A Question of Quality: Examining the roots of uneven instruction quality in our schools
Any consumer of public education knows that teacher quality can be uneven. But why does the gap exist? And how do you beat the luck of the draw?
By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer, February 2, 2003

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Each year on the brink of autumn, students -- and their parents -- wonder about which teachers they'll get.

Will the math teacher be the good one or the mean one? Will the English teacher be the one who's happy to talk with parents, or the one who's biding time until retirement and can't be bothered?

Greg Geibel, an award-winning English teacher at North Allegheny High School, says the new federal designation for a "highly qualified" teacher is sort of like a "pre-owned certified car," which essentially means "it has an engine, it has wheels, it can run." (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

Any consumer of public education knows that teacher quality can be uneven. But why does the gap exist? And how do you end the luck of the draw in the classroom?

It might seem that the answer will come from the new No Child Left Behind federal education law. Under that law, all teachers must be "highly qualified" by the end of the 2005-06 school year.

But these standards are so minimal that most teachers in Pennsylvania already meet them: They must hold a college degree, pass a test in the subject area they teach and hold a valid state certificate.

The best teachers scoff at that definition of quality.

Greg Geibel, a North Allegheny High School teacher who was named one of Western Pennsylvania's top teachers in 2001, compared the designation to a "pre-owned certified car," which essentially means "it has an engine, it has wheels, it can run."

Like many educators, he doesn't believe that teacher quality can be defined by any sort of law or truly gauged by any type of test.

But researchers who've studied the characteristics of good teachers say they can show a direct connection between the quality of the teacher and the performance of the student.

A recent Tennessee study found that students who had good teachers three years in a row scored significantly higher on state tests than students with three years of poor-quality teachers.

A study by Stanford University professor Linda Darling-Hammond concluded that the best predictor of student performance on national tests was the percentage of high-quality teachers they had -- teachers who had majored in the subjects they taught and were properly certified.

And students who spend even one year with a bad teacher can score more than a grade level lower than students who had a good teacher, according to a University of Rochester study.

Suffering the odds

Some experts feel that the nation's teaching corps is uneven at best.

Lagging Charters

If your child is one of 28,500 students who attend a Pennsylvania charter school, chances are greater that the child is being taught by an unqualified teacher.

The irony is that charter schools were established largely because reformers claimed that regular public schools had not done a good enough job of educating students. Charter schools are funded by taxpayer money but are exempt from many of the regulations placed on public school districts.

The reformers' rhetoric may ring hollow when it comes to teacher qualifications.

While about 45 percent of regular public school teachers had at least some education beyond a bachelor's degree, fewer than 30 percent of charter school teachers were in that category, according to a study conducted by Western Michigan University.

Close to 30 percent of the state's charter school teachers were not certified to teach, according to the study. Another 4.3 percent held certificates, but not from the state of Pennsylvania. And 11.5 percent of the certified teachers weren't certified to teach the subject they were teaching.

By comparison, about 4.4 percent of regular public school teachers in the state are improperly certified; half of those are in Philadelphia.

Some argue that certification is overrated as a measure of how good a teacher is, but the ongoing Western Michigan study also shows that while charter students have made some gains in achievement, their test scores continue to lag behind those of students in regular public schools.

Many parents now don't expect good teaching every time, or even from time to time," said California-based researcher Leon Lessinger, who was assistant education secretary under presidents Johnson and Nixon. "From experience, they know, if only intuitively, that luck or chance can rule in the quality of classroom teaching."

In Pennsylvania, recently approved teacher quality controls could help improve those odds. But some of the new rules -- including more rigorous requirements to get into education schools and to graduate -- apply only to new teachers.

The teaching staff in half of Pennsylvania's 501 school districts has been on the job an average of 15 years or more, and most older teachers never had to meet any particularly stringent standards.

A typical scenario: Patsy Tallarico, a former New Kensington teacher who graduated from Edinboro College in 1966, didn't have to take a test to get his teaching certificate and did half of his 12-week "student teaching" without a supervisor.

