Teachers tackle racial bias: 'We're tired of waiting'

The program, run in collaboration with the University of Washington and funded with a three-year grant from the National Education Association, is the outgrowth of meetings with parents and a survey of 11,000 Washington teachers and other public-school employees, reported The Seattle Times (http://bit.ly/2baaqKN).

In that survey, the teachers and others said their top priority, by an overwhelming margin, was addressing the differences in achievement by students of different races, socio-economic levels and other demographics.

The people who want the training "are the ones who know what it is like in the classroom," Ben Ibale, the union's human and civil rights coordinator, said about teachers across the state.

Black students, for example, are suspended at far greater rates, on average, than white or Asian or Latino students, according to Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction data.

At the recent training, the teachers discussed strategies to achieve those goals, such as home visits, finding ways to use students' home languages in class, and holding weekly student-teacher meetings.

Another participant said using Language Line, a phone-translation service, had helped in providing updates to families in multiple languages.