3.4 Distribute Teachers to Schools
Schools with high concentrations of low income and minority students need effective and well-prepared teachers. However, these schools often have some of the toughest working conditions in the education system. Within a few years, talented teachers in many of these schools either leave the profession or move to a school where there are fewer distractions and more support.
There are at least two basic approaches to affect where talented teachers work: “push” and “pull.”
“Push” approaches directly assign teachers to schools, modifying collective bargaining agreements where necessary to increase the power of the district to deploy human resources centrally.
“Pull” approaches use incentives to attract effective teachers to choose such assignments on their own. Such incentives include promises about working conditions, recruitment of a strong school leader, arrangements to move teachers as a group, reduced or flexible work assignments, and (occasionally) increased compensation.
Because inexperienced teachers earn lower wages than experienced ones, a school with a large percentage of inexperienced teachers has low staff costs. If the ratio of students to teachers in such a school is the same as that in a school with high staff costs, the net effect is that the costlier school with more experienced teachers is subsidized by the one with less experienced teachers. Usually, this means that money flows away from educating poor kids. This pattern occurs frequently, as documented by Education Trust West in its report The Hidden Gap. In order to expose and confront this inequitable practice, Oakland Unified School District uses actual salary costs in its personnel accounting. It was the first district in America to adopt this practice.
Next: 3.5 Develop Teachers on the Job
Is this effect more of an inter-district or intra-district issue?
I think its both. You see massive inter-district variation combined with intra-district variation on the way schools are staffed and the level to which they are budgeted. Personnel counts for the bulk of costs.
The the pull forces in California schools are stymied by a breakdown in clear, updated information about available positions in schools districts around the state. A website, http://www.edjoin.org has tried to provide one online location for all individuals seeking employment in schools throughout the state. However, even this website is not consistently updated at the district level.
What does this mean?
It means if I am new to teaching, am ready to begin the process of searching for a job anywhere in California, and am willing to work in California’s toughest districts – I cannot be sure that the job I apply for is actually open nor can I be sure that someone will review my application. In fact, a study in the early 2000s showed that in large urban districts almost half of all resumes are NEVER READ.
This breakdown in information as well as long delays in teacher hiring (see http://tntp.org/publications/reports/missed-opportunities/) create an inhospitable environment for even the most passionate & effective future teachers.
An important question moving forward is – how can school districts provide timely, accurate job information for teacher candidates?
In addition to the “Push” and “Pull” approaches mentioned, there is a third strategy that has gotten far less attention from the media and the policy community: retain and build. With very few exceptions, each year even in the most challenging environments, the majority of teachers assigned to a school remain there. Of those who stay, neither pushing nor pulling is likely to help them improve their practice, especially in critical subject matter areas such as science.
A 2007 survey of elementary teachers in the San Francisco Bay region conducted by the Lawrence Hall of Science found that 41 percent of respondents felt less prepared to teach science as compared to other subjects, yet more than two-thirds said they had fewer than seven hours of professional development in science education over the last three years. More than a third said they received none at all.
In dynamic environments where students and teachers are more likely to thrive, attention is paid to building subject matter content knowledge and pedagogical skills, developing solutions to tough problems by encouraging collaboration between and among teachers, and using student data and other relevant assessment information to guide instruction and shape professional development. Building capacity of the teacher workforce to meet everyday classroom challenges may not have the drawing power – or the drama – of other currently popular approaches, but it is a strategy that deserves equal play if we want to bring about the increases in students’ learning that Californians would like to see.
Thanks, Margaret. The Lawrence Hall of Science study is interesting… and discouraging. Among the chestnuts: 16% of science resource teachers responded that they feel “only somewhat or not adequately prepared to teach science.”