Schools
Black Educators Are Still Rare — And That Needs To Change
"None of my teachers until my third grade looked like me, walked like me, or talked like me," said Rodger Horton.
February 18, 2020
"None of my teachers until my third grade looked like me, walked like me, or talked like me," said Rodger Horton, a kindergarten teacher at Chase Elementary.
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He grew up with dreams of becoming a police officer, but that changed in college at Central State University in Xenia. He credited mentors in his education for the turning point.
That, and opportunity.
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"[Recruiters] all wanted to speak with me," he said. "Because there were so few African Americans in the early 2000s, particularly males, that were looking to go into education, particularly elementary education, everyone wanted to sit down with me."
It's nothing new.
Before Peter H. Clark became the first teacher in the new Cincinnati Independent Colored School District in the mid-1800s, black children didn't have many educators who looked like them.
And they still don't.
In Ohio, non-white teachers made up 5.64 percent of the workforce in the 2018-19 school year. Students of color, meanwhile, represented 31 percent of pupils.
Kentucky's demographics were similar. Just 4.8 percent of the Commonwealth's teachers were non-white, while 24.2 percent of students were something other than white.
New research has shown that changing that gap brought dropout rates and disciplinary problems down while raising test scores and positive views of education.
Which brings us back to Horton.
He has taught at Chase in Northside for 16 years -- 10 of those years he's taught kindergarten.
On a recent Tuesday, Horton wrangled more than one dozen students with the help of a paraprofessional aide. He asked them what 'data' is and how it's used. Students counted rockets, cars and buses. One by one, they graphed those numbers on a smartboard at the front of the room.
The other adults in the room, like this reporter, wondered when kindergarten got so advanced.
It was a big change for Horton, too.
"I had to learn to wipe noses and I had to learn to tie shoes," he said. "But ultimately, I had to learn how to hug and had to learn how to love."
This press release was produced by Cincinnati Public Schools. The views expressed here are the author’s own.
