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Malik Lewis was one of few Black educators at Brooklyn’s Automotive High School when he started his teaching career there in 2005 — a fact that made him feel “absolutely out of place.”
Though almost all of his students were Black and Latino, many of his colleagues and his school leaders were white, and Lewis struggled to make connections with his coworkers, he recalled.
He left after just a year. For his next job, he tried to find the “Blackest school possible.”
He landed at Boys and Girls High School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, where his principal, most other administrators, and many of his colleagues were Black. Lewis flourished there, making lasting connections and launching a long career in New York City’s public schools.
New research suggests that Lewis’ experiences are not isolated.
Researchers from New York University who examined nearly a decade of teacher turnover data from New York City public schools found that, while Black teachers left their jobs at higher rates overall than other groups, having a Black principal and a critical mass of Black colleagues made them significantly more likely to stay.
Two decades later, Lewis is a principal, and he finds Black teachers actively seeking out his school — and staying. His teaching staff at West Brooklyn Community High School, where the student body is largely Latino, is almost half Black, far higher than the 17% of teachers citywide who are Black.
“We don’t have to question how our Blackness shows up in work,” he said of West Brooklyn. “We are Black, and we are comfortable with that, we are proud of that, and we leverage that to teach children.”
Working at a school with a Black principal reduced turnover by about 14% for Black teachers over the period of 2011 to 2020, according to the study published last month in the journal “Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis.” Working at a school where at least 20% of other teachers were Black had a similar effect for Black teachers, the researchers found.
The findings are significant because there’s strong evidence that teachers of color bring a range of educational benefits, said Luis Rodriguez, a professor at NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and a lead author of the study.
The benefits for students of color are well documented, and include lower rates of discipline, more placement in gifted programs, and better graduation and college outcomes. Some researchers also argue that white students can gain greater cross-cultural understanding from having teachers of color, and in a national survey, white students reported more favorable impressions of teachers of color, according to research cited in the study. But teachers of color remain underrepresented and have higher rates of turnover, both locally and nationally, than their white peers, said Rodriguez.
The study comes as efforts to diversify teaching may face new threats nationally, with President Donald Trump seeking to curtail Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives through a barrage of executive orders.
New York City has made progress in recent years diversifying its teaching force, but white educators still make up more than half of the teaching force and more than half of school administrators. About 16% of city public school students are white.
As of the 2022-2023 school year, about 24% of principals and assistant principals were Black, but the Education Department didn’t immediately provide a breakdown of just principals.
‘Similarity attraction’ a key driver of findings
The study’s central findings are likely explained by what social psychologists call “similarity attraction,” or a tendency to surround ourselves with people with shared characteristics, Rodriguez said.
Shamella Jeffers, an English and special education teacher at West Brooklyn who is Black, has gravitated toward Black teachers since she was a student. One of those former teachers is Lewis, who taught Jeffers U.S. History in high school and is now her principal at West Brooklyn.
“I’m trying to stay here for as long as humanly possible,” Jeffers said. “Because I don’t think that when I come to work, it feels like it’s work.” She also credited Assistant Principal Ingrid Roberts-Haynes, who is also Black, for “beautifying” the school and hanging African kente cloth in classrooms.
“It’s just a vibe from the beginning of the day until the end,” she said.
Sasha Fletcher, a Black English teacher at West Brooklyn, came to her current job after working at three schools with white principals — and often feeling like she didn’t get the support she needed.
Finding a Black principal who “has an understanding of what teachers of color need in their corner” was a “deciding factor” in her job search, she said.
Fletcher credited her current principal, Lewis, for spending time in classrooms and connecting directly with students, which in turn gives him a better sense of what teachers need.
Some of the reasons it’s appealing for Black teachers to work with Black supervisors and colleagues might apply in other workplaces. But others are specific to education — particularly in school systems where the vast majority of students are not white, Lewis said.
“Education is probably one of the most politically charged fields you can work in,” Lewis said. “We’re talking about issues of equity and justice. We’re making selective decisions about what is and isn’t canonical books and … what things you should teach.
“So when you have administration and teachers that are on the same page about making sure their experience is reflected in the curriculum and the way they teach, I think that helps.”
Findings apply beyond Black teachers
It’s not just Black teachers who are more likely to stay in schools where they have a principal of the same race, the study found. Turnover also decreased for white teachers who have white principals, though not by the same degree as it did for Black teachers, the NYU research found.
Notably, the finding did not apply for Hispanic teachers, Rodriguez said.
He suggested that might be in part because the category of “Hispanic” encompasses a “broader, more diverse array of backgrounds” than other racial and ethnic categories, which may mean there’s less “racial and ethnic cohesion.”
Roberts-Haynes, the West Brooklyn assistant principal, cautioned that the Black experience is also “wide-ranging.” Black educators in the city hail from a variety of national and cultural backgrounds, and it would be a mistake to assume Black school leaders can just automatically understand those experiences, she said.
The sample size for Asian American educators, who are the most underrepresented group of teachers in New York City vis-a-vis the share of students of that group, was too small to include in the study, Rodriguez said.
But Nico Victorino, the principal of P.S. 150 in Manhattan, who is Filipino-American, said a disproportionate share of his hires have been teachers of color, many of whom have explicitly expressed interest in working for a principal who’s not white, he said.
“Teachers would say that I would ‘get it’ more than a white principal would,” he recalled.
Rodriguez said districts could use some of the same approaches they’ve tried for boosting teacher diversity to diversify the ranks of school principals. Those include scholarship mentorship programs for aspiring school leaders of color, and ensuring the people above principals in superintendents’ and central offices also come from diverse backgrounds.
Lewis said something as simple as building more time into mandatory principals’ meetings to recognize and celebrate school leaders’ identities could help. That would help Black principals feel like “they belong in those places,” he said. “Not that they have to put their Blackness aside to participate in the meeting, but it’s essential to the meeting.”
Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org
