The Sto-Rox School Board on Thursday approved a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Teach Plus, a national non-profit group focused on improving educational equity through teacher leadership. Sto-Rox will be one of several local school districts taking part in the Pennsylvania Equity Leadership Institute (ELI), with the goal of hiring and retaining more teachers of color.
“Diverse teams bring multiple perspectives to problems of practice,” said Megan Marie Van Fossan, M.A., M.Ed., Superintendent of the Sto-Rox School District. “We owe our students and families the best education possible. That can’t happen unless we have the right players at the table.”
Starting in July, the Pennsylvania Equity Leadership Institute will bring together Sto-Rox and other school districts to collaboratively use school and district data to design and implement plans to better recruit, support, retain, and grow educators of color. The goal is to empower those districts to expand diversity in the teaching ranks and ultimately, improve student achievement.
Sto-Rox comes to this initiative at a time when different trends are colliding. A teacher shortage, a decline in instructional certifications, and accelerated teacher retirements caused by the Covid-19 pandemic have made staffing classrooms difficult.
On top of that, Sto-Rox faces a daunting gap in the racial makeup of its teachers and students. While 74 -percent of its students are students of color, just four percent of its teachers are teachers of color. It’s a statistic - and a reality - Sto-Rox wants to change.
“We know from research that students of color as well as white students do better when they have a racially diverse staff,” explained Van Fossan.“Sto-Rox has an imbalance and we have to do better.”
It’s not just an issue for Sto-Rox schools. In Pennsylvania, 36 percent of students are people of color, while just six percent of teachers are people of color.
Laura Boyce, Pennsylvania Executive Director of Teach Plus, said research studies performed over the last decade continually show the importance of having teachers who look like the students they are teaching.
“The evidence has really become overwhelming that teachers of color are beneficial for all kids, and particularly life-changing for students of color,” said Boyce.
As Boyce explains, conditions in schools often cause those teachers to leave schools at higher rates than white teachers. Teach Plus’ researchers have interviewed hundreds of teachers of color across the country to understand what makes them more likely to leave or stay at a school, and how schools can be made more attractive for them.
“Teach Plus will serve as a convener,” said Boyce, “and provide a framework as districts assemble teams of teacher leaders, school leaders, and district leaders.” Once Teach Plus gets them together, the district teams will meet monthly, with quarterly meetings of all the teams in the region. Over the course of the year, teams will collect internal data and develop strategies to improve recruitment and retention of teachers of color through changes to district policy and school culture.
Dr. Aaron Johnson, Teach Plus Pennsylvania Program Director, will be the primary facilitator of ELI. He was most recently at the Consortium for Public Education and has been a teacher and administrator in several local school districts as well as an adjunct professor at several local institutions of higher education.
The length of the grant-funded program is one year with the possibility of renewal for up to three years. Both Sto-Rox School District and Teach Plus hope to continue using the lessons learned to make all students more successful in the classroom, and in life.