Teacher Scholarship

The United States has intensified its recruitment of minority teachers, with efforts to attract professionals overseas in an effort to fill the void of decreasing numbers of teachers especially in public schools. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education noted that the number of minority teachers have steadily fall in the last decade, from almost 12% to 10.3%. Factors for the decline include financial inadequacy, better career opportunities in other professions and failure to meet the passing level for the teacher competency testing.

The continuing decline in minority teachers is a perennial problem for the U.S. public school system. With increasing minority student population, a white teacher may not fully understand or effectively address a minority student's expectation in areas like concept of authority, administration of discipline and specific student behaviors. This proves to be a stumbling block to learning and is a real phenomenon in many public schools with large minority demographics.

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education cautions that the absence of a considerable number of minority teachers may result in the inadequate exposure of the general student population to important social concepts like equality, justice, and fairness among all co-existing social groups, contributing to social dysfunction.

With this reality, the government has opened national and state-wide scholarship grants to encourage minority enrollment in education degrees. National scholarships for teachers include the Phi Delta Kappa International Education Foundation for elementary and secondary teaching majors and the Bright Horizon Family Solutions for early childhood education course. Most states in the U.S. have also instructed their state colleges and universities to offer teacher educational grants, such as the Minority Teachers of Illinois (MTI) Scholarship Program and the Minority Teacher Scholarship Program (MTSP) of Arkansas.