Urban school systems are increasingly concerned about their limited ability to recruit and retain Black teachers as the number of minority students continues to increase. The picture is not promising. While the kindergarten to grade twelve minority population is increasing, a limited pool of potential minority teachers has a much wider choice of options outside of teaching. At the same time, the requirements for entrance into teaching are increasing, which provides further disincentives to participation. In addition, urban schools most in need of minority teachers are often least able to attract teaching talent for both budgetary and social reasons. This study focuses on how a specific urban school system deals with the problem of recruiting and retaining African American teachers. Current initiatives in recruitment and retention are also examined. A Likert rating scale was used to measure African American teachers' perceptions of how they were recruited and why they have remained in Education. Ninety-two teachers participated in the survey which also included four open-ended questions. Four Central Office school administrators were also interviewed. Data analysis included descriptive and inferential statistics--frequency distribution, measures of central tendency and dispersion, Pearson correlation, cross-tabulation, and Chi-Square. The interviews and open-ended questions of the questionnaire were grouped according to commonalities as well as frequency. The analysis of the data showed that the more academic preparation that the teacher had, the less the recruiter had affected their decision to teach. Training for career advancement and professional development were also felt to be important factors in retention. Most of the respondents did not plan to leave teaching within the next five years. The interviews with the Central Office administrators indicated that they were satisfied with recruitment efforts but unsure of how to plan effectively for retention. The study underscored the need for school systems to have a clear and comprehensive policy for the recruitment and the retention of Black teachers. The researcher suggests components and related action plans that might be included in such a policy.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UMASS/oai:scholarworks.umass.edu:dissertations-9026 |
| Date | 01 January 1995 |
| Creators | Budd-Jackson, Celeste Theresa |
| Publisher | ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst |
| Source Sets | University of Massachusetts, Amherst |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Source | Doctoral Dissertations Available from Proquest |
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