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.

Degrees of Diversity

Connections: RCSD Board President Van White and his new children’s book, Heroes

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. Pedro Noguera is an internationally-recognized education scholar who studies how students are affected by a variety of social and economic factors. He’s in Rochester to give a presentation at East High School , but first, he’s our guest on Connections. We talk about how to create more equitable education opportunities for all students. In studio: Pedro Noguera , Ph.D., sociologist and distinguished professor of education at UCLA Shaun Nelms , Ed.D.,

Connections: How to create schools that serve all children well

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: James Flagler, 2017 graduate of St. John Fisher College, and substitute teacher at School 45 Danielle Maxwell, 2017 graduate of the College at Brockport, and soon-to-be teacher at Bicentennial North in Glendale, Arizona

Connections: College Grad Series, part 1 - The teaching profession

At the Little Theatre in Rochester, teachers, superintendents, parents and school board members discussed ways to bring more diversity to local teaching staffs. On Friday, WXXI hosted a community discussion to wrap up our week of reporting on teacher diversity. Evan Dawson reports. Brandon White is a teacher in the Rochester City School District – He said that for too many students of color, there are not enough mentors who look like them, and school is not a positive experience. “There was one thing that was said about getting more RCSD kids to be RCSD teachers, and why they wouldn’t want to be, and I returned with the question, ‘Why would the convict want to be the correctional officer?’” Simeon Bannister is a parent and board member in the Rush-Henrietta district; he said that teacher diversity will only get addressed when the community views it as a problem for everyone. “If all of a sudden, graduation rates dipped below 50 percent across the county, particularly outside the city,

Connections Live at The Little: Degrees of Diversity

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 . Find out how diverse your district is on our interactive map Click here to see all the data from Monroe County, Erie County, Onondaga County, the Finger Lakes region, and regional colleges . Degrees of Diversity is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Listen to all the stories in a podcast or on our series page .

State Education Commissioner reacts to teacher diversity needs

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. Our guests are a combination of teachers, administrators, parents, and school board members. Our live audience members bring their own questions based on our reporting and research. The guests: Brandon White, teacher on assignment for restorative practices at Northwest Junior & Northeast Senior High Schools at the Douglass Campus Kevin McGowan , superintendent of the Brighton Central School District Lesli Myers, superintendent of the Brockport Central School District Jeff Crane, superintendent of West Irondequoit Central School District

Connections Live At The Little: Degrees of Diversity, Part 2

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. Our guests are a combination of teachers, administrators, parents, and school board members. Our live audience members will bring their own questions based on our reporting and research. The guests: Shaun Nelms , superintendent of East High School Candice Hudson , teacher in the Hilton Central School District Simeon Banister , parent and school board member in the Rush-Henrietta Central School District Trina Newton, superintendent of the Geneva Central School District

Connections Live At The Little: Degrees of Diversity, Part 1

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. Karen DeAngelis, an associate dean at the University of Rochester's Warner School of Education, set out on a research project with colleagues from Southern Illinois University. They had access to multiple years of data, tracking tens of thousands of students. From the outset, they knew that students of color graduate high school and attend college at lower rates. But that can lead to a stereotype, which their study debunked. "The story is a little bit more complicated than, 'Students of color are less academically prepared going into college, and as a result, we don't see as many teachers of color.' I mean, that's not at all what our data showed," DeAngelis explained. Leak in the pipeline: high school DeAngelis found that there are more than enough students of

The Teaching Pipeline: Where Diversity is Lost

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. It was reported by Connections host and reporter Evan Dawson and producer Megan Mack. Here, WXXI’s Morning Edition host Beth Adams sits down with Dawson to talk about the series — and what prompted him to begin looking into this issue. Find out how diverse your district is on our interactive map Click here to see all the data from Monroe County, Erie County, Onondaga County, the Finger Lakes region, and regional colleges . Degrees of Diversity is funded in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Listen to all the stories in a podcast or on our series page .

Reporter Talks About 'Degrees of Diversity' Series

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. “We have a lot of African-American male students who – they need that interaction with a male,” Fields said. “Because they may not live in a two-parent home. So sometimes they just need that interaction. You know, they live at home with Mom, most of their teachers are female, and it’s just a refresher for them to see an African-American male.” The Albert Shanker Institute recently issued a report on the gap between teaching and student diversity in nine large American cities. The city with the largest gap was Philadelphia, with 86 percent students of color, and 31 percent teachers of color. That’s a gap of 55 percentage points. Had Rochester been included in the study, it would have ranked first,

How Rochester Schools Grapple With Their Teacher Diversity Gap

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. “My children graduated from Pittsford schools in the ’80s," Castle said. "They’re still reading the same books. Not that they aren’t great books — they are great books. But students don’t get the opportunity to see different points of view.” Louis is now a junior at Pittsford Sutherland High School. Castle met with staff and challenged them to include more diversity in the reading list — for the benefit of students from all backgrounds. “When you have books, and the only people shown in the books are white people, kids begin to say, ‘That’s the world,’ when in reality, the world is a kaleidoscope of many different people," Castle

Lack of Teacher Diversity Impacts the Rochester Suburbs

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. Candice Hudson is the only African-American teacher in the Hilton school district. All 393 of her colleagues are white. We visited Hudson to find her reading to her elementary school students; she teaches English as a New Language for grades three through six. Hudson loves working with the kids, and they seem to share the sentiment. But occasionally, there are awkward moments. "Living in Hilton, they don't see a lot of people of color, so they wanted to touch my skin color, make sure it wasn't rubbing off," she said. "And it was just innocence on their part. They've never seen people like me. The last thing is, 'Can I touch your hair?' I get that a lot.” Hudson spent the first eight years of her career teaching in Perth Amboy

A District’s Only Teacher of Color Shares Perspective

In Monroe County and the Finger Lakes, thousands of students could graduate high school without ever seeing a black teacher in their school hallways. A year-long WXXI News investigation found that five districts in Monroe County don’t employ a single black teacher in kindergarten through 12 th grade, according to the numbers from the 2015-16 school year. Four districts have only one. The countywide lack of diversity on teaching staffs is significantly more severe than the national average. According to the National Center for Education Statistics , 82 percent of American public school teachers are white. In Monroe County, we found that 92 percent of teachers are white. Outside the city of Rochester, 98 percent of teachers are white. In every district, the percentage of white teachers is significantly higher than the percentage of white students. “We all, collectively, have failed on this issue, and we continue to fail just by doing nothing,” said Adam Urbanski, president of the

Teacher Diversity: 'We All, Collectively, Have Failed'

More than 80 percent of public school teachers in the U.S. are white, and a WXXI News investigation has found that the disparity is much more severe in the Rochester, NY and Finger Lakes regions. Degrees of Diversity takes an in-depth look at diversity among local teaching staffs, and the steps, if any, the districts are taking to making their staffs better reflect their student population.

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Degrees of Diversity

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