Teacher Recruitment:
Pulling out all the stops

Chicago recruits from near and far
A place to call home--at a discount
Signing bonuses aren't just for athletes
Retired teachers return to active duty

Chicago recruits from near and far

The Chicago Public Schools' decision to invest $5.1 million in teacher recruitment appears to be paying off. Though far from a panacea for the city's long-term demand for teachers, the recruitment effort school officials have mounted in the nation's third-largest district shows signs of attracting prospective teachers who might otherwise have overlooked the Windy City. According to district officials, the school system hired 2,236 new teachers for the 2000-01 school year.

But, with more than one-third of the schools' 26,000 teachers expected to reach the minimum retirement age of 55 in the next five years, the district will have to continue its aggressive recruitment campaign.

The twin pillars of Chicago's teacher recruitment program are an initiative that targets students at Big Ten universities and the district's new Global Educators Outreach Program. School administrators and teachers regularly visit Big Ten campuses, most of which are located in Illinois and other Midwestern states, to form partnerships with college officials and talk to students about teaching in Chicago.

A student-teacher program established by the Chicago Public Schools and the University of Illinois has dramatically increased the number of hires from that university. It helps that Chicago is seen as being on the cutting edge of education reform. "We're making progress in improving the schools, and as a result the district is getting a ton of positive press," Chicago Teachers Union president and AFT vice president Tom Reece says.

New teachers employed by the Chicago school district "know we are going to provide them with a good environment," Chicago school board president Gerry Chico told the Chicago Tribune. "They also know we are going to give them a decent class size to work with, good students and a promotion policy that respects teachers."

Like other districts, Chicago is also looking overseas for new teachers. This school year, as part of its new Global Educators Outreach Program, the district hired 36 teachers from more than 20 countries.

Many of these educators have been recruited to teach in critical-shortage areas such as math, science and foreign languages. A native of Nigeria, Florence Onubogu was hired last summer to teach German at a Chicago high school. She came to Chicago by way of Austria where there is a surplus of teachers, she says. Onubogu was employed as a secretary in Austria. "I wanted to return to the teaching profession, so when a friend in Illinois told me about a newspaper ad for teachers in Chicago, I decided to apply," says Onubogu, who holds a Ph.D. in German and French.

Teachers hired through the Global Educators Outreach Program are required to earn a master's degree in education within three years. Onubogu, a member of the Chicago Teachers Union, takes classes at DePaul University. "I see myself and the other teachers [from overseas] as role models who can help Chicago students broaden their perspective and learn about other cultures."

Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City are among the other districts that have gone global in the pursuit of prospective teachers. Not everyone, however, is pleased with the idea of recruiting teachers from other countries. Houston Federation of Teachers president Gayle Fallon has been critical of her school district's proposal to recruit teachers from Moscow. Fallon is particularly concerned about plans for a shortened alternative-certification program. "All these games to attract people are nothing more than a Band-Aid," she says. You can't rush people through a program and then put them in a position that "was once filled by a qualified, experienced person," Fallon adds.

Low pay that continues to drain the profession of quality teachers--not the lack of qualified people--is the biggest obstacle to recruiting and retaining good teachers, Fallon asserts.

In the final analysis, what will really attract teachers to Chicago schools, and keep them there, are the salaries and working conditions, Reece emphasizes. While far from perfect, he says, the partnership between the CTU and top school district officials "has put us all on the same side in trying to improve pay and benefits."

A place to call home--at a discount

Terry Burgess loves teaching. But, like many of her colleagues, she has thought about switching to a better-paying career. That is, until she heard about the federal Teacher Next Door program, which allowed her to buy a five-bedroom house in Queens, N.Y., for about $100,000--half the market rate.

A United Federation of Teachers member and special education teacher at Clara Cardwell Elementary School in Brooklyn, Burgess and her young daughter are planning to move into their new place sometime this month after some needed repairs are completed. Burgess is one of a growing number of teachers who are benefiting from efforts to offer teachers non-monetary incentives--including low-interest mortgages, loan forgiveness, housing allowances and day-care subsidies--to attract them to the profession or keep them from leaving it.