Then he was handed a lifetime teaching license.

"I could have gone from '66 to 2000 without doing another thing," said Tallarico, now president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state's largest teachers union.

Even though teacher requirements appear to have gotten tougher in recent years, there are loopholes you could drive a school bus through. For instance, teachers who have flunked required tests can take them again and again until they pass -- and even if they don't pass, they still can teach under so-called "emergency certificates" for up to two years.

And some teachers in public charter schools are allowed by law to be uncertified.

President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" education reform act is supposed to close some loopholes and improve the quality of both new and older teachers.

Under the law, the federal government plans to distribute $2.85 billion this year to state education departments nationwide to improve teacher quality. Pennsylvania will get $112.5 million of that money to be used for teacher training and evaluation, which amounts to about $1,000 a teacher.

The PDAP flap

Evaluating teachers, however, can be an onerous political struggle, as Pennsylvania's experience with the Professional Development Assistance Program, or PDAP tests, has demonstrated.

Teachers unions continue to criticize the $1.5 million-a-year teacher testing program started by former Gov. Tom Ridge, a Republican; and Democratic Gov. Ed Rendell has said he may scrap the test.

Union officials said the tests were poorly administered and didn't reliably measure how well teachers perform in the classroom.

But it's also true that many teachers who took PDAP's basic math and reading tests scored poorly, raising the question of whether some of the unions' concern was simply that the test results were embarrassing.

Nevertheless, teachers didn't have to worry about being punished for poor scores.

Under the testing rules, even if a teacher flunked every question on the exam, principals couldn't use those scores to fire employees or force them to get help. That's because principals don't get individual teacher's scores, which aren't supposed to be given to anyone but the teachers themselves.

However, tests aren't the only way to measure a teacher's performance -- there are observations and evaluations by school administrators or fellow teachers.

But while teachers in Pennsylvania are supposed to be evaluated regularly, when a teacher receives tenure -- after three years on the job -- evaluations can become far less stringent. Overwhelmed administrators may barely have time to fill out the evaluation forms, much less closely observe dozens of teachers in their classrooms.

Even though he said he makes the time to do proper evaluations, Richard Sternberg, principal at Grandview Elementary School in Pittsburgh and president of the Pittsburgh Administrators Association, acknowledged that school principals "do have to do a lot of things," and so "something will get sacrificed."

Principals often use the squeaky-wheel theory, he said. If there are complaints about certain teachers, they may get a closer observation.

And as for principals who think they don't have time for thorough evaluations: "There's always time. . . . You have to prioritize what's important," Sternberg said.

Nepotism dangers

The prevalence of nepotism or favoritism in school district hiring also can lower the chances of honest teacher evaluations. If you were a principal, would you want to give a poor evaluation to a school board member's daughter?

Sometimes, problem teachers stick around for years because no one wants to criticize them -- at least not openly.

Teachers generally won't complain about a low-quality colleague to an administrator. And parents typically are extremely reluctant to comment on the record about bad teachers, fearing backlash against their children -- even though local teachers who were interviewed said they wouldn't punish a child for complaints made by their parents.

Typical is one parent's lament about a teacher in a Pittsburgh high school.

"She sits in the classroom and plays computer games all day long," said the parent, who would not allow her name to be used because "there would be retribution against my child," who is an honor student.

"The teacher tells the children, 'I don't care if you come to my class. Why don't you just cut the class; you're in my way anyway. You bother me.' "

No one will listen to complaints about the teacher, the parent said, because "the school is afraid to do anything because she has tenure."

Even when parents express satisfaction with their children's teachers, their comments often are tinged with relief.

"I've been lucky," said Nancy Sample, a West Jefferson Hills parent.

"We've been fortunate," said Dave Gadd, whose children have attended schools in North Carolina, Virginia and in Pittsburgh.

"It's just the luck of the draw," said Roberta Horwitz, a Pittsburgh parent, explaining how a friend's son was placed in a favored teacher's math class.

