Teacher quality: Some schools shortchanged

The high-needs schools that could get hit hardest under accountability provisions included in the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLBA) are the same ones that currently get short shrift from policymakers when it comes to fulfilling the law's mandate for teacher quality--a proven component in raising student achievement. That's the picture that emerges from "Quality Counts 2003," Education Week's annual survey of standards-based reform around the states.

The latest installment of the report, released at a Jan. 7 press conference in Washington, D.C., focuses on efforts to recruit, prepare and retain qualified teachers. The issue is a pressing one since NCLBA, the latest reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, requires states to ensure that all teachers in core academic subjects are "highly qualified" by the end of the 2005-06 school year.

Meeting that mandate will be challenging at best--particularly in schools serving high-poverty, high-minority communities. These schools receive almost no focused assistance when it comes to staffing classrooms with highly qualified teachers even though the concerns they face in this area are staggering.

"About 70 percent of secondary students in low-poverty schools have teachers who have both majored in and become licensed in their subjects," the survey points out. "Only about half of secondary students in high-poverty schools can say the same." The problem is greatest at the middle school level, where more than half of the students in high-poverty schools take a class with a teacher who hasn't acquired at least a minor in the subject taught.

Working conditions may be contributing to the burdens placed on high-needs schools, observes the report, drawing from the most recent federal Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). It shows that teachers in high-poverty schools cite problems such as lack of parental involvement, student disrespect, and students entering the school unprepared to learn at a much higher rate than their counterparts in low-poverty buildings. Additionally, "teachers in high-poverty or high-minority schools were less likely to agree that they were satisfied with their salaries, received a great deal of support from parents or had the necessary materials to teach."

Despite these problems, states have done little to target teacher recruitment and retention efforts to the schools that need them most. For example, "only New York prohibits the practice of hiring teachers with emergency licenses in its lowest-achieving schools," the report notes, adding that the ban will extend to all New York schools next fall. "Quality Counts 2003" also surveys 30 large school districts across the nation and finds few teacher recruitment and retention efforts are targeted at high-poverty, high-minority or low-achieving schools within each system.

"The link between teacher quality and student achievement is well documented. Nonetheless, there are far too many classrooms with teachers who are underprepared, uncertified or teaching a subject without the proper content expertise," the AFT stated following release of the report. "Teacher quality is no place to cut corners when you are working to improve schools. Common sense, and now federal law, both dictate that all children should have teachers who meet a high standard."

"Quality Counts 2003" is available online at www.edweek.org.

Group issues warning on school segregation

Important gains in school desegregation are eroding in school systems across the nation, a study by the Civil Rights Project at Harvard University warns.

The Civil Rights Project's recent report, "A Multiracial Society with Segregated Schools: Are We Losing the Dream?" uses federal education statistics to trace desegregation trends over the past three decades. For those interested in diversity in education, the current trend is not a friendly one, the authors observe.

"The desegregation of black students, which increased continuously from the 1950s to the late 1980s, has now receded to levels not seen in three decades," the report concludes. "Latino students are the most segregated minority group, with steadily rising segregation since federal data were first collected a third of a century ago."

The report was issued on the 2003 observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

"Martin Luther King's dream is being honored in theory and dishonored in the decisions and practices that are turning our schools back to segregation," says report co-author Gary Orfield, a professor of economic and social policy at Harvard. Among the steps the authors suggest is continuation of current desegregation plans in schools and new city-suburban student transfer options in major metropolitan areas.

For a full copy of the report, visit the Civil Rights Project online at www.civilrightsproject.harvard.edu.

Copyright by the American Federation of Teachers, AFL•CIO. All rights reserved. Photographs
and illustrations, as well as text, cannot be used without permission from the AFT.