Teacher quality recommendations
The Education Trust in Washington, D.C., released today its recommendations for addressing teacher inequality in schools with mostly poor and minority students.
Those include:
- Scaling back prerogatives that allow experienced teachers to pick their assignments
- Providing salary incentives to attract high-quality, experienced principals to work in schools that serve high concentrations of poor and minority students and linking their pay to improved conditions and improved achievement (Sound familiar?)
- Identifying effective teachers and paying them more to teach in schools with shortages
- Taking a cue from professional sports and start using a "draft strategy," which would put high-poverty, struggling schools at the head of the hiring line, allowing them to have the first pick of teaching talent
- Giving teachers who work in the poorest communities fully paid sabbaticals
- Reserving tenure for those teachers who demonstrate effectiveness at producing student learning
- Banning unfair budgeting practices that allow the most advantaged schools to "buy" more than their share of the most highly paid teachers
All states, including North Carolina, must submit equity plans to the U.S. Secretary of Education by July 7. What do you think of these recommendations. Are they needed and would they work in Guilford County?
Comments (6)
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Changes have to be made and I don't know what the best solution is. I do know that I would not teach at any of the Mission Possible schools despite the pay bonus. It's difficult enough to teach at a "regular" school in Guilford County and even more so at a school with a high poverty rate and students with a lack of resources and various social issues. I grew up on welfare and I know the difference it can make in a child's life to have a caring adult that believes in them. However, it's hard to handle the physical and emotional stress of teaching now and I know I would not be the right person to work in a highly impacted environment without the necessary resources and support systems in place.
Teachers will be more apt to work at these schools when they know that discipline issues will be taken care of swiftly and fairly, when they know that will be given help in obtaining classroom supplies, and when there is support from the community. Simply offering more money is not enough. Teachers need more than just incentive pay to work at schools that no one else wants to work it. There is a reason that it's hard to fill positions at these schools and those reasons need to be taken care of.
Posted on June 9, 2006 5:17 AM
Correction: Teachers need more than just incentive pay to work at schools that no one else wants to work at.
Posted on June 9, 2006 5:19 AM
Andi,
I think that most positions were filled with MP (mission possible)-- but we will have to wait to see how they do in their jobs. In the mean time teachers that were misplaced due to NO GROWTH or less than 1 years growth are now being placed in all other schools, so we will have to see if they were bad teachers overall or just not capable of teaching the neediest children.
And also, the neediest schools get so much more per child than the average school, that they should have more than enough money for supplies, support and training.
Posted on June 9, 2006 12:47 PM
Debora-
All that extra casheroo does not often filter down to individual teachers' classrooms. The administrators control it, and it can go for any number of pet projects. This is equally true for all those cities and states which have such "inflated" per-pupil budgets.
Posted on June 11, 2006 9:25 AM
Do you mean the onsite admin, or downtown. I have served on 4 leadership teams and although we don't get any title one or equity plus money, I was told that each school that qualified got that money. I have heard of many things like trips to the zoo, mountains, carowinds etc being the receiptant of that money. Now I think all that is nice, but not if you can't read and write on grade level. Spend that money on tutoring, supplies and true enrichment trips-- not just fun trips. That is only one area of questionable spending.
Posted on June 11, 2006 11:53 AM
I am reporting the words of a family member who has taught at more than one school. I was not told if the concern was with administration within one or more specific school itself or downtown. I do know one of the schools had a rather incompetent administrator (several years ago), who has been transferred and, I believe, demoted (maybe, hopefully, "retired").
Posted on June 12, 2006 10:11 AM