And even though African American students make up 17 percent of the nation’s public school enrollment, it is highly unlikely that African American students will encounter African American teachers who grasp the importance of the cultural values and characteristics of African American students, as approximately 6 percent of the U.S. teaching population are African American. This disparity of diversity in middle and high school teachers overall, creates a fertile bed for cultural incongruence, mismatch, or dissonance between African American students and teachers, especially in schools where most its student population is African American. In Tyrone Howard’s study entitled, ‘Powerful Pedagogy for African American Students: A Case of Four Teachers.’,
