Chicago advocacy group Parents United for Responsible Education, said black boys are particularly likely to be labeled troublemakers. There’s a “very serious problem with the school system and its ability to serve the needs of that population,” she said.

The Illinois data AP analyzed do not include the reason behind the punishment or who’s meting it out.

And one recent study shows the complexity of the issue. University of Georgia professor Jeffrey Jordan and a colleague found that black teachers in a school district near Atlanta recommended discipline for black kids in larger proportions than white teachers.

There are also too many failing students who tend to get in trouble more, said Rep. Esther Golar, a Chicago Democrat and chairwoman of the House Black Caucus.

“They don’t fit in. They’re not at the level they should be. There’s a shame level,” Golar said. “So what do they do best? Fight and get into all sorts of things.”

Still, Golar said, too few Chicago schools follow guidelines ensuring that all teachers respond the same way to problems. A spokeswoman for the Chicago Public Schools did not return a phone message or e-mail seeking comment.

Teachers, particularly new ones, want more training, Illinois Education Association spokesman Charles McBarron said. The IEA wants a mentoring program pairing veterans with rookies expanded throughout the state.

Colvin said members of the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus in recent weeks have begun discussing the racial gap and what lawmakers can do. The Illinois State Board of Education is scheduled to discuss school violence in December, a spokesman said.

State officials now face a situation that experts describe as something of a self-fulfilling prophecy: Minority students come to school expecting to be disciplined. When they are, it reinforces their attitude, which prompts teachers — both black and white — to label them troublemakers.

Georgia’s Jordan wonders whether the system is sending a message to some kids that they’re expendable.

“So from their point of view, why bother?” he asked.

Duncan: Preschool Key to Solving Education Crisis 11/3/09

teachersofcolor — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:52:43 +0000

By The Associated Press

Education Secretary Arne Duncan says the key to solving the education crisis in the United States is offering quality early childhood programs to every child.

Duncan spoke to thousands of educators from across the country gathered in Atlanta on Monday for the National Black Child Development Institute. He said schools have to become like community centers that are open 14 hours a day and offer extra music, sports and academic programs.

Duncan said the U.S. has a historic chance to transform education and get out of the “catch up business” with other countries like China.

He talked about the after-school program his mother founded in 1961 to help poor black students on Chicago’s southside as an example of what every neighborhood needs to really make a difference.

Education Department Report: States set low bar for student achievement 11/3/09

teachersofcolor — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 00:24:05 +0000

WASHINGTON (AP) — Many states set achievement standards so low that they can say their students are reading and doing math at their grade level when they haven’t truly mastered the subjects, the Education Department asserted Thursday.

The Obama administration said the report bolsters its effort to persuade all states to adopt the same set of tougher standards for what students should know.

“States are setting the bar too low,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said in a statement. “We’re lying to our children when we tell them they’re proficient, but they’re not achieving at a level that will prepare them for success once they graduate.”

The federal government can’t impose a set of standards, because education is largely up to states.

But Duncan noted he is offering millions of dollars in grants to encourage states to accept a set of standards being developed by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. The grants come from the federal stimulus law, which set aside $5 billion to push Obama’s vision of educational reform.

While the standards are not yet final, every state but Texas and Alaska already has committed to work toward adopting them.

Kids do far better on state tests than they do on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is much more challenging.

Duncan and the House Education and Labor Committee chairman, Rep. George Miller, argued that states should be raising their standards to help students compete with their peers in other countries. But according to the report, more states lowered standards than raised them from 2005 to 2007.

“The quality of a child’s education should not be determined by their zip code,” Miller, D-Calif., said in a statement. “It is unacceptable that many states have chosen to lower the bar rather than strive for excellence.”

However, the head of the department’s Institute of Education Sciences cautioned against making broad judgments on the lower standards.

“I’d want to look into it more carefully,” IES director John Easton said. Some states were putting new tests in place and might have changed standards to adhere more closely to the tests, he said.

Yet in his home state of Illinois, which lowered its eighth-grade math standard, Easton said officials were trying to make it easier to meet the goals of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law that prods schools to boost test scores to meet annual improvement goals.

Easton said a bigger concern is the wide disparity in standards among the states. A student who is proficient in one state might not be proficient in another, the report said.

“It’s a very big puzzle to me, how there can be such a difference,” Easton said.

The report by the department’s statistics arm compared state achievement levels to achievement levels on NAEP. It found that many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level when they would rate below basic or lacking even partial mastery of reading and math under the NAEP standards.

Among the findings:

— Thirty-one states deemed fourth-graders proficient in reading when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Mississippi’s standards were lowest, and Massachusetts’ were highest.

— Seventeen states deemed eighth-graders proficient at reading when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Tennessee’s standards were lowest, and South Carolina’s were highest.

— Ten states deemed fourth- and eighth-graders proficient at math when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Tennessee’s standards were lowest; Massachusetts had the highest fourth-grade math standards, and South Carolina had the highest eighth-grade standards.

In those states, the standards “are fairly low standards, relatively speaking, in terms of what students are able to do,” said Peggy Carr, associate commissioner of the department’s National Center for Education Statistics, part of the IES.

EDUCATION SECRETARY DUNCAN ENDORSES EFFORTS TO IMPROVE STEM EDUCATION 11/24/09

teachersofcolor — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:06:56 +0000

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today praised corporate and philanthropic leaders for stepping up to support improvements in science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

“The president and I believe that ensuring our nation’s children are excelling in the STEM fields is essential for our nation’s prosperity, security, health and quality of life,” Secretary Duncan said. “All of us need to be engaged in task of improving STEM education. Business leaders and major donors are leading the way, and leaders from other sectors need to join them.”

