Governor: Bring HBCUs into Teaching Fellows program

Gov. Roy Cooper said Tuesday that he wants North Carolina's Teaching Fellows program expanded to every historically black college and university in the state as part of an overall push to increase diversity in the state's teaching ranks.

The loan forgiveness program for STEM and special education teachers is limited by law to five campuses now, and none of them are HBCUs.

Cooper's comments came during a symposium at North Carolina State University meant to kick off a task force that will drill down on minority teacher recruitment. The governor also said he'd like to see more courses offered at community colleges that count toward teacher licensing requirements, to cut down on the cost.

Minority students make up about 52 percent of the traditional public school body, but 80 percent of teachers are white. WRAL News looked closely at the issue last year and found some students of color may never have a teacher who looks like them from kindergarten through 12th grade.

Research and anecdotal evidence indicates that minority teachers – and especially male minority teachers – can have an outsized impact on students' lives, but collegiate education programs in North Carolina enroll mostly white, female students.

Some 300 educators, policymakers, school district officials, advocates and philanthropists gathered Monday for the N.C. DRIVE Summit, an effort coordinated through the Governor's Office to press the issue. Cooper created a task force this week to develop "a statewide plan of action with real goals and tangible strategies."

LaTanya Pattillo, the governor's teacher adviser, said there are a lot of local and regional efforts already on this issue, and the task force is about coordinating things.

"Now is the time, because we're hearing just a synergy," she said.

"This is something that needs to be intentional," Cooper said.

The governor said North Carolina needs to recruit more teachers, period, to address shortages and that more of them need to be people of color. The Teaching Fellows program has been the state's biggest recruitment tool, offering scholarships to high school students who agree to go into teaching.

The state legislature killed the program in 2011. Lawmakers brought it back in 2017, but at only five college campuses. One HBCU applied to the program, but it didn't meet all the certification requirements.

Cooper said the legislature needs to expand the program and that HBCU chancellors need to make it a priority.

For the last two years, more than 80 percent of students selected for the program were white, and more than 80 percent were women. Most of the applicants are white women.

The program had 133 slots this year.

Cooper asked the legislature this year for a $1.8 million pilot project to increase the recruitment, retention and support for educators of color, but the proposal was lost to the state's still-ongoing budget fight. The governor said Tuesday he believes the private dollars are there to help boost minority recruitment.

"Basically, we need funding for an infrastructure so we can have some people on staff that can help coordinate this strategic initiative that we have," he said. "I think some of the answers are going to pretty simple, and it's going to be about implementation, but a lot of it is about recruiting."