MyBlack^® Career

Minority teachers' importance emphasized by U.S. education secretary

Source: NOLA.com

Quinton Jones, a Houston teacher, told U.S. Education Department Secretary Arne Duncan that he had entered college "strongly against" teaching as a profession. "That's a common theme," Duncan said, as he moderated a Friday roundtable of young African-American and Latino teachers at the Children's Defense Fund offices in New Orleans with Marian Wright Edelman, the iconic advocate who began the organization in 1973. All of the teachers at Friday's roundtable were inspired by the Children's Defense Fund's Freedom Schools: after-school and summer programs in 75 cities that are rooted in the civil-rights movement and focused on holistic, socially aware education. Duncan said that black teachers currently make up about 8 percent of the nation's total. To increase that, he wanted each teacher to tell him how they felt about the profession. "We always had teachers in the African-American community," said Franceria Moore, a student at Southern University in Baton Rouge. "And it was a very prestigious position." But today, as a black woman living in a country with a black president, she has many other options. "The sky's the limit," she said. "So why would I limit myself to being just a teacher?"

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