Cairo Association of Teachers - Newsletter

CAT Tracks for June 13, 2006 STATUS/IMPACT OF TEACHER "QUALITY"

Couple of articles from the Southeast Missourian...

Federal deadline on teacher certification coming next month

CALLIE CLARK MILLER ~ Southeast Missourian

Few Missouri districts have achieved the federal target of all teachers being rated highly qualified.

Their students' ACT scores are higher than the statewide average.

They have more teaching experience and have fewer students drop out of school than the statewide average.

Their students are twice as likely to go on to a four-year college after high school than other students in Missouri.

But according to the federal government, they're not highly qualified.

That's the situation the Leopold School District -- and hundreds of other small, rural schools in Missouri -- face as the July deadline to meet the federal No Child Left Behind Act's requirement for 100 percent of classes to be taught by highly qualified teachers approaches.

At Leopold, the irony is that while 100 percent of the teachers are fully certified by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, only 84 percent are considered highly qualified.

Under No Child Left Behind, teachers must be certified in all of the subjects and grade levels they teach to be highly qualified.

"We're so small, we have a hard time finding teachers qualified in all the areas we need them to teach," said Derek Urhahn, superintendent at Leopold.

In Urhahn's district, a math teacher might also take on business classes and physical education classes. Or an art teacher might also teach Spanish and family and consumer sciences.

The penalties

Originally, NCLB required that all core subject classes (math, science, language arts and social studies) be taught by highly qualified teachers by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. States that failed to meet that requirement face financial penalties from the federal government.

In May, the U.S. Department of Education announced that no states were on track to meet the requirement.

Based on the 2005 school report cards -- the latest data available from DESE -- fewer than 40 of the 524 school districts in Missouri had achieved the 100 percent target, including all Southeast Missouri districts.

Jackson School District comes the closest at 99.9 percent of classes taught by highly qualified teacher. Cape Girardeau School District had 95.9 percent highly qualified in 2005, and Scott City had 97.2 percent.

Because so many districts were struggling, Missouri and several other states have asked the U.S. Department of Education for a one-year extension on the requirement's deadline.

Randy Rook, DESE's director of federal grants management, said he will know whether Missouri has received the extension in July.

"Missouri has some advantages other states don't have," Rook said.

For one, the state has required subject matter of testing using an assessment called Praxis since the 1990s, said Rook.

The alternatives

For those teachers who are not currently "highly qualified," there are a few choices for coming into compliance:

* Teachers can demonstrate that they are highly qualified by taking an assessment to prove their knowledge of a particular subject.

* Teachers can go back to college to get the necessary courses and/or degree(s) needed to teach a particular subject.

Leopold's Carlton Thoma is among those currently teaching subjects they are not certified in. In Thoma's case, his original bachelor's degree is business administration, but his lifetime teaching certification is in math. At Leopold, Thoma teaches high school math and a business class.

Under the federal law, he is not qualified to teach the business class.

"I actually have more experience in business than in math," said Thoma, who also teaches physical education classes.

For those classes he isn't certified in, Thoma said he puts in extra ime preparing and making sure he's following the school's curriculum guidelines.

He isn't sure what the new requirement will eventually mean for him, but he is certain of one thing:

"I know people with doctorates, people with master's and bachelor's," he said. "And just because you have a master's degree or a doctorate doesn't make you a better teacher. That comes down to being able to teach, to get the attention of your students, and to meet your objectives."

Why Missouri is behind

Educators say there are several reasons districts are struggling to find highly qualified teachers.

"The standards are very high for all of the goals NCLB requires," said Rook. "There's the lofty goal of having all students proficient by 2014. The steps required to get there are tough, and no question part of that process has to be highly qualified teachers."

For smaller schools, it's often lack of incentives such as low salaries that makes finding good candidates difficult.

"We're fortunate that we do get applicants and are able to fill positions that way," said Dr. Rita Fisher, assistant superintendent for the Jackson School District, where 99 percent of classes are taught by highly qualified teachers. "But I'm sure smaller districts are having a tough time."

Fisher said even Jackson -- the largest district in Cape Girardeau, Bollinger, Scott or Perry counties -- has seen a shortage of teachers in certain subject areas in recent years.

"Math and science have become difficult. We're losing those high-level math and physics teachers because they can make more money in a different field," said Fisher.

