Including Racial Literacy in Teacher Assessment as a Life Raft

• In Event: Transforming Teacher Education: Policy Life Rafts as Consequential Intervention During a Time of Global Chaos

Abstract

In all the efforts to boost students’ academic performance and success, limited attention has been paid to a key barrier to progress—that teacher and student demographics do not match. Nationwide the student population is becoming more racially, socioeconomically and linguistically diverse, but the majority of teachers still tend to be white, monolinguistic and middle class (NCES, 2021; Shanker Institute, 2015). As research shows that students perform better, both academically and socially, when they have a teacher that is racially similar (Dee, 2005), the lack of a diverse workforce is hindering the growth and potential of a vast number of students.

However, while some school districts have strived to diversify their teacher workforce, there is a severe teacher shortage in the US. Put simply, it would take decades to recruit and train the teachers of color necessary to reflect the student body. Instead, to make more immediate progress, it is crucial to increase the racial literacy of existing teachers. Only then will they have the knowledge and resources they need to best engage with a rapidly diversifying student population.

The gap we have discovered is that teachers still do not fully understand what race and racism is, and teachers cannot fully engage with students of different cultural backgrounds if they do not understand race, racism, and anti-racism. Racial literacy, which is the knowledge, skills, and awareness needed to fully talk about race, racism and anti-racism must come first if teachers are to disrupt racism when it happens and build up young people to have a healthy racial self-identity (King, Vickery, & Caffrey, 2018; Sealey-Ruiz, 2021; Stevenson, 2018).

Giving teachers racial literacy skills to build their own understanding of race and racism allows them to see themselves as a producer of education, and not a consumer of education (Sealey-Ruiz, 2021). Educators must be able to fully see the role they play in disrupting harm or perpetuating it. To promote progress, the expectations for and benefits of racial literacy must be clearly communicated to teachers, and national and state assessment tools that evaluate teachers’ performance in the classroom is an approach to do so.

Currently, there is language that discusses “diverse,” “equitable” and “inclusive,” but we have seen that language in educator preparation with no change in student outcomes for racially diverse students. It fails to address race and its role in the classroom, leaving room for teachers to still perpetuate stereotypes, or cause harm to students by not addressing race specifically (Author, 2017). The rubric should be revised to include the development and integration of racial literacy, encouraging its understanding and adoption by all teachers. I propose criteria on racial literacy in the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP) and state teacher evaluation systems.

Author

• Tehia Starker Glass, University of North Carolina - Charlotte
  Presenting Author