Excerpt from Book: The Forgotten Cost of De-Professionalizing Urban Teaching—and Why Public Education Still Deserves Our Deepest Investment

I’ve been away for a while, deep in the work of writing two books. The first is a strictly academic study based on a three-year research project focused on teachers of urban Black students. The second builds on that research but weaves in my personal and professional experiences as a teacher trainer, offering practical insights for educators, policymakers, and communities alike. Both books are now moving toward press.

While I’ve been busy behind the scenes, the recent and dramatic moves by the Trump administration have made it impossible for me to remain silent. The urgency of this moment compels me to share portions of my findings and reflections publicly. What follows is one excerpt from my forthcoming work. I welcome your engagement—please feel free to ask questions, comment, or share your thoughts. In Sounding the Alarm, I explore the de-professionalization of teaching, a phenomenon documented by education journalists and scholars such as Dana Goldstein (The Teacher Wars), Leslie Fenwick (Jim Crow’s Pink Slip), and others who have examined how political, economic, and cultural forces have chipped away at the professional standing of teachers across the U.S. This trend—reflected in growing scrutiny, disempowerment, and loss of autonomy—is deeply felt in schools across the nation. But I argue that while de-professionalization is widespread, it takes on a uniquely destructive character in urban schools that serve Black students because it is shaped by a fraught historical legacy of segregation and erasure.

When I work directly with urban educators in professional development settings as a trainer/coach, I intentionally root our conversations in this history. We explore how, since the era of desegregation, Black teachers have been systematically removed from the classroom—not due to incompetence, but because of white supremacist assumptions embedded in the legal and institutional mechanisms that implemented Brown v. Board of Education. Black schools were deemed "inferior" and thus shut down, and their teachers—many of whom were highly qualified and deeply respected in their communities—were fired or marginalized, often replaced by white educators unfamiliar with, or biased against, Black children.

My grandmothers lived through this history. They were brilliant, highly educated Black women at a time when teaching was one of the only careers open to women like them. My maternal grandmother held leadership positions in both segregated and integrated schools and fought to get Black teachers hired in the post-segregation era. Working in the Washington, DC superintendent’s office, she saw firsthand the long-term damage caused by this erasure of Black educational expertise—not only to the teachers themselves, but to the students who lost vital cultural knowledge and truth-telling about how to thrive in a racially unjust society. As she often reminded our family, “No one was telling these Black children the truth—about their potential and about the barriers that would be placed before them.”

This history still reverberates today. I’ve seen it in my research, not just as a legacy but as a current identity crisis among teachers of Black students—many of whom feel undervalued, micromanaged, and implicitly distrusted. They're treated not as professionals with degrees and skills, but as babysitters who need constant oversight. It’s no surprise, then, that these teachers often struggle to project confidence in the classroom, which in turn undermines their ability to build authentic relationships with students.

This crisis isn’t just personal—it’s structural. When teachers are disempowered, stripped of autonomy and trust, they are more likely to adopt punitive approaches to discipline, particularly in high-pressure environments. If we treat teachers like enforcers rather than educators—especially in schools serving Black children—then we replicate the very systems of control and surveillance we claim to be dismantling.

Sir Ken Robinson, in his widely viewed TED Talk, critiques this same era of education shaped by No Child Left Behind and its subsequent reform efforts. Drawing on global educational models, he argues that the over-reliance on standardized testing is a fundamental flaw—that real learning happens in the dynamic, relational space between teacher and student. He insists that teachers must be free to make informed, real-time decisions for their students' benefit, and constant testing severely undermines that freedom. I am deeply compelled by his argument, as are many educators and scholars. But when I first encountered it years ago, I also found myself wanting to yell at the screen. Because in America, that kind of responsive, relational teaching he champions does happen—but mostly in elite, well-funded private schools, many of which were created after desegregation specifically to keep white children away from integrated public schools. These are some of the places where I have had the most fun as a teacher trainer. Unfortunately, the freedom to teach creatively, to be treated as a trusted professional, is not extended equally. Urban teachers of Black children are not expected—or trusted—to be good enough to have that freedom. And this creates a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy: we deny them trust, strip them of autonomy, and then blame them for not teaching 'well enough.' Without naming and addressing this racialized disparity in expectations and opportunity, we can't fully engage with Robinson’s call to reimagine education.

Malcolm Gladwell touches on this in an episode of Revisionist History about Brown v. Board. He, like Leslie Fenwick, shares how children were integrated, but their teachers were not, which left generations of Black students without role models who looked like them and without educators who understood the racialized realities of their lives. Worse, these children were now being taught by educators who may have harbored biases—conscious or not—about their capabilities. Brown v. Board, though well-intentioned, may have exacerbated white educators' fears, reinforcing ideas that Black children were “trouble,” “behind,” or “less capable.”

That’s why in my trainings, I don’t just address implicit bias or child development in isolation. I frame these topics within the historical treatment of Black teachers and students, and ask participants to wrestle with a difficult question: Was the “stink of inferiority” ever really removed from the way we view Black children and those who teach them? Because if that lingering stain still exists, then it’s no wonder that teachers struggle, and no wonder that students sense the low expectations held for them—despite the best intentions of many educators.

In short, urban teachers of Black students are not simply struggling because they’re in underfunded or “difficult” schools. They are coping with a deeply racialized system that has always questioned their competence and diminished their worth. Understanding this helps us not only reframe the challenges of urban education, but also begin to repair the professional identities of teachers who are doing some of the most important, and most undermined, work in our society.

If we can wrap our minds around this, then we may also begin to see that the solution is not to further undermine public schools. It is not to strip funding from already struggling districts, dismantle the Department of Education, or continue shifting resources and trust toward charter networks and private institutions that often replicate the same inequities under different names. And it is certainly not to ignore or sanitize the painful and racialized history that has brought us to this point. Rather, the path forward demands that we first tell the truth—about how Black educators were displaced, how Black students were underestimated, and how the current system continues to reflect those assumptions. Then, and only then, can we collectively commit to doing right by all of our young people. That means doubling down on our investment in public education, not abandoning it. It means giving urban schools not only the budgets they need to function, but also the intellectual space to grow, innovate, and lead. It means trusting that excellence already exists in these communities and that, given the proper resources and respect, teachers and students alike can thrive. Public education remains one of the few remaining democratic promises of this country—but only if we choose to keep it, nurture it, and finally include those who have been systemically left out of its full benefits.