A Lincoln Elementary classroom in March 2021. (Photo by Quinn Glabicki/PublicSource)
Eligible Pittsburgh Public Schools students who commit to teaching in the city for five years could get a full-tuition college scholarship.
by Oliver Morrison, PublicSource
Pittsburgh Public Schools and community partners are establishing another method of improving the low ratio of teachers of color in the majority-Black school district.
At Wednesday’s meeting, the district’s board approved a new program that will provide around 35 full-tuition college scholarships to high school graduates who commit to teaching in the city for five years after earning their degrees.
After a report in 2018 about how few teachers of color there were in Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh Public Schools took note, said Alexis Howard, the district’s director of talent management.
Pennsylvania had the sixth worst ratio of teachers of color to students of color. And the research by that point was clear: All students do better when there are teachers of color but especially Black and Brown children. The list of measurable improvements include better attendance, fewer discipline issues and higher graduation rates.
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Schools [PPS] employs a higher rate of more diverse teachers than the state as a whole but it’s still below the national average. Fewer than one in five PPS teachers are Black or brown while two out of every three students are.
The problem, Howard said, is it’s hard to draw qualified Black candidates to the city. The district went to a job fair in Atlanta, for example, and only received three applications. Many people who grow up in a place like Washington, D.C., or Philadelphia don’t see many people who look like them in Pittsburgh. “Listen, if you are a person of color, you are not moving to this city,” she said. “It’s bigger than the school district, it’s about the city at large.”
But one advantage Pittsburgh does have, Howard said, is that many people who grow up here will stay here. Some families live in the same house for multiple generations. Howard herself moved back to Pittsburgh after going to college in South Carolina to be close to family.
The scholarship program is the new addition to a suite of efforts to diversify the city’s teachers.
In 2019, the district started a program to help its paraprofessionals, who are majority Black, to become certified teachers. Point Park University and Carlow University offer remote and hybrid options, so the aides could keep working while getting their degrees.
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