Minorities lag as educational administrators
As a black public school superintendent, Joe Tindal is in a class almost by himself.
"We've been here doing the jobs in backup roles for a lot of years," said Tindal, who took over the top job at the Wilkinsburg School District eight years ago. "A lot of areas aren't ready for a person of color in a prominent position in education."
A half-century after the Supreme Court's landmark Brown vs. Board of Education ruling ending state-sponsored segregation in classrooms, a racial chasm remains at the highest levels of school administration.
Tindal is one of just nine minority superintendents in the state. He'll be joined over the summer by Cleveland Steward Jr. at Gateway and Roslyn Wilson at Woodland Hills.
Once Steward and Wilson step in, Allegheny County will have half of the state's 10 black superintendents. Locally, the others are Pittsburgh's John Thompson and Duquesne's Jacqueline Webb.
Even then, minorities will make up just 2.2 percent of Pennsylvania's 501 superintendents. Nationwide, about 5 percent of 14,000 superintendents are minorities.
School officials blame the disparity on a wide range of factors, from politics to fear of change to education still being dominated by whites -- who make up more than 90 percent of Pennsylvania's teachers and principals.
"There are very few opportunities presented," said Gail Edwards, a black woman who is chief administrative officer for the Urban League Charter School in East Liberty. "There's a prejudice always against us when we come through the door. The world has missed very talented (African-American) women and men."
Classrooms, meanwhile, are filled with the color that administrative offices lack. Minorities make up nearly a fourth of Pennsylvania's students and more than a third of students nationwide.
"African-American students need to see positive role models," said Steward, who's being promoted to the top post at Gateway from assistant superintendent. "What they should see is somebody who worked within the system, prepared themselves appropriately and when given a task, finished that task to the best of his or her ability."
The American Association of School Administrators in Washington, D.C., recognizes the problem. The 14,000-member group has formed an advisory committee to find ways to pull more minorities into education.
"It's definitely a concern," said Barbara Knisely, association spokeswoman. "When you look at the kids that are in these school districts, you want a better representation from men and women and all races."
But Pittsburgh's Thompson isn't optimistic.
"I don't see enough being done to get (African-American superintendents) and retain them," he said.
The answers are anything but easy, said Audrey Utley, a black woman who is superintendent at Middletown Area School District in Dauphin County.
"The disparity is quite obvious," she said. "There is something that needs to be done. But what, I don't know."
That few minorities are pursuing education as a career is problematic, she said. Superintendents generally are chosen from principals, and principals from teachers, and teachers from education students in college.
"We can't increase the number of superintendents until we get the numbers coming up through the ranks," said Utley, who's in her 32nd year in education, more than half as an administrator. "We have to get more people to consider the profession."
Along with the school administrators association, education officials nationwide are researching ways to make the profession more attractive to minority job-seekers.
The effort is crucial, civil rights groups say, not just to bridging the racial divide at the top of the administrative ladder, but to helping minority students succeed.
"Role models are always key," said Lavera Brown, executive director of the Pittsburgh branch of the NAACP. "If we are going to maintain the African-American students in school and reduce the dropout rate and increase their roles in society, a role model is one of the keys to success."
Wake County, N.C., School District Superintendent Bill McNeal knows the value of role models.
Named 2004 National Superintendent of the Year by the administrators association, McNeal credits his success, in part, to a principal's influence on him after he was hired as a teacher at Wake County. He was one of two blacks nominated for the award.
"You have to have mentors," he said. "They can point things out for you and help you when you stumble."
But the prospect of more leaders like McNeal rising through education's ranks appears bleak.
Experts project that while the number of minority students will rise for decades, in 2025 only about 3 percent of public school teachers will be minorities.
And Pittsburgh's Thompson worries that for those educators, top jobs will remain elusive.
By the numbers 11: Number of minority school superintendents in Pennsylvania -- 10 black and one Latino
2.2: Percentage of minority superintendents statewide
5.1: Percentage of minority superintendents nationwide
6.4: Percentage of minority teachers statewide
15.7: Percentage of minority teachers nationwide
22.3: Percentage of minority students statewide
36.9: Percentage of minority students nationwide
$127,00: Average salary for superintendents
$138,543: Average salary for black superintendents.
$124,704: Average salary for white superintendents.
Sources: Superintendents Prepared, Pennsylvania Department of Education and Scholastic Administrators.
A broken pipeline
Minorities make up less than 10 percent of faculty and administrators statewide:
TotalBlackPercent
Teachers119,5486,3725.3
Elementary principal1,7061629
Secondary principal943566
Source: State Department of Education, 2001-02 survey
"It's very political," he said. "There's still a good ol' boy network."
