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RevEd KC & Latinx Education Collaborative Open House and Ribbon Cutting

March 4, 2022 | It truly is a blessing to have celebrated the Latinx power in Kansas City! Revolucion Educativa and the Latinx Education Collaborative hosted an Open House and Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on March 4. We are thankful for your support in our journey. Our office space was created to be a community space; this is your home! This space is a reminder that we are here to support you and walk hand in hand to better the outcomes of our students in Kansas City and beyond. 


Revolución Educativa and the Latinx Education Collaborative are committed to amplifying the voices, showcasing the gifts, and elevating the spirits of Latinos in Kansas City. We look forward to working together to continue to build a home for Latinx Educators, inspire the hearts of Latinx students and build communities of belonging where the humanity of Latinx educators is appreciated and affirmed.

Visit our community space soon at 2203 Lexington Avenue, Kansas City, Missouri, 64124

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Report reveals need for racial diversity in KC’s teachers

KC Hispanic News, Published March 26, 2021 – A new report shows that Latinx/Latino/Hispanic students in Kansas City metro-area schools are unlikely to see themselves reflected in the teacher leading their classroom.

Read entire KC Hispanic News article >>

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Latinx Education Collaborative and Urban Education Research Center Release Report on Teacher Diversity in Kansas City Metro

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact:
Edgar José Palacios
(305) 906-0644
edgar@latinxedco.org

Kansas City, MO; February 5, 2021: A report released today from Latinx Education Collaboration (LEC), “Landscape Analysis: Teachers of Color in Kansas City” was commissioned by the nonprofit organization to further understand the critical state of diversity among students and teachers in elementary and secondary education.

A research team at the Urban Education Research Center (UERC) of University of Missouri-Kansas City used 2019 teacher self-reported data provided by the Kansas State Department of Education and the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to determine
the outcome of the report.

“Representation matters. Students have better educational outcomes when they see themselves reflected in the teachers that serve them. In fact, every student benefits from a diverse teacher workforce,” says Edgar Palacios, Founder and CEO of LEC. In the Kansas City metropolitan area, there are more than one hundred public schools. Approximately one third of these schools do not have at least one teacher of color in the building. “I wonder what my opportunities would be like today if I had had more teachers of color. I don’t know. But we’ll use the findings from this report to hone LECs efforts in educating our students and recruiting and supporting Black and Brown education
professionals,” adds Palacios.

Jackson County and Wyandotte County —together employ the largest number of Latinx teachers as their combined share of the total percentage of Latinx teachers in Kansas City is 87%. Jackson County employs 174 Latinx teachers, which is 67% of the total Latinx teacher population. Wyandotte County employs 54 Latinx teachers (21%). Although efforts are being made locally to recruit more teachers of color, retention rates are not
keeping the pace with the growing number of students of color. The cause for high turnover notes insufficient preparation, lack of in-school and out-of-school supports and mentoring, poor teaching conditions, additional student mentoring burdens and instability in the high-need schools in which they teach. The analysis shows the achievement gap among students of color directly correlates with an inability to connect with their instructor.


Additional reports show when students of color are taught by teachers of color, their math and reading scores are more likely to improve (Egalite et al., 2015). The students are more likely to graduate from high school and aspire to go to college (Gershenson et al., 2017). Students of
color and white students are more likely to have positive perceptions of their teachers of color, including feeling cared for and academically challenged (Cherng & Halpin, 2016).

A copy of the report can be accessed at http://latinxedco.org/2021-landscape-analysis/ For more information or how to support the Latinx Education Collaborative, call (305) 906 0644 or visit www.latinxedco.org.

About Latinx Education Collaborative
The Latinx Education Collaborative (LEC) is a non-profit, 501 (c) 3 organization based in Kansas City, MO. The LEC works on increasing the representation of Latinx education professionals in K- 12 through its three strategic objectives: retention, pathway exposure, and recruitment support.

