NEWSPAPER EDITORIAL
Feb 11, 2008 - The Dallas Morning News on finding better teachers, "Students Deserve Better: Disadvantaged children need the best teachers." They point to a lack of qualifications and experience and a salary gap in the poorest, citing a study by The Education Trust.
Lack of Experience
Even within Dallas schools, which say they are aggressively tackling this disparity, about 14 percent of teachers in the highest-poverty schools have fewer than three years of experience, compared with 9 percent of teachers in the lowest-poverty schools.Uncertified Teachers
About 32 percent of teachers assigned to high-poverty middle schools in Texas aren't fully certified in the subjects they teach. That compares with 19 percent in schools with the fewest low-income students. At the high school level, the gap widens. About 37 percent of teachers in high-poverty schools lack subject certification, compared with 16.1 percent in the most affluent high schools.----------------------------
TT - They don't link to the study or the press release from the Education Trust. The newspaper ignores one of the major findings of the study. Dallas and Austin have already acknowledged the problem and are working on it. Other districts like Galena Park, Leander, Mesquite, San Antonio and Ysleta are all districts that serve minority populations and are exceptions. They all have fewer novice teachers. San Antonio actually pays more to teachers in minority schools and Leandro pays teachers more on average than paid in the most affluent schools in the district.
You would think, wouldn't you, that the newspaper would question why wouldn't teachers who have greater experience be paid more than novice teachers? And why wouldn't teachers who are certified in their subjects be paid more than uncertified teachers? The basic assumption that paying a teacher more money will result in better grades when those teachers will still be unqualified and inexperienced is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Luring a warm body for the classroom to such districts is difficult. Luring qualified teachers may be impossible no matter what you pay them.
Teachers choose to work in districts for many reasons, including the living conditions in the community, job opportunities for spouses, educational opportunities for their children, crime rates and the housing market. Those are quality-of-life factors. Not because they're racists who don't want to work with minority populations which could be another logical assumption you could come to if you wanted, using the same data. Or that teachers were lazy because it is harder work to motivate a child whose parents don't care enough to support education or even teach children English at home. Then, too, the lack of discipline at home in the poorest districts often translates to problems in the classroom that no rational person would willingly accept.
There are lots of reasons why low-income schools hire teachers who aren't certified in their subject. No one else wants to work there.
And until such time that school districts demand standards of conduct in the low-income schools be the same as those found in other schools that don't have discipline problems, the schools will remain Blackboard Jungles. From choice, not demographics.
