Minneapolis has embarked on a radical vendetta against white teachers instead of encouraging qualified individuals of all races to pursue teaching careers.
The city has embarked on a radical-left vendetta against white teachers instead of encouraging qualified individuals of all races to pursue teaching careers.
A s students return to school for what many hope will be the first uninterrupted in-class experience in nearly three years, numerous districts are expecting enrollment declines, and some are laying off teachers. That creates an opportunity for the radical Left.
In Minneapolis, where up to 50 teachers may lose their jobs as a result of declining enrollments and budget cuts, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) and Minneapolis Public Schools agreed that starting next year, with few exceptions, MPS must lay off white teachers before any non-white teacher may be laid off, and if teachers are recalled, whites will be recalled last. The process will continue until “the teachers in the District reflect the diversity of the labor market and the community served by the District.”
The purpose of these measures, labeled “Protections for Educators of Color,” is “to remedy the continuing effects of past discrimination by the District.” A union spokesman declined to answer inquiries regarding how the agreement will be applied to mixed-race individuals or to white Hispanics, though he claimed that no teacher layoffs are currently planned. Union president Greta Callahan told the Associated Press that attacks on the agreement are “all made up by the right wing now. And we could not be more proud of this language.” The school district did not respond to several requests for comment.
On Monday, Judicial Watch filed a lawsuit on behalf of a Minneapolis taxpayer seeking to enjoin the implementation of the agreement for violating the Minnesota constitution’s equal-protection guarantee.
In its Equity Proposal to the MFT, the district premised the need for the agreement on statistics showing that its teachers are 72 percent white, 6 percent black, and 3 percent Hispanic, while its students are 38 percent white, 36 percent black, and 17 percent Hispanic.
Evidence of a racial mismatch between a labor pool, or a community, and employees is insufficient to establish unlawful discrimination, though it can create a basis for further inquiry. However, a mismatch of teachers to students is irrelevant under the 14th Amendment or Civil Rights Act of 1964.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Minneapolis is 63 percent white, 19 percent black, and 10 percent Hispanic. The nine-point gap in the percentage of white teachers must be placed in context. Minneapolis was 65 percent white in 2000 and 79 percent in 1990, the period during which many of its teachers were hired. Further, a November 2018 school-district report explains that the percentage of new hires who are white has declined each year since 2013, but retention rates average about 4 percent higher each year among white teachers than among teachers of color.
The data on the labor market, and the school district’s analysis of its recruitment problems, are telling. The Census Bureau reports that as of 2020, 63 percent of white Minneapolis residents had graduated from college, compared with 16.6 percent of black residents and 24.4 percent of Hispanics. The MPS report concedes that black teachers are more difficult to recruit and retain, compared with white teachers.
The equal-protection clause of the 14th Amendment mandates that no state “deny to any person . . . equal protection of the laws.” The Civil Rights Act of 1866 gives every American “the full and equal benefit of all laws and proceedings.” Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employers from discriminating on the basis of race, color, and national origin. Progressive courts have watered down the plain meaning of the words, and the teacher contract is written in an effort to fall within the cracks.
In 1972, the school district and teachers’ union in Jackson, Mich., amended their contract to require that if teachers are laid off, seniority would be disregarded so that “at no time will there be a greater percentage of minority personnel laid off than the current percentage of minority personnel employed at the time of the layoff.” In Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986), the Supreme Court rejected this plan, holding that a public employer’s remedial racial affirmative-action initiatives are valid under the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment only if necessary and narrowly crafted to remedy its own discrimination.
In United Steelworkers v. Weber (1979), the Supreme Court allowed a limited exception to Title VII in private employment for affirmative-action plans that have purposes that mirror the statute and do not “unnecessarily trammel the interests of the white employees.” Applying that holding, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held in Taxman v. Board of Education of Township of Piscataway (1996) that a white teacher could not be laid off to maintain racial diversity. The court rejected the argument that alleged educational benefits of diversity are sufficient to support an exception to Title VII.
