Teacher Education and Black Communities

A volume in Contemporary Perspectives on Access Equity and AchievementSeries Editor Chance W. Lewis University of North Carolina at CharlotteThe field of education has been and will continue to be essential to the survival andsustainability of the Black community. Unfortunately over the past five decades two major trends havebecome clearly evident in the Black community: (a) the decline of the academic achievement levels of Blackstudents and (b) the disappearance of Black teachers particularly Black males. Today of the 3.5 millionteachers in America's classrooms (AACTE 2010) only 8% are Black teachers and approximately 2% of theseteachers are Black males (NCES 2010). Over the past few decades the Black teaching force in the U.S. hasdropped significantly (Lewis 2006; Lewis Bonner Byrd & James 2008; Milner & Howard 2004) and thiseducational crisis shows no signs of ending in the near future. As the population of Black students in K-12 schools in the U. S. continue to rise-currently over 16% of students in America's schools are Black (NCES 2010)-there is an urgent need to increase the presence of Black educators.The overall purpose of this edited volume is to stimulate thought and discussion among diverse audiences (e.g. policymakers practitioners andeducational researchers) who are concerned about the performance of Black students in our nation's schools and to provide evidence-based strategiesto expand our nation's pool of Black teachers. To this end it is our hope that this book will contribute to the teacher education literature and will informthe teacher education policy and practice debate.