The right way to hire teachers

The gist of the Nov. 16 news article “In search of Hispanic teachers” was that, because the number of Hispanic students is growing, Prince George’s County public schools and school systems elsewhere want to hire more Hispanic teachers. This is untenable as a matter of both law and logic.  

Federal civil-rights statutes and the Constitution forbid hiring teachers with an eye on race or ethnicity. The Supreme Court has expressly rejected the notion that faculty racial percentages should mirror student-body racial percentages (Hazelwood School District v. United States, 1977), as well as the “role model” justification for faculty discrimination (Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education, 1986). As Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote in the latter case, “Carried to its logical extreme, the idea that [minority] students are better off with [minority] teachers could lead to the very system the Court rejected in Brown v. Board of Education.”

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Nor can the fact that many Hispanic students may need teachers who can speak Spanish justify a preference for Hispanic teachers. Many Hispanic teachers do not speak Spanish, and many non-Hispanic teachers do; so if the aim is to hire teachers who can speak Spanish, it makes no sense to hire on the basis of language stereotyping.

 It is also wrong to suggest there is a monolithic “cultural heritage” shared by everyone with a Spanish surname.

Schools should forget about politically correct bean-counting and hire the best-qualified people. 

Roger Clegg, Falls Church

The writer is president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity.