AAMU Featured for Teacher Recruitment Best Practices Among HBCUs
Alabama A&M University Highlighted in UNCF Report on Black Teacher Pipeline
Alabama A&M University is highlighted in a United Negro College Fund (UNCF) special report identifying best practices for teacher recruitment at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
The report, “The Heart Work of Hard Work: Black Teacher Pipeline Best Practices at HBCU Teacher Education Programs,” provides best practices implemented to strengthen the Black teacher pipeline at AAMU and three other UNCF-member HBCUs, Huston-Tillotson University, Albany State University, and Fayetteville State University. AAMU and the other participating institutions are listed among the top 25 four-year HBCUs that produce Black teacher college graduates in various K-12 education fields.
“We do great things at A&M and I wanted to make sure that we were front and center to showcase our practices and our procedures and the way we train our educators,” says Dr. Samantha Strachan, Associate Professor of Science Education and Program Director of AAMU's Males for Alabama Education (M.AL.E.) Initiative. “We do such a good job and I think our story needed to be told.”
The report cites AAMU’s M.AL.E Initiative, which recruits, trains, and inducts minority male undergraduate and graduate students who express an interest in teaching students in Alabama's public P-12 schools. The M.AL.E. Initiative scholarship provides tuition assistance for undergraduate juniors and seniors, and for graduate students.
“HBCUs in general are instrumental in making sure that we place Black teachers in the classroom and A&M is extremely big on making sure that we contribute heavily to that pipeline,” says Strachan, who initiated AAMU’s involvement in the report. “We focus on recruitment, training, exposing students to various types of professional development, exposing students to different opportunities that will be useful to them as teachers. Our faculty also places them in schools with highly qualified teachers to learn from.”
UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute says HBCUs account for only three percent of colleges and universities, but produce 15 percent of Black graduates overall and half of all Black educators. Strachan says right now the percentage of all African American teachers in the country is about seven percent. For African American males, it’s less than two percent.
The report reveals Black teacher scarcity may be attributed to factors including desegregation, racism, and the incorporation of standardized tests that result in Black teachers losing their license. The 40-page report also found that teacher certification exams used to screen effectiveness eliminated nearly 100,000 minority teachers in 35 states between the late 1970s and early 1990s.
“The discoveries are significant for utilization as they validate numerous aspects that we had believed to be true but lacked concrete evidence,” says Dr. Peter Eley, AAMU interim dean of the College of Education, Humanities, and Behavioral Sciences. “For instance, they affirm the effectiveness of our faculty in establishing meaningful relationships to gain a deeper understanding of students and address their needs. Additionally, these findings offer data-driven policy recommendations that we can evaluate for potential integration into our existing program, contributing to the ongoing enhancement of teacher education here at AAMU.”
Eley says he was interviewed as a participant for this study during his tenure at Fayetteville State University (FSU).
“Now, in my current role at AAMU, I possess a distinctive perspective, having an intimate understanding of both programs,” says Eley. “I am enthusiastic about guiding AAMU's program to new heights by capitalizing on our strengths and incorporating successful practices from FSU. For instance, I aim to implement the early alert system, which proved effective at FSU in identifying students displaying signs of academic struggle and offering timely support to help them stabilize academically.”
The report concludes there are several steps that need to be taken to improve the rate of Black teachers in the classroom, including analysis of culturally responsive curriculum in teacher education programs, examination of the validity of teacher certification exams and potential barriers that could exclude specific student populations, increasing state and federal funding for HBCU teacher programs and increasing and establishing non-traditional pathways to becoming an educator.
“We receive calls weekly from school districts as far as Colorado and California requesting to interview our candidates for jobs and to become school partners with AAMU to recruit our graduates,” says Dr. Lydia D. Davenport, Associate Professor and Director of AAMU’s Center for Educator Preparation and Certification Services. “Our goals are to continue to recruit high-quality candidates from a broad range of backgrounds and diverse populations that align with our mission and provide support to address local, state, regional, and national needs for hard-to-staff schools and shortage fields.”