The Teacher Next Door program, modeled after a similar initiative for police officers, allows certified teachers to buy houses owned by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), typically in economically distressed neighborhoods, at a 50 percent discount. In return, teachers are required to live in the house for at least three years. For Burgess, it was too good to pass up; she will pay only $100 more per month to own the large house than she paid to rent a two-bedroom apartment. "You don't want to quit a job you like just so you can make more money to afford to buy a house," she says.

Across the country, similar housing incentive programs are popping up in response to teacher shortages. In California, for example, the Extra Credit Teacher Home Purchase Program, which was launched last year, offers reduced-rate loans and assistance with down payments. Recipients can save up to $37,000 over the course of a 30-year, $150,000 mortgage. In an interesting twist, the program is open only to teachers who commit to work for five years in a school on the state's "low-performing" list.

While home-purchase incentives can be a great asset for teachers who are committed to the profession over the long term, they matter much less to beginning teachers. "We can offer new teachers all these incentives" but still have trouble attracting them "because we're not paying them competitively" compared to other professions, says Ted Thornton, human resources director for the Baltimore Public Schools. New teachers, in particular, he adds, will tend to rent an apartment and decide if they like the city and the job before they think about buying a house.

With that tendency in mind, the Baltimore-based Abell Foundation is working with a variety of partners to renovate an apartment complex in the city that will serve as rental housing for teachers. In addition to offering lower rents, the complex will provide teachers--unmarried, most likely--a chance to interact with other new teachers in a location that's near shopping and mass transportation, says Bob Embry, who heads the foundation. He hopes the complex will be ready for the 2002-03 school year.

In most big cities, where entry-level teachers often don't earn enough to afford their own apartments, teachers often share housing. It's not unusual to find four or five of them sharing a place, says Kent Mitchell, president of United Educators of San Francisco. "That's not a good way to create stability in the work force," he comments.

Mitchell and other leaders in the city came up with an idea: Take a section of a playground at one elementary school and build a 40-unit apartment block there to serve as affordable teacher housing. Unfortunately, the project unraveled before it got very far, but Mitchell is looking into other efforts to deal with the housing crunch in one of the most expensive cities in the country.

Signing bonuses aren't just for athletes

If you had thousands to spend on an effort to improve teacher recruitment and retention, how would you use it? That question has generated a lot of debate--and controversy--especially in Massachusetts, which has chosen to offer $20,000 "signing bonuses" to some new teachers in the last two years.

Massachusetts probably attracted the most attention with its program, which included nationwide recruiting for candidates, but a number of states and school districts are offering financial incentives as a way to recruit teachers to tough-to-fill jobs. Some, such as Florida Gov. Jeb Bush's recent proposal to pay new teachers who move to Florida a $1,000 bonus, seem almost insulting by comparison. Other states, such as Utah, are considering $20,000 bonuses for new math, science and technology teachers.

To some experienced teachers--and their union leaders--the idea of paying hefty bonuses to new hires who are typically coming to teaching from routes other than the traditional four-year undergraduate education degree, is an affront to classroom veterans. Some AFT leaders in Massachusetts are blunt in their opinions. "It's a bad idea," says Joseph Gauvain, president of the Lynn Teachers Union. "It's unfair to those people who are here and have busted their backs for 20 years." Ed Doherty, president of the Boston Teachers Union (BTU) and an AFT vice president, notes that "there's a high degree of resentment" about the notion that someone who has never taught can change careers and become an instant success in the classroom.

Nevertheless, the Massachusetts program and others like it are achieving one of their goals: to attract talented, enthusiastic candidates to the profession--people like Bill Triant. A Harvard graduate, Triant was planning to go on to medical school before he heard about the program. The Massachusetts program, largely modeled on the approach used by Teach for America, includes seven weeks of intensive summer training, a dose of student teaching and help from an experienced mentor during the first year on the job.

The fast-track certification process was even more important than the money to this novice teacher. "Not to say that I didn't appreciate the bonus," says Triant, who is teaching algebra and economics at Boston's Charlestown High School, "but it honestly was not that important to me." In fact, he adds, many of his colleagues don't even know about his bonus because he doesn't talk about it much. "I wanted to come in as a regular teacher and not broadcast it," he says.

