Black students make up around a quarter of the city’s more than one million public-school pupils. However, Black instructors are disproportionately underrepresented among the faculty who teach them.

Only 19% of educators in New York City’s public schools are Black—and only 4% of the city’s educators are Black men.

The scarcity of Black men is glaring for a system in which Black male students are more likely to be chronically absent and are among those least likely to graduate from high school in four years.

To better understand this disparity, the NYCity News Service spoke with educators, students and activists of color to examine why the problem persists—and the ways it could be solved.

Why are there so few Black men in NYC education?

Experts say Black men often leave teaching because the pay does not match the amount of work and education required for the job.

Jose Vilson, executive director and co-founder of EduColor, an organization dedicated to social justice issues in education, said notoriously low salaries are a major deterrent. Public school teachers must complete the kind of professional certifications and higher education programs required of more lucrative careers. Yet they only receive a starting salary of $61,070 in New York.

“We have the similar rings that we have to jump through, and yet time and again, we’re not seeing salaries match that level of expertise and certification,” Vilson said.

Black male educators also leave the field when they bump up against cultural expectations about the markers of success.

Corey Carter, assistant director of the Sherman Scholars Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, works to increase the number of highly skilled Black male educators. He believes Black success often does not look like becoming a teacher; it’s not necessarily a profession held in high regard.

The challenges faced by Black students are another reason they may not want to return to the classroom as teachers.

Read the full article about Black male educators by Amaya McDonald at Chalkbeat.