Duncan attended at an event at the White House where the president addressed the importance of STEM education to a group that included other Cabinet members, business executives, foundation leaders and students from Washington, D.C. schools.

At the event, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Carnegie Corp. of New York, and several corporate leaders announced they will work together to gather support for STEM education and recruit others to join them. They also will raise awareness of the STEM education priority in the department’s $4 billion competition for states to develop comprehensive reform plans under the Race to the Top Fund.

Board members of the new group include Craig Barrett, the former chairman of Intel; Ursula Burns, the chief executive officer of Xerox; Glenn Britt, chairman and CEO of Time Warner Cable; and Antonio Perez of Kodak.

Time Warner Cable committed $100 million in media time and promises to produce shows that promote STEM issues. Media efforts will be launched by other partners, including Discovery Communications and Sesame Street. The MacArthur Foundation and other donors are supporting National Lab Day — an effort to promote and celebrate learning in science labs and other learning environments, and to build communities of support for STEM teachers across the country through the Web site nationallabday.org. National Lab Day will include a year-long effort to expand hands-on learning methods throughout the country

Experts Call for More Black Male Teachers 11/3/09

teachersofcolor — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:50:08 +0000

By The Associated Press

Lenny Macklin made it to 10th grade before having a teacher who looked like him — an African-American male. Gregory Georges graduated from high school without ever being taught by a black man.

Only about 2 percent of teachers nationwide are African-American men. But experts say that needs to change if educators expect to reduce minority achievement gaps and dropout rates.

Macklin, now an 18-year-old college student, said he understands the circle that keeps many of his peers out of the classroom professionally.

“A lot of males, they don’t like being in school because they can’t relate to their teacher,” said Macklin, of Pittsburgh. “So why would you want to work there?”

American teachers are overwhelmingly white (87 percent) and female (77 percent), despite minority student populations of about 44 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

It’s a job men generally avoid because of gender stereotypes, fear of abuse accusations and low pay, said Bryan Nelson, founder of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit organization MenTeach. The average U.S. teacher salary was about $51,000 in 2006-07.

Yet increasing the number of minority teachers is important because of “the role model factor,” said Greg Johnson, a policy analyst for the National Education Association. “These students need to see successful adults of color in front of them,” Johnson said.

Macklin and Georges, both sophomores at historically black Cheyney University near Philadelphia, are trying to fulfill that need through the Call Me MISTER teaching program. MISTER is both an acronym — Mentors Instructing Students Toward Effective Role Models — and a reference to the 1967 film “In the Heat of the Night,” in which Sidney Poitier’s character demands respect with the line, “They call me MISTER Tibbs!

Designed to put more minority men at the head of the classroom, the initiative offers scholarships in exchange for teaching in public schools.

“If we can recruit linebackers, point guards and track stars, we can recruit third-grade teachers,” said Roy Jones, the program’s national executive director. “It is a matter of priority.”

Jones directs the program from Clemson University in South Carolina, where it began in 2000 after researchers found that fewer than 1 percent of the state’s elementary school teachers were black men; the overall K-12 student population at the time was 42 percent black.

Nearly six years after the first MISTER cohort graduated in 2004, there has been some progress, though Jones concedes not nearly enough.

About 50 program graduates are teaching in South Carolina schools, representing a 25 percent increase in the number of black male instructors statewide, Jones said. Another 250 future teachers are in the MISTER pipeline, scattered across 28 colleges in seven states.

To improve the national percentage of black male teachers to even 3 percent, another 45,000 would need to enroll.

One hurdle may be that the program is found mostly at historically black colleges and universities, which have lower graduation rates than colleges overall, according to an Associated Press analysis. Men at those schools have a paltry 29 percent graduation rate within six years, in part due to lack of money and poor academic preparation, the AP found.

Yet some who have finished the MISTER program, like Keith Wilkes, find teaching rewarding.

Wilkes, who works in a predominantly white school in Westminster, S.C., said he believes children of all races need male role models. Wilkes, 50, sees himself as an African-American giving back to the community where he grew up — an image he hopes will dispel negative stereotypes of black men for students and parents alike.

“It’s a noble cause,” Wilkes said. “This is not just something you do as a job. This is a lifestyle. You have to believe in what you’re doing.”

Hayward Jean, 27, has found teaching equally inspiring, though not without its challenges. Now in a low-income district in Orangeburg, S.C., Jean said he was caught off guard by the initially chilly reception from boys in his class.

Many are being raised by single mothers and are wary of black men abruptly entering and leaving their lives, Jean said.

“Actually, a lot of them were a little bit bitter toward me,” Jean said. “We’ve been breaking those walls down, and that’s been helping them tremendously.”

At Cheyney, a public university serving 1,400 students, the Call Me MISTER initiative started last year with a $1 million state grant. Students receive full tuition, room and board, and a stipend; for every year they receive the scholarship, they are required to teach one year in Pennsylvania public schools.

About a dozen undergraduates are expected to get their bachelor’s degrees in 2011; six graduate MISTER students are expected to receive master’s degrees this spring.

Gregory Georges, 20, said some of his peers are attracted to higher-paying careers with fancier wardrobes. But he notes that all of his teaching salary will be going into his pocket because he’ll have no loans to pay back. And he’s not so much into clothes anyway.

“I’d rather be in a classroom rolling my sleeves up and talking to the kids,” Georges said. “Get some chalk on my fingers.”