by Fedrick C. Ingram
Whether it’s school vouchers, book banning, or DEI at our colleges and universities, one thing is very clear about this year’s election—education is on the ballot.
As an HBCU graduate (from THE Bethune-Cookman University), the father of students, and a former educator myself, I want to ensure that Black education is also on the ballot when Americans cast their votes in November. And while I think the presidential choice is simple — you can see who my union wholeheartedly endorsed — that does not ensure an easy path to success for Black students and educators.
Since we arrived on these shores, we have fought tooth and nail, politicians and neighbors, to get an education. We are the descendants of people who built the library of Timbuktu and educated Plato, Hippocrates, and Pythagoras. When the law said reading was illegal, we broke the law. When the nation’s universities refused to let us enter, we built our own.
Education is our North Star, something we strive for regardless of circumstance or safety. But we have encountered obstacles along the way. Poverty and a long history of legal discrimination have left Black students and families in a fragile — but fixable — place.
So, what does a solution look like? I don’t think there is one answer that can solve every single issue, but after 10 years as a teacher and another decade in labor leadership, I’m convinced that any solution must address one word: access.
Access to a pipeline of Black educators to provide their special connection with all students.
Access to community schools, which provide students with life-affirming services (food, dentistry, mental health) that allow students to focus on learning instead of surviving.
Access to AI and other transformative technologies that will define the next generation of education and labor.
Access to higher education and preparation for students to forge their own entrepreneurial futures.
This access is not just a priority because we are in an election cycle. Black education is in trouble right now. The most recent data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that while only 43% of fourth-graders were at or above proficient reading levels, that number shrinks to 17% for Black children. We are less likely to attend preschool, with 77% of children eligible for early education subsidies never receiving them. So, what can we, in concert with our elected officials, do now to right the ship?
Access to Black Teachers
Black kids do better when they have teachers who look like them. Here’s what we know about Black teachers: At only 6% of the overall teacher population (1% for Black male teachers), there are nowhere near enough Black educators in our public schools. We also know that Black teachers have a real impact on Black student performance. As Cassandra Hart, a University of California professor, shows in her research, “Black students who were exposed to Black teachers by third grade were 13 percent more likely to enroll in college. If kids had two Black teachers by third grade, Hart said, the likelihood of college enrollment jumped to 32 percent.”
We also know that Black teachers are stressed out and ready to leave their jobs — in 2022-23, 35% reported an intent to leave their profession by the end of the school year.
Standing still is doing nothing for Black students who continue to struggle in our nation’s schools.
If you prioritize Black education and want to see Black students thrive, you must be serious about not only recruiting new educators but retaining the ones already in classrooms.
That means addressing the issues that are currently driving them away: lack of pay, lack of professional autonomy, and disproportionate positions in low-income, low-performing schools. Black male teachers routinely mention the “invisible tax” of being expected to do their jobs in addition to acting as the school disciplinarian simply due to their race and gender.
When it comes to recruiting, the answer is sitting right in front of our faces. If you meet a Black teacher, lawyer, or doctor, for that matter, there’s a 50% chance they graduated from an HBCU. So engaging education programs at Howard, Hampton, Bowie State, Morehouse, and the nearly 100 other Black colleges and universities that are turning out new crops of teachers every summer is the next logical step.
While these issues will take time, effort, and political will to address, standing still is doing nothing for Black students who continue to struggle in our nation’s schools. The question is, how invested are we in their success? Are we willing to pay a bit more upfront — raise teacher wages and provide more professional support — or are we content with losing more educators as yet another generation of Black kids continues to play catch-up? I know my answer.
The hard truth is that 32 percent of Black students live in poverty. Poverty is linked to worse nutritional health, which contributes to general inattentiveness and motivation. Without reliable health insurance, these students are also less likely to visit the doctor or dentist. Their families, already struggling to do more with less, are less likely to have time for the kind of crucial financial planning that could alleviate stress.
This is where community schools — a different vision of education that makes the school the hub for an entire community or neighborhood by offering life-affirming services—come into play. By giving students and their families access to doctors, dentists, food, and foreign-language services, community schools show a promising model for addressing the historical and persistent issues that plague Black education.
The AFT is fighting to make community schools the norm, not the exception. We welcome the support of the Biden-Harris administration, which has expanded grants for full-service community schools since taking office — from $25 million in 2020 to $150 million in 2023. We know its transformational impact on communities of color by working to neutralize the impact of poverty on learning.
Access to Advanced Technology
The pandemic showed us that the digital divide — the difference in access to technology by race — was not only real but also impactful. Black families are twice as likely not to have broadband access as white families. They are also less likely to own a standard computer. This leads to a lack of digital readiness — the ability to understand, manage, and learn digital technology — which disproportionately impacts low-income people of color.
If we are serious about Black education in 2024, we have to be serious about ensuring students have safe, monitored access to advanced technologies like AI right now. At the AFT, we believe educators should be leading the charge, as they are closest to students and best understand their needs. To that end, we worked with classroom practitioners to create “Commonsense Guardrails for Using Advanced Technology in Schools” to protect students and educators from problematic aspects of the new technology while embracing its potential benefits.
This year alone, we are investing $200,000 in 11 school districts across the country to fund solutions to incorporating, understanding and regulating AI, drawing inspiration from members on the ground. We understand that delaying kids’ access to advanced technologies only ensures that tech and entrepreneurial opportunities remain disproportionately out of reach.
Access to Higher Education
While HBCUs have seen a recent spike in attendance, 90% of Black college students attend predominantly white institutions. This is crucial because recent data show that Black male college attendance has dropped dramatically — down 39% between 2011 and 2020.
Higher education is still understood to be the best way to set yourself up for success when it comes to job attainment, financial security, and more, and the fact that Black men are opting out of this opportunity is cause for major alarm.
This is unsustainable. But it’s fixable.
First, we must reexamine our understanding of career and technical education. For too long, we have seen this viable pathway, one that gives students hands-on education in various fields, as one that points away from college. In fact, 94% of high school students involved with CTE—whether they are learning plumbing, automobile work, IT, or any other concentration—graduate from high school, with as many as 72-84% going on to enroll in postsecondary education.
Second, we must foster opportunities like our Grow Your Own programs that prep high school students to attend college to pursue an education degree and then return to their communities to teach. A great example is the Red Hawks Rising program in Newark, New Jersey, where high school students take classes at Montclair State University.
These students are the next generation of Black and Brown educators who will return to communities of color to become models of success to young students hungry to see people like themselves leading classes. It’s an inspiration machine that we think will have a profound impact on diversity and achievement.
And we don’t have to wait much longer to see the fruits of this labor — the first cohort of college graduates will reenter Newark schools as educators in the fall of 2026, with almost all students being of color, 30% male.
By giving Black students access to college courses and encouraging enrollment, they, in turn, become the new teachers, bringing cultural understanding, excellence, and representation to the Black students who so desperately need it.
That said, there is no silver bullet to solve the complicated web of issues. Black folks are not a monolith, so there is no monolithic response, but anyone looking to run for office this November would be remiss not to consider giving us more access to technology, college, teaching jobs, and community services if they are committed to progress that benefits everyone.
All we are asking for is an equal swing of the bat and equal access to the American dream that others have long assumed was theirs alone.
Fedrick C. Ingram is the Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers, serving 1.8 million members, including pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; school and college support staff; higher education faculty; federal, state, and local government employees; and nurses and other healthcare professionals. Ingram is the immediate past president of the 140,000-member Florida Education Association. He also has served as an elected vice president of the AFT’s executive council.