"Taking Care of Your Own": Parochialism, Pride of Place, and the Drive to Diversify Teaching

Abstract

As the student population in the U.S. becomes increasingly diverse, many district and school hiring personnel -especially those in districts with large numbers of students of color -have taken proactive approaches to hiring teachers of color (TOC). The drive to diversify the teaching force is supported by a broad range of promising academic and non-academic outcomes for students of color. And yet, many districts face struggle with the recruitment and retention of TOCs. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 65 participants in a small urban district and applying the analytic lens of bonding social capital (Putnam, 2000), we examine entrenched patterns of parochialism to better understand one potential explanation for the incremental pace of change.

Rethinking the educational ecology in the wake of COVID: Intellectual solidarity, teacher prestige, and educational humanization

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“…Jane Arnold Lincove and colleagues (2018) found that, in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Black teachers who were locally trained were more likely to be dismissed and replaced by less-experienced and less-educated white teachers. Similarly, James Noonan and Travis Bristol (2020) found that one urban district in the northeastern U.S. was more likely to hire white teachers from the area than to hire teachers of color who also called the district home.…”