Today's Houston Chronicle tries to imply that the Katy Independent School District is somehow remiss in the demographic makeup of its workforce when compared with the changing ethnic mix of its students.
First there's the headline: "Katy schools lagging in diversifying staff - District admits there's a problem but says it must be competitive for top workers."
Then the article text begins:
Despite steps the Katy Independent School District is taking to boost minority hiring, employees have not kept pace with the racial diversity represented in the student population, reports show.
Hmm. Sounds serious. Let's move on to paragraphs two and three.
A.J. Durrani, an unsuccessful candidate in the May school board race, put the spotlight on the issue at the June 27 school board meeting.In criticizing the district, he said the demographic makeup of administrators failed to reflect the percentage of minority students in the school system.
Only after the KISD superintendent has "defended" the district's hiring practices do we find the facts of the situation.
Meanwhile, Katy school officials say they are taking initiatives to increase the pool of minority applicants. They include:• Advertising in periodicals geared toward minorities.
• Conducting summer internship programs targeting minority college students.
• Soliciting assistance from minority educators in locating quality teachers.
• Overseeing a minority recruitment committee.In 2000-01, minorities made up 28 percent of the student population and 18.1 percent of the district's work force. By 2004-05, minorities rose to 39.4 percent of students but held 22.9 percent of district jobs.
...
Lisa Moore, the district's elementary and secondary personnel coordinator, said numbers alone don't reveal the extent of the district's recruiting efforts.
To continuously increase the number of qualified minority applicants, district recruiters scout universities that include a large number of minority teacher candidates. However, Moore points out that statistics are showing that the number of African Americans choosing to pursue teaching as a career is shrinking.
Moore said the district has seen an increase in minority educators primarily because of its recruiting endeavors. In five years, the percentage of minority teachers increased from 7.9 percent to 10 percent.
"We want to have a teaching population that closely mirrors the diversity of the student population," she said.
District spokesman Steve Stanford said Katy faces the same predicament that districts across the nation confront in minority representation.
The latest National Education Association data validate Stanford's comment, said NEA spokesman Daniel Kaufman.
In 2001-02, 60 percent of public school students nationwide were white, 17 percent African American, 17 percent Hispanic, 4 percent Asian/Pacific Islander and 1 percent American Indian, while 90 percent of teachers were white, 6 percent African American, and fewer than 5 percent of other races.
A representative from a state education agency said the district's numbers are in tandem with state data, which also show a shortage of minority teachers.
Richard Kouri, a spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, said everyone who enters the teaching profession must have a college degree, and other factors that influence recruitment, such as salary, benefits, and working conditions, affect the number of minority applicants.
There is the strong impression that minorities believe they can do better elsewhere outside of teaching, Kouri said.
...
Lohelen Hambrick, director of the Minority Teacher Recruitment Project, which formed in Louisville, Ky., to address the critical shortage of minority educators in the state's largest county (Jefferson), said that research has proven the shortage is a pervasive phenomenon in other states as well.
So, the Chronicle article seems to say these things:
• KISD is entirely typical in the fact that its faculty and staff does not perfectly reflect the ethnic demographics of its student population
• KISD has a strong, ongoing effort to recruit minority faculty and staff, even during an extended period of explosive growth in student enrollment
• Minority parents are moving their students in droves to the KISD attendence zone, no doubt in large part because of the great schools
• A.J. Durrani, who apparently wants to blame everyone but himself for losing a school board election, can throw around accusations like a typical Democratic activist
We also know that Houston's "leading information source" will buy into his tale and publish a story that is factually accurate in its particulars but misleading in its implications.
Sigh. Life was better when we had two real newspapers in this area.
Posted by Alan at August 2, 2005 07:47 PM