UIC’s College of Education has found that student teaching matters—a lot—when it comes to placing new teachers in minority schools.
Most newly-minted teachers took their first jobs in schools with the same racial or ethnic mix as the schools where they were assigned to student teach, according to a UIC study that looked at data from 1998 through 2002.
Relatively few teachers crossed racial lines in their first jobs—for instance, taking a job in a predominantly black school after student-teaching in a racially mixed or predominantly white school. Just 17 percent of graduates took jobs in African-American schools, a finding that troubled college officials, since UIC’s College of Education has worked with schools on the Near West Side and in North Lawndale for years.
Even so, fewer than half of grads who student-taught at black schools took jobs in predominantly African-American schools, the study found. Yet 54 percent of those who student-taught in Latino schools took teaching jobs in predominantly Latino schools.
“We still have much to do,” says Victoria Chou, the dean of the College of Education.
Researchers looked at student-teacher placements and first jobs for 540 graduates.
UIC researchers now plan to look at how many graduates take jobs in the same school or neighborhood where they student-taught.
Where new teachers land
Graduates of UIC’s College of Education most often took their first job in a school that had the same racial or ethnic makeup as the school where they were assigned to do their student teaching.
| Racial makeup of school where grads took first job | ||||
| Racial makeup of student-teaching school |
African-American
|
Latino
|
Mixed
|
White
|
| African-American |
44%
|
19%
|
25%
|
13%
|
| Latino |
15%
|
54%
|
16%
|
16%
|
| Mixed |
15%
|
24%
|
40%
|
22%
|
| White |
14%
|
16%
|
22%
|
46%
|
| TOTAL: |
17%
|
34%
|
27%
|
22%
|
|
Notes: Data are from 1998-2002. |
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