Our most inexperienced teachers are teaching Colorado’s neediest children. And once they get a few years of experience under their belts, those teachers often move on.
Unfortunately, the children often don’t have that same luxury. Yet in the push for school reform, little has been done about this problem.
A recent Greeley Tribune analysis found that schools in Greeley-Evans School District 6 with the lowest test scores also had the poorest students and least-experienced teachers. It’s a classic chicken-or-egg scenario: Which came first, the low test scores or the inexperienced teachers? The problem is duplicated across Colorado, education experts say, but the extent varies by district.
In 2004, teachers at Colorado schools rated “unsatisfactory” by the state had an average of 5.5 years of experience, according to a study done by The Alliance for Quality Teaching. That compares to 11.4 years of experience at schools rated “high” by the state, or 11.1 years of experience for schools deemed “excellent.”
One factor driving the problem is burnout. Young teachers set out to change the world, starting with the neediest students first, only to discover they can’t – or the bureaucracy, CSAPs and district politics beat them down first. The other problem is whether or not there are any incentives to keep teachers in hard-to-staff schools. Veteran teachers tend to drift not only to high-performing schools, but to classes with the easiest-to-teach children, such as advanced placement courses.
So, educators have to be more creative.
Robert Reichardt, executive director of The Alliance for Quality Teaching, says there are three ways to fix the teaching gap: a weighted student funding formula; accountability measures; and regulatory measures.
Regulatory measures, such as requiring teachers to work in low-performing schools for a set amount of time, won’t work. Good results rarely come from forcing someone to work somewhere they don’t want to be.
Colorado has chosen accountability, which holds districts accountable for failing schools. It’s prompted some creative measures, such as the provision in Denver’s proposed ProComp system that would give teachers “battle pay” for working in low-performing schools.
“It creates pressures on districts to be thoughtful about what they’re doing,” Reichardt said.
The weighted-student formula, an idea gaining traction with some Colorado lawmakers and educators, has been used in Canada for about 30 years and is popping up in several U.S. cities. The money follows the student. Rather than using the same formula for every school to determine teacher-student ratios, each school could decide how it spends its money. For example, a school with 400 students, 380 of them poor, may decide it needs different staffing levels than a school without poor students, who have more challenges.
The bottom line, Reichardt says, is “we have to be thoughtful about how we support new teachers. We have a sink-or-swim attitude.”
Unfortunately, the students also can sink with that attitude, and lawmakers and educators need to have more discussions about fresher solutions, such as using the weighted-student formula.
