Riverside Press Enterprise

Editorial: School inequities
August 5, 2005

The courts will decide whether California fudges the number of qualified teachers it has, as a new lawsuit charges. But the litigation underscores a persistent inequity in California public education: The neediest schools get the least-qualified teachers.

The state needs to find ways to encourage good teachers to work at low-performing schools, regardless of how the legal fight plays out.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday by the advocacy group Californians for Justice, accuses the state of creating a new individualized internship certificate that turns emergency-credentialed teachers into "highly qualified" instructors required by No Child Left Behind. That boosts the state's performance under the federal law.

The state Commission on Teacher Credentialing defends the internship certificates as compliant with federal law. The commission's April 2005 report says the panel issued 2,627 such certificates in 2003-04.

But look past the semantics of qualification to the challenges facing poor and heavily minority schools. The Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning found in 2004 that California schools with large minority populations have five times the percentage of underprepared teachers than do schools with few minorities.

And a study this year by Education Trust-West found that teachers at the poorest schools often made less money than teachers at better schools, even within the same district. Why the pay differential? Experience and qualifications.

These dynamics perversely punish poorly performing schools, which should be getting the best teachers.

There are ways to change that: Districts could offer bonuses to lure good teachers to poorly performing schools, along with perks like additional teacher training.

Teachers at the neediest schools should earn higher salaries than those at better schools, as an incentive to take the more challenging work. In return, the teachers would have to make long-term commitments to stay there.

These steps would be a start toward improvement. Some California schools face startling inequities. It should not require lawsuits to fix this glaring disservice to kids.

<- Back to Media Clips