Luck isn't good enough, maintains Lessinger, who said schools must operate as "high-reliability organizations."

That's business-management jargon for services that are performed under quickly moving, high-stress conditions -- such as emergency medicine or air traffic control. Highly skilled employees are needed for those jobs or the results can be disastrous. Many experts say the same is true for education.

One way to ensure that reliability, experts say, is to insist that teachers be trained in the subject matter they're teaching.

But the latest figures from the National Center for Education Statistics show that nationwide, more than half the teaching force didn't have a major or a certificate in the area they were teaching -- from 57 percent in science courses to 71 percent in history courses.

In Pennsylvania, 22 percent of high school teachers didn't even have a minor in the field they were teaching, according to a study done by University of Pennsylvania Professor Richard M. Ingersoll. And in higher-poverty school districts, that number jumps to 34 percent.

Nationwide, poor children are about twice as likely to get inexperienced teachers, uncertified teachers or teachers who scored poorly on teaching exams, according to Ingersoll's study, conducted for the Washington-based Education Trust.

The problem of improperly certified teachers -- or teachers who just aren't sufficiently educated -- has been a popular research topic for academics, and a profusion of national organizations has attacked the issue from all sides.

Louis V. Gerstner Jr., the retired chairman of IBM, announced just last month that he has assembled a panel of education experts, high-powered politicians and business owners to study teacher quality for 14 months: The Teaching Commission.

Not everyone was impressed. "We don't need this problem studied again," said Arthur Levine, president of Teachers College at Columbia University. "We need action."

More often than not, these reports and statistics aren't seen by some very important consumers -- parents.

And when they are, the studies can be contradictory and confusing, especially to frustrated parents who are usually more concerned about their child's next teacher than any academic review of teacher quality.

State and federal officials continue to wrestle with how to improve teaching. Lessinger warns that improvements need to be made quickly, however, before another generation of students goes through classrooms where mediocre teaching is ignored.

The classroom, he said, "is not like a gambling casino. It's not the place for a game of chance."
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A question of quality: Are teacher entrance tests tough enough?
By Eleanor Chute, Post-Gazette Education Writer, February 3, 2003

Second in a series
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Abby Ivory, a junior at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, loves working with children and decided in high school to pursue a career in special education.

But she hasn't been able to pass all of the tests required to get a teaching certificate, or even enter IUP's education program.

Ivory, who was an honors student at Central Cambria High School and has a 3.2 GPA at IUP, passed the reading test the first time she took it. But it took three tries before she passed the math test. And she still is trying to pass the writing test.

Under IUP's rules, that means Ivory can't continue as an education major. Now she plans to work with children in a hospital setting.

In Pennsylvania, the teacher tests -- called Praxis exams-- are supposed to be "make-or-break." Flunk just one of them, and you can't become a certified teacher.

But while IUP restricts the number of times students can take the tests, the state and some other education schools permit unlimited attempts.

One student flunked 21 times before getting a passing score, said Frank Meehan, teacher certification director for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.

And even students who don't pass can teach with a so-called "emergency certificate" for up to two years.

These loopholes may dilute the effectiveness of a test that is designed to be a basic gateway to the teaching profession.

The standardized, written tests are not supposed to be particularly difficult. In fact, they simply test "minimum competency," said Meehan.

"It's meant to be the floor; not the ceiling," Meehan said.

A basic requirement

Added Mari Pearlman, vice president of Educational Testing Service, which developed the Praxis tests:

"If you can't pass this test at a standard set by states for minimal levels to be licensed, you really need to reflect on whether or not you have enough content knowledge to teach children effectively."

And Rosalie Dibert, who taught special education in city schools for 38 years, said prospective teachers need to know how to take tests.

"We ask kids to take tests non-stop," Dibert said. Teachers need to learn test-taking strategies for themselves, she said, so they can later help students do their best on standardized exams.

Nearly all states have testing requirements for teacher candidates.

In Pennsylvania, teacher candidates must pass Praxis tests in reading, math and writing as well as in their content area to become certified. They also have had to pass a written Praxis test on teaching techniques. But beginning in the fall of this year, the state will accept evidence from their student teaching instead.