About Urban Education Research Center
The Urban Education Research Center (UERC) is a research and evaluation center within the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Education. The center works collaboratively within the School of Education, across the university and in conjunction with local partners
and communities. Collaborators and partners include educational leaders, educators, researchers, community leaders, advocacy groups, industries and service organizations throughout the Greater Kansas City area.

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Discretion: A Tool for Equity or Oppression?

Recently, with the sentencing of Paul Manafort and the college access scandal, I’ve been thinking a lot about “discretion” and the consequences of its inequitable application. A few examples from around the internet:

  • “Hispanic students constitute 22.3% of students but only 15.4% of students receiving gifted services (U.S. Department of Education, 2010). […] Researchers have identified teacher discretion in the gifted assignment process as a potentially important contributor to this inequity. […] Reliance on teacher referrals can disadvantage students of color if teachers hold lower expectations for them or are less likely to recognize giftedness in such students.” (Discretion and Disproportionality: Explaining the Underrepresentation of High-Achieving Students of Color in Gifted Programs| Grissom, Redding)
  • “During the 2009-2010 school year more than 70 percent of students arrested in schools were Black or Hispanic. […] The evidence shows that zero-tolerance policies have failed to make schools safer and are not effective at handling disciplinary issue. […] school districts should establish a disciplinary policy that clearly outlines disciplinary actions and consequences based on the severity of the misbehavior. […] This practice will also ensure that school administrators are not stripped of discretion when disciplining students and unique and mitigating circumstances are considered before punishment is imposed. ” (Tolerance in Schools for Latino Students: Dismantling the School to Prison Pipeline | Castillo)
  • “[…] exposure to same-race teachers lowers office referrals for willful defiance across all grade levels, suggesting that teacher discretion plays a role in driving our results.” (Exposure to Same-Race Teachers and Student Disciplinary Outcomes for Black Students in North Carolina | Lindsay, Hart)
  • “In New York, attitudes toward manipulation—the propensity among teachers to score leniently—appear to have varied significantly from school to school. They also, interestingly, may have even varied within schools. In the Regents study, white and Asian students were more likely than their black and Latino counterparts to have their test scores manipulated if they fell just short of the cutoff—there were just much more black and Latino students total who scored below the threshold. In other words, the score manipulation may have contributed to inequality just as much as it erased it.” (Why Would a Teacher Cheat? | Wong)

In Missouri, Black and Brown students are arrested at higher percentages (18.6%; 6.2% respectively) than they represent in enrollment numbers (14.2%; 5.2% respectively). Why do you think that is? How does discretion contribute to this inequality?

How does discretion show up in your classroom or school? And more importantly, why are Black and Brown students subject to the most negative consequences of its application?

 

EJP

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Is a Career in Education Meant for People of Color?

The past few weeks, I have struggled with a few race-related, education-based events that have occurred within our Kansas City community. And the events have me pondering a few questions:

“Is the field of education designed for teachers of color to quit? Is the system designed to prevent teachers of color from succeeding?” Or when asked differently, “When a teacher of color quits, does the system win?”

According to a report from the Education Trust, “although greater numbers of Latino teachers are entering the classroom, they […] are leaving the profession at higher rates than their White peers.” Black teachers are also leaving the teaching profession at higher rates than their White counterparts; “National data points to a somewhat larger overall turnover disparity of about seven percentage points between black and white teachers (22 versus 15 percent, respectively). The reality is that “teachers tend to be white, female, and have nearly a decade and a half of experience in the classroom”.

So why is it that even when data show that ALL students benefit from being exposed to diverse teachers, school systems still struggle to retain them?

Maybe educators of color are just not welcomed (and maybe that’s the way the experience is designed to play out). One article explains it well: “Minority teachers are more likely to work in schools with high concentrations of students of color. But because of unconscious and overt biases, […] school administrators do not always value those teachers’ experiences the way they should.”

And if my hypothesis is correct, how do we disrupt the system? What mechanisms could we implement to ensure that teachers of color are retained? Or do we just start over and create a new system?

I would love to hear (read) your thoughts.

EJP