Sacramento Bee

Poor students, green teachers

Report says inequity is likely to grow as standards kick in.

By Laurel Rosenhall
Thursday, December 8, 2005

California's lowest-performing students attend schools with the least-prepared teachers, and even as the consequences of state and federal accountability systems begin to set in, the inequity is likely to grow.

That's the picture painted by a 150-page report released Wednesday by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning.

Each year the Santa Cruz-based nonprofit documents the state's teacher work force and its distribution among the 6.3 million students in public school.

This year's report shows that the number of teachers with emergency or intern credentials has declined significantly.

But the report illustrates a looming crisis on several fronts:

* State accountability: For the first time, high school seniors must pass a math and English exit exam to graduate. But the report shows that one in four high school math and English teachers are not trained to teach those subjects. The lack of trained teachers is greatest at schools with the lowest pass rate and smallest at schools with high pass rates.

* Federal accountability: The federal No Child Left Behind law mandates that all teachers be "highly qualified" by the end of the current school year and that teachers of varying experience be distributed equally among all schools. It also requires that all students reach proficiency in math and English by 2014.

But the report shows that sixth-graders in schools with the lowest test scores have a three in 10 chance of having had more than one underprepared teacher, while sixth-graders at schools with the highest test scores have a one in 50 chance of learning from more than one such teacher.

* Supply and demand: California's student population is growing - but so is the number of teachers nearing retirement. The report says that about 97,000 of the state's 306,000 teachers are over age 50, and the number of new teachers is not keeping pace.

The state is expected to be short by tens of thousands of teachers in the coming decade.

* Distribution of new teachers: The fastest-growing way for people to enter the teaching profession is by becoming an intern while pursuing a credential. Unlike student teachers, interns are not supervised by experienced teachers.

The report shows that they overwhelmingly work in schools that serve students of color: 85 percent work in schools where at least 60 percent of the students are nonwhite.

"Underprepared" teachers include interns and teachers with emergency credentials.

Under No Child Left Behind, interns can be considered "highly qualified" - but not teachers with emergency credentials.

Margaret Gaston, executive director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, said she believes teachers in both categories are in need of more training.

"These individuals have not yet met the state's requirements for the preliminary credential," she said.

But David Gordon, Sacramento County superintendent of schools, said interns can be good teachers if they're in quality training programs.

He said the report highlights several areas needing change, but that educators should "not get caught in the theory that if a person has an intern credential that by their nature they're a substandard teacher."

The report includes a raft of recommendations, from creating financial incentives for teachers to work in the neediest schools to allowing retired teachers to come back and teach part time. It calls on the state to reinvest in teacher training programs that have lost funding in recent years.

Education leaders said the report sheds light on critical issues.

Alan Bersin, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's secretary for education, said the governor intends to develop the teacher work force.

"There is an interest and a focus by the governor on infrastructure for teaching and learning that parallels his concern for roads, canals, bridges and levees," Bersin said in a telephone interview.

Sandra Jackson, spokeswoman for the California Teachers Association, said the union also wants to help disadvantaged students.

"We need to find a more equitable way to ensure that students in those communities have some of the more experienced teachers," she said.

"It's a dilemma. And we'll be working on it next year."

About the writer:

• The Bee's Laurel Rosenhall can be reached at (916) 321-1083 or lrosenhall@sacbee.com.

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