Officials want to know why BPS teaching staff so much whiter, more female than student population

in order to get the white and female numbers down? Certainly the goal is laudable, but hiring quotas won't achieve much until enough time has gone by for retirements and other attrition mechanisms to take effect.

Seriously!

Remember how you thought when you were a kid? I knew that, theoretically, women could be doctors. But it didn't become something concrete in my mind until I actually had a female doctor. When I was little I wanted to be a teacher. Why? Because all the teachers I knew where women, so it seemed like the thing women did.

Seeing a variety of people in positions of power is good for kids. First, it reminds kids that no matter their gender, race, sexuality, etc. they really can go into whatever field they want. Second, it helps to break down lingering prejudices.

Logic dictates that when you use a quota system, quality will suffer. Applicant A is better qualified; Applicant B is less qualified but in the favored hiring demographic; quota says you have to hire Applicant B.

The question is whether the amorphous benefits a "racially and gender diverse teacher workforce" provides (as cited by Councilor Pressley) off-set these losses. I'm skeptical - I want my kids to be taught by the best teacher, sex or race be damned.

And this is why you may not see minorities filling out the teaching ranks that have been opened over the past 40 years like Adam said.

Unless you have some sort of system like the police and fire have (let minorties or veterans score 25 points lower than whites on the teachers test), you probably won't see anything change in the near future.

The lack of logic I am subjected to in every day life reminds me that some people are idiots. And no amount of schooling will cure that disease.

The state teacher's union has steadfastly blocked and attacked anybody who wants to pay the going rate for math and science teachers because it is somehow unfair to the English teachers who don't have other career options.

Therefore, if you have a lot of student loans - like a disproportionate number of minority students do - you go to private industry where the money is if you can possibly do so. Ditto for "male dominated" industries: why teach at a reduced rate because the MTA won't let schools pay more for math and science teachers when you can go into private industry?

This is also done because a lot of 50-something women (who make up the bulk of the teaching workforce) do not want men coming into the teaching field from industry and will say so loudly and clearly - and the union's policies are dominated by their fear.

Instead of investigating the Boston schools, perhaps the federal government should dig a little deeper with the union that shields, protects, and enables an anti-male climate in the teaching professions in the entire state.

As for the "teacher's tests", I call bullshit. Anybody who can pass the MCAS can pass those basic exams - let alone people who have the college degrees necessary to teach! Complete nonsense! The only people those tests weeded out were people who were already teaching lower grades but had no business in the classroom because their skills were at truly minimal levels. My husband used to tutor them - nearly all were older women with "normal school certificates" and extreme fear of math beyond addidtion/subtraction. You can't even get into college lacking those skills.

So the BPS system has been in violation of a federal court order for going on forty years, and it could now face a federal probe?

That's not how it worked regarding school assignment of students. Back then, the federal government took a rather different approach.

I knew being a man would pay off someday! Based on what I've seen, the kids view all teachers as outsiders regardless of their race or gender. If the city is serious about having more minority teachers it needs to step-up non-traditional approaches to teacher training. The way it stands now, you need a Bachelors before you can begin your teacher training - in most cases. That's a pretty high hurdle if you come from a community where four years degrees are far and few between. If they created a pathway that went something like City Year to para/teacher's aide to subsidized teacher training they might get more people from the neighborhoods as teachers.

A quick peek at the 2010 census data shows that 25% of the city is black. 23% of the teachers are black.

The idea that your teachers need to match the percentages of the students sounds good on paper. However, you should be teaching the students about reality, not masking it from them. I would only be concerned if the teachers didn't have the same general racial makeup of the population at large. It sounds like they do.