Applause for a Pilot Program

In an effort to reverse the disturbing decline in the number of minority teachers, Cal State Dominguez Hills is going beyond platitudes about encouraging more minorities to become teachers. The university, one of the few in the state with a student body that is 60% black, Latino and Asian, is working as part of a nationwide network to ensure that future schoolchildren--one in three of which will be minority by the turn of the century--can find role models in the classroom.

Cal State Dominguez, along with New York’s Fordham University, City College and Hostos Community College of New York, and Xavier University in New Orleans have been brought together for a pilot project by the Ana G. Mendez Educational Foundation, which operates three colleges in Puerto Rico. The schools all have large minority enrollments and a demonstrated interest in training minority teachers. The pilot project will make it easier for the consortium members to share information about each one’s recruitment programs and to disseminate the information nationwide to show others what works best.

This consortium of colleges and universities is working to attract more talented black, Latino and Asian students to the teaching profession by exposing high school students to the special satisfactions of the classroom. At present, minorities make up only 9% of all teachers, compared to 17% in the mid-1970s. As career and economic opportunities expanded for minorities and women, many chose not to become teachers. But teacher salaries are finally rising. And now educators must lure students back to the profession by exposing them early to the rewards of teaching and to the lasting impact a good teacher has on students.

Cal State Dominguez is already in the third year of its own Saturday Future Teachers Institute, supported by the Carnegie Corp. of New York, in which high school students are paid $15 per Saturday to teach math and science to elementary school students for 10 weeks. The Saturday program is the first time many youngsters have ever set foot on a college campus; soon the idea of attending college, or maybe eventually teaching in one, becomes less intimidating. Tracking of some former “teachers,” now college students, indicates that half of them remain strongly interested in becoming professional teachers. It is already an accomplishment that more bright students are seriously considering a lifetime in the classroom to lead a new generation.