Minority Teachers: Hard to Get and Hard to Keep is the title of an article from Miller-McCune. It highlights recent statistics that show that even though more members of ethnic minorities are becoming teachers, an increasing percentage of them are leaving the profession.

Why?

“The new research from Penn and UC Santa Cruz suggests that teachers of color are leaving because of poor working conditions in the high-poverty, high-minority urban schools where they are concentrated. They want more influence over school direction and more autonomy in the classroom to teach what works.”

Of course, the issue of school working conditions is the focus of the report released last week that fourteen teachers (including me) have worked on for the past year. I’ve written an article for Teacher Magazine about it that should appear next week.