While some say the tests ensure at least a minimum level of knowledge, others say they carry too much weight because they exclude potentially good teachers who may not test well.

"There is probably some baseline knowledge everyone should know," said John Johnson, who is in charge of the teacher education program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. "On the other hand, from our experience, we believe there are a number of potentially fine teachers being excluded on a single indicator."

Passing the Praxis doesn't guarantee high-quality teachers in every classroom, said University of Kansas psychology professor John Poggio. "There are people who will pass these tests and will make horrible teachers," he said.

And minorities and those who speak English as a second language have difficulty with the tests, said Marilyn Cochran-Smith, a Boston College education professor who is co-chair of the American Educational Research Association's Consensus Panel on Teacher Education.

"There is some evidence teacher tests may be discouraging more minority members from entering teaching in the first place," she said.

Testing 'wrong stuff'?

Ivory said there were several reasons she struggled with the math test.

Ivory, who had a 940 SAT score and took trigonometry in high school, said she was thrown off by a lot of things: the math test format, the time limit, the rule against using a calculator, the gap between when she learned the material and took the test, and perhaps some test anxiety.

"I just think that the tests are important, but you're tested on the wrong stuff. You should be tested on your skills, how you work with children and how you manage and handle them," she said.

Lori Tweedy, an IUP junior with a 3.6 GPA and a 970 SAT score, also has struggled with the Praxis.

Tweedy believes she would be a good teacher, but because of a learning disability that slows her reading, she has failed the Praxis writing test three times by as little as one point. To try to reach her dream, she plans to transfer to Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania so she can keep taking the test.

"I don't want to be anything else," she said. "I want to be a teacher."

Last year, an average of 84 percent of Pennsylvania students who had completed teacher education programs had passed all of the required Praxis exams by October.

That percentage is likely to go up because some schools are planning to require students to pass the Praxis before they begin student teaching. Students who can't pass the tests would have to switch majors to graduate.

For now, there is a wide range of pass rates on the Praxis tests among Pennsylvania colleges and universities, ranging from 100 percent at several colleges to just 25 percent at Lincoln University near Philadelphia.

Pearlman said it isn't necessarily fair to judge the quality of an education program based on how many students pass the Praxis, because some schools have made it their mission to train more challenging students with diverse backgrounds.

And Cochran-Smith said that while she favors high standards and accountability for education schools, "I think teacher tests are a poor measure if they are the only measure."
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A Question of Quality: Do schools hire the best teachers? Probably not
By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Education Writer, February 4, 2003

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Most school officials intend to hire good teachers.

They solicit applications, screen resumes and interview candidates.

Sto-Rox Superintendent Anthony Skender uses salesmanship and an appeal to candidates' altruistic motives to recruit teachers to a school district where the starting salary is $25,000. (Joyce Mendelsohn, Post-Gazette)

And at each stage, they'll tell you they're looking for qualified individuals who will be the right fit for their districts.

But local and national education experts contend that too often, school officials -- particularly those in low-income areas-- focus more on filling jobs quickly than on building a high-quality teaching staff.

"What I hear is that most [local] school districts wait for the applications to flow in. There is a lackadaisical aspect to all this," said Lauren Resnick, director of the University of Pittsburgh's Learning Research and Development Center, a nationally known organization that pushes for higher standards in public schools.

The effort that some school officials put into recruiting top teachers can vary widely, said Charles Gorman, executive director of the Tri-State Area School Study Council at Pitt.

"A lot depends on the attitude of the superintendent," he said. "If it's a high priority for the superintendent, then you'll see change. Where it's not a high priority, it doesn't happen, so it's left for good people to find their way into the system."

There is no question that hiring good teachers can make a vital difference.

Studies in Texas and Tennessee have shown that the years students spend in classrooms with good teachers improved their performance on achievement tests.