Overall though, Fisher feels this NCLB requirement is a positive one.

"Every child does deserve to have a highly qualified teacher," she said.

For smaller schools, making that happen means helping teachers get the extra college classes or take the tests needed to become certified.

"We have a responsibility as school districts to continue professional development with teachers so that it's not just that piece of paper that says we're highly qualified, but that we are actually highly qualified," Fisher said.

Study says poor and minority students are shortchanged on teacher quality

MARK BLISS ~ Southeast Missourian

Low-income and minority students in the nation's public schools often are shortchanged in teacher quality, the one resource they most need to succeed in the classroom, a nationwide study says.

"Research has shown that when it comes to the distribution of the best teachers, poor and minority students do not get their fair share," the Education Trust said in a just-released study of teacher quality in Ohio, Wisconsin and Illinois.

The study by the Washington-based, not-for-profit think tank found:

* Students in high-poverty and high-minority schools are saddled with novice teachers almost twice as often as children in low-poverty districts, the study said.

* Classes in high-poverty and high-minority secondary schools are more likely to be taught by teachers without a major or minor in the subject they teach.

* In Wisconsin, almost one of every two teachers in the highest-minority schools had less than five years of experience compared with only one in five in the schools with the lowest minority enrollment.

* In the highest poverty schools in Chicago, one in eight teachers had failed the test of basic skills.

Cape Girardeau public school officials say minority and low-income students in their district aren't being shortchanged.

But state education statistics for the 2004-2005 school year show that Jefferson Elementary School -- which had the most low-income and black students among the district's five elementary schools -- had a teaching staff with fewer years of experience on average than the other elementary schools.

Jefferson School's professional staff averaged 9.7 years of experience compared with a high of 16.2 years of experience on average at Alma Schrader Elementary.

At Jefferson School, low-income students -- those receiving free or reduced-price lunches -- make up more than 85 percent of enrollment. Nearly 50 percent of the school's students are black.

At Alma Schrader, only 20.9 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch and blacks account for only 6.9 percent of enrollment, according to the district's "report card" filed with the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Jefferson lags behind Blanchard, Clippard and Alma Schrader schools in terms of the number of teachers with advanced degrees and is only ahead of Franklin Elementary School. Nearly 46 percent of Jefferson's professional staff have advanced degrees. By contrast, 58 percent of Clippard's professional staff has advanced degrees.

But Gerald Richards, Cape Girardeau public schools personnel director, cautions against reading too much into statistics.

'Snapshot in time'

"All the statistics, regardless of what we look at, are just a snapshot in time. Those things change every single day," Richards said.

While he agrees that more experienced teachers are an asset, Richards said it's important not to discount the value of new teachers either.

"They bring in new ideas and bring in enthusiasm and motivation," said Richards.

He said teachers at Jefferson Elementary School for the most part aren't looking to transfer to one of the other elementary schools.

The federal No Child Left Behind Act requires the nation's schools to have all classes taught by highly qualified teachers as of July.

Under federal law, teachers must be certified in all of the subjects and grade levels they teach to be considered highly qualified.

Ninety-six percent of Cape Girardeau public school teachers are listed as highly qualified. Richards said the rest typically are in the process of receiving the necessary state certification.

Such bureaucracy can be time consuming. Richards said the state still hasn't come up with certification requirements for the district's aviation instructor even though the state has approved the aviation course and the district began teaching it at the Cape Girardeau Career and Technology Center last fall.

"Those things can tear your hair out whenever you look at statistics," he said.

The national study defines high-poverty schools as those where 63 percent or more of the students receive free or reduced-price lunch.

The Cairo, Ill., School District qualifies as a high-poverty district. Almost all of its students receive free or reduced-price lunches, superintendent Gary Whitledge said.

More than 90 percent of its students are black.

The study would suggest that the district would be full of inexperienced teachers. But Whitledge said just the opposite is true. Teaching experience averages just more than 18 years.

The superintendent credits that to a declining enrollment that has forced the district to lay off teachers who have only taught in the district for a few years.

That poses a problem in the future when those experienced teachers retire, Whitledge said. The district, he said, could see its teaching experience average drop sharply as new, inexperienced teachers are hired to fill those slots.

And that could affect learning. "I think common sense will tell us that an experienced teacher is going to deliver the service a little bit better," Whitledge said.