Rochester City School Board president Van White has written a new children's book. It's called "Heroes," and it's about the everyday heroes in our lives: doctors, firefighters, caregivers. He joins us to talk about why he wrote the book and the importance of diversity and inclusion in literature.
Low-income students of color make up the majority of classrooms in American public schools, and research shows that the challenges they face -- poverty, homelessness, or hunger -- have directly influenced their level of academic success. While many of these children are failing to make the grade, education experts say state and federal policies are failing the students. They say there’s too much of a focus on raising test scores, and that policies should be designed to close opportunity gaps and get students excited about learning.
It's graduation season... so are the local graduates getting local jobs? It's the first in our series of conversations with freshly minted college graduates about their experiences navigating the job market. This week, we focus on the teaching profession. In studio:
At the Little Theatre in Rochester, teachers, superintendents, parents and school board members discussed ways to bring more diversity to local teaching staffs.
New York State Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia sat down with WXXI Albany Correspondent Karen DeWitt to talk about WXXI's week-long series, Degrees of Diversity.
It's a special broadcast live from the Little Theatre. We're capping our week-long series exploring the lack of diversity on local teaching staffs.
It's a special broadcast live from the Little Theatre. We're capping our week-long series exploring the lack of diversity on local teaching staffs.
When local teaching jobs open up, superintendents say they rarely see candidates of color. New research indicates the pipeline has leaks at almost every stage -- from high school, through college graduation and job retention.
The WXXI News series, Degrees of Diversity, is the result of a year-long investigative reporting project that explores the wide gap between white teachers and teachers of color in the Rochester and Finger Lakes regions and beyond.
Christopher Fields is rare in the teaching profession. He’s an African-American man, and he teaches sixth-grade English at East Lower School. According to the U.S. Department of Education, you'd have to stop by more than 50 classrooms in this country before you found one black male teacher.
On a recent afternoon, Musette Castle was sifting through a stack of books on her dining room table: The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway; Dubliners by Joyce; Catch 22 by Heller. The books come from her grandson Louis’ high school English class reading list. Castle, who is African-American, pointed out that the authors and protagonists are almost all white.
A WXXI News investigation finds that local districts have a severe lack of diversity on teaching staffs. Five public school districts have zero African-American teachers on staff; four districts have just one, according to the numbers from the 2015-16 school year.
In Monroe County and the Finger Lakes, thousands of students could graduate high school without ever seeing a black teacher in their school hallways.