"Good teachers matter and they matter a lot," said Thomas Carroll, executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future. "If students are in a school where they consistently receive quality teaching year to year and class to class, they have a significant advantage."

Research done by the Post-Gazette for this series has shown that students in more affluent districts are more likely to get those kinds of teachers than students in lower-income districts are. And there seems to be a strong correlation between teacher quality and student test scores in those districts, as well.

Wealthy Allegheny County school districts such as Upper St. Clair, Quaker Valley and North Allegheny attracted more new teachers with master's degrees and full-time experience. Of the last 30 teachers hired in those districts, 19 had master's degrees and 17 had previous experience as full-time teachers.

In the same districts, the percentage of eighth-graders who scored at the proficient and advanced levels in math on standardized state tests ranged from 67.1 to 87.5 percent; in reading, from 71.6 to 89.2 percent.

By contrast, of the last 30 teachers hired in the low-income Sto-Rox, Wilkinsburg and Duquesne districts, only five had master's degrees. Fourteen had previous full-time teaching experience.

Among those districts' eighth-graders, the percentage of those at the proficient and advanced level in math ranged from 1.6 to 31.4 percent; and in reading, from 8.1 to 34.4 percent.

Family backgrounds for the students in these districts obviously play a major part in test results. But several studies have shown that teacher quality can make an impact on test scores, even after allowing for demographic differences.

One reason for the difference in qualifications among the teachers hired in wealthier and poorer districts is the pay scale for new employees.

Beginning teacher salaries in Allegheny County, for instance, can range between $25,000 and $35,000 a year.

Districts on the low end of the pay scale have to work harder to attract good teachers.

One example is Sto-Rox, one of five in Western Pennsylvania that have been declared "empowerment districts" because of low student test scores.

Superintendent Anthony Skender said the large percentage of low-income students, along with the district's comparatively low starting salary of $25,000, mean that he has to employ salesmanship and an appeal to candidates' altruistic motives.

"I just can't throw money at problems," Skender said. "I tell college kids, 'We need you. You can make a difference. If we can't offer more money, we can offer something to build your soul.' There are still kids out there who believe in that kind of thing."

Affluent districts, on the other hand, may get hundreds or even thousands of unsolicited applications.

Quaker Valley in the Sewickley area received about 900 applications last year. The average number of unsolicited applications that flow into Upper St. Clair annually is about 4,000, and includes prospective teachers from as far away as Alaska, California and Florida.

A large pool

While other regions have to recruit out of state or even out of the country to meet their demand for teachers, many Western Pennsylvania districts can generate most of their candidates from responses to ads, applications on file, their substitute teachers' lists, or by using the Allegheny Intermediate Unit's Internet teacher employment service, called Pa-Educator.Net.

Those sources are usually sufficient because Pennsylvania colleges graduate far more new teachers than districts in the state can hire. Last year, for instance, the state Board of Education certified 10,520 new teachers, but only 4,384 were hired.

Teaching job openings also attract more applicants because Pennsylvania, at $52,832, has the highest average teacher salary in the country.

But having ready access to so many applicants may not yield the best teachers.

"It's not so much whether your state is producing enough teachers, it's whether they are producing the right kind of teacher in terms of quality and diversity," said Mildred Hudson, chief executive officer for Recruiting New Teachers, a Belmont, Mass., nonprofit devoted to improving teacher recruiting nationally.

"Are they producing enough teachers in the specific areas where teachers are needed? Are they serving those districts that need them most?"

Hiring top teachers is half the battle. Keeping them is the other half.

"If schools worked to reduce the turnover rate, they would have to hire fewer teachers. And if they hired fewer teachers, they could be more selective," Carroll said.

A recent report by Carroll's commission found that almost a third of all new teachers leave the classroom after three years, and that close to 50 percent leave after five years. In all, more than a quarter of a million teachers stop teaching every year.

"The conventional wisdom is that we can't find enough good teachers when the problem is that we can't keep good teachers," he said.

That is less of a problem in Pennsylvania, though, where the turnover rate is relatively low, averaging 8.7 percent annually.