As for the short preparation period, Triant admits he was "a little lost" at first in the classroom, but no matter what the training, "there's always going to be a baptism by fire when you're a 22-year-old teaching 18-year-olds in an urban high school."

A big issue for critics of signing bonuses is whether the money would be better spent beefing up programs for new-teacher induction and support. As Doherty of the BTU points out, "We lose an awful lot of teachers after a year or two in the classroom." He and others suggest that more use of skilled veteran teachers as mentors and partners for the newcomers could reduce some of that turnover. Even the Massachusetts bonus program had a 20-percent attrition rate in its first year, according to a recent analysis conducted by the Boston Herald. That means a significant number of candidates took their $8,000 initial bonus (they get an additional $4,000 in each of the next three years), and left within a year.

In Florida, the much more modest $1,000 bonus proposal attracted scorn from AFT leaders such as Pat Tornillo, executive vice president of United Teachers of Dade and an AFT vice president. "It's a gimmick, and it's not going to work." The $1,000 bonus, Tornillo says, "isn't going to attract and retain the kind of teachers we need in Florida. It's not a substitute for making salaries more attractive."

Retired teachers return to active duty

After 35 years as a social studies teacher, Ernie Lotano still had the energy and enthusiasm that first drew him to the teaching profession. "I'm 59 years old and in the prime of my career," boasts Lotano, a former vice president of the Schenectady (N.Y.) Federation of Teachers. But a generous retirement package offered by the Schenectady school district was too much to pass up. So, at the end of the 1999-2000 school year, Lotano retired.

"I had no problem staying on [as a teacher]," he explains. "But the financial deal I was offered convinced me that it was a good time to retire."

Lotano, who has since taken a job with a nearby Catholic high school, does not rule out returning to teach in the public school system. But first he would have to be assured that his pension benefits would not be penalized. "If a public school offered me a position that didn't affect my pension, I would probably go back," he says.

With New York state already seeing signs of a teacher shortage, luring retired teachers back to the classroom is a goal shared both by state officials and by the New York State United Teachers (NYSUT). "Offering incentives to encourage some retired teachers to return to the classroom and providing additional mentoring opportunities for first-year teachers are smart and effective strategies," NYSUT first vice president Antonia Cortese says.

NYSUT projects that schools in the state will have to fill 100,000 teaching positions during the next five years. The AFT state affiliate has expressed support for a proposed "returnment" policy that would allow retired teachers to come back to teaching without losing their pension benefits. In a recent survey, 61 percent of the senior teachers questioned said they would be willing to come back to teaching--full-time or part-time--after they retired if they could do so without losing their pension benefits, a NYSUT statement on returnment points out.

"Providing an incentive to encourage experienced, certified teachers to return may be good for these teachers--but it's even better for students, especially those who have the greatest needs and face the greatest challenges," Cortese points out.

Last year, California Gov. Gray Davis signed into law legislation similar to what is being proposed in New York. It, too, allows retired teachers to return to active duty without their pensions being affected. At least three other states--Florida, Louisiana and Texas--have financial-incentive programs that are designed to retain teachers nearing retirement.

Cortese, an AFT vice president, stresses that a returnment policy is just one part of the solution to the teacher shortage. "We also must do much more to retain those bright young people who have chosen teaching as a profession," she says. "Unfortunately, too many new teachers now leave our ranks in frustration over low salaries, lack of public support and inadequate training."

Since his retirement as an elementary school teacher in Plattsburgh, N.Y., Dick McTigue has taken on assignments as a long-term substitute guidance counselor, a shortage area for some school districts.

Even with a returnment policy that allows retired teachers to maintain their full pension benefits, many retirees will be reluctant to return to a school system that is, in many ways, much different from the one they started their careers in, says McTigue, a former president of the Plattsburgh Federation of Teachers. Standards and the new emphasis placed on test scores "have put additional demands on teachers who oftentimes don't have the training or resources they need to keep up with these changes."

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