Building on these precedents, in City of Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co. (1989), the Supreme Court held that generalized societal or industry discrimination and underrepresentation alone do not justify affirmative action, and that prior to considering racial preferences, the defendant must consider “alternative, race-neutral means to increase minority participation.”
Though the teacher contract pretextually claims that its purpose is to remedy past discrimination, it makes only a generalized claim. The district’s 2018 report blames its difficulty in recruiting black teachers on a limited pool, which it attributes “largely” to structural racism in teacher preparation in “white teacher preparation programs.” The report also blamed recruitment difficulties on an insufficient number of people of color pursuing teaching licenses and on Minnesota’s rigorous licensing requirements.
However, the district effectively blames its retention problems on white bias, not the minority teachers’ lack of preparation: “Once they are hired, teachers of color endure a challenging work environment. Teachers face persistent negative interactions, isolation, and bias—ranging from microaggressions to more serious behaviors — from colleagues, leaders, and the larger school community alike. . . . When teachers of color attempt to confront these inequities, they feel silenced and targeted.”
Aside from the policy’s constitutional and statutory flaws, the harm to those terminated and to race relations is not justified by any compelling benefits. Contrary to the assumption that more minority teachers will substantially improve minority performance, a survey of the research by Learning Policy Institute (LPI), a left-leaning education-research institute in Palo Alto, Calif., found just a handful of studies showing improvement in minority performance, and even that was just a few percentage points. Just one North Carolina study supported the oft-repeated claim that minority attendance improves in classes with minority teachers.
More helpfully, a Learning Policy Institute report in 2018 observed:
Over the past 30 years, the percentage of teachers of color in the workforce has grown from 12 percent to 20 percent. Incoming teachers, as a whole, are even more diverse. A quarter of first-year teachers in 2015 were non-White, up from 10 percent in the late 1980s. However, the teacher workforce still does not reflect the growing diversity of the nation, where people of color represent about 40 percent of the population and 50 percent of students. And the share of Native American and Black teachers in the workforce is actually in decline, not growing like the populations of Latinx and Asian American teachers. Furthermore, teachers of color have higher turnover rates than White teachers.
LPI recognized that many blacks hired through “alternative routes” were not as prepared as other teachers, and they often “skipped student teaching and key coursework.” The Minneapolis Public Schools report concedes that “a disproportionate number of teachers of color in MPS work under a license variance.”
There is a shortage of qualified teachers. Though gains from increasing the percentage of minority teachers are overstated, there are undeniable benefits from eliminating substandard alternative routes, mainstreaming minority participation in education, and providing race-neutral opportunities for qualified people of all backgrounds to pursue a career as teachers in public education.
Many of the approaches to increase the recruitment and retention of minority teachers recommended by LPI should be considered for teachers of all races, such as state support for the cost of teacher preparation through scholarships and loan-forgiveness programs that cover a portion of tuition costs in exchange for multiyear commitments to teach in high-need schools or subject areas; partnerships between school districts and universities to subsidize and improve teachers’ training; earlier hiring to reach in-demand candidates; and financial incentives to veteran teachers to announce their retirements earlier in the year so the school can accelerate recruitment. LPI also recommends improved teaching conditions, including strengthening program accreditation and licensing standards.
By contrast, Minneapolis Public Schools’ goal is to achieve “equity” by reducing standards and replacing white teachers. The sensible (and legal) goal is to expand the pool and retention rate of all qualified teachers.
The union and district recite progressive boilerplate to justify a racist attack on white teachers who have dedicated their lives to working in an urban school system, including more recent hires who chose the district knowing the diversity of its students. In doing so, the union and the school district reveal the ugliness in their thinking and send a powerful message about the goals of the radical leftists who control most education boards, teachers’ unions, and accreditation agencies.
By contrast, while the Learning Policy Institute’s leanings may be to the left, with race-neutral polish, much that it recommends should appeal to those of us on the right who believe in improving opportunities for, and the quality of, teachers of all races.