Local turnover rates included 1.7 percent in North Allegheny and about 10 percent in Duquesne. Retirements caused the few staff changes in North Allegheny, while most of the turnover in Duquesne came from teachers leaving for jobs elsewhere.

Carroll's commission has found that teachers are more likely to stick with their jobs if they have been well-trained; if they have had good previous teaching experiences; and if they've received feedback on their teaching from mentors.

Mentoring is important

School officials should look at hiring as a two-stage process, said Adam Urbanski, director of the Teacher Union Reform Network, a national union-led initiative to promote education reform.

"They should scrutinize candidates' credentials, references and give some type of pre-test, but that's just the preamble," he said. "Then they should withhold judgment for a year while new teachers undergo mentoring."

Pennsylvania law requires school districts to have "induction programs" for first-year teachers that last at least one school year and must include teacher mentors.

Mentoring quality varies widely, though.

In the Pittsburgh Public Schools, for instance, "instructional teacher leaders" in each building are supposed to help both new and long-term colleagues hone their skills. But whether a new teacher receives individual mentoring for a year depends on how many new teachers are assigned to a school.

More extensive is the program in Upper St. Clair, where all new teachers are assigned master teachers in their field as mentors for two years. New teachers also are required to participate in seminars throughout the year, including a two-day orientation before the beginning of school.

And to help prevent burnout, school officials also should avoid "sink or swim placement" of new teachers in the most challenging schools or classrooms, Carroll said.

Home-grown teachers

One way urban districts can improve their pool of applicants and maintain racial and ethnic diversity, said Hudson of the Recruiting New Teachers group, is by "growing their own" candidates.

Districts can create middle and high school programs that encourage youngsters to go into teaching and provide them with opportunities to explore the profession. They also can form partnerships with local colleges to offer teachers' aides the opportunity to earn teaching degrees.

The Pittsburgh school district has tried both approaches.

Some districts also add extra twists to increase the quality of new hires.

Shaler and Quaker Valley, for example, use the Gallup Organization's Teacher Perceiver and Teacher Insight as part of their interviewing process.

The Teacher Perceiver, which is conducted in person, and the Teacher Insight, done online, are used by about 1,100 school districts across the country. Both include a series of questions designed to identify qualities essential to good teaching.

Quaker Valley officials also are so determined to have candidates teach sample lessons that even when school is out during the summer, they "round up students off the street" to sit on the sessions, said Assistant Superintendent Joseph Clapper.

The Pittsburgh district may have the most unique formal system in the region because it is required by state law to maintain an eligibility list, which ranks applicants according to a score based on points given in different categories.

Applicants receive points for interviews and evaluations, and for performance on the national teachers' exams, experience in an urban school district and whether candidates are city alumni.

Full-time teachers have to be hired from the top third of the eligibility list under this procedure, which was enacted decades ago to help prevent graft and favoritism as well as maintain quality, said district spokeswoman Pat Crawford.

The bottom line

Do these various hiring practices yield better teachers?

While the Post-Gazette research shows that affluent districts have an advantage in the kind of teaching candidates they attract, that's not the whole story.

There also are districts whose teachers don't seem as highly qualified that have been described as "beating the odds" by a state-sponsored Standard & Poors report. Such districts have produced above-average student scores despite having large percentages of poor youngsters.

Among them are Highlands in Allegheny County, Ellwood City Area in Lawrence County and Titusville Area in Venango County.

In those districts, the teachers' performances on the state content exam known as the Professional Development Assistance Program have been mediocre, ranging from average to slightly below average.

Even in districts with below-average student and teacher test results, administrators defend their teachers, saying they have to find employees with a special blend of rapport, work ethic and courage because their youngsters have so many social and family problems.

Daniel Stephens, principal of the middle and high schools in the low-rated Duquesne City School District, looks for teachers who know their subjects, can relate to children from varied backgrounds and can motivate students.

"The person who comes here is one who's a teacher at heart," he said. "They come into Duquesne and they see the challenges here, and if they want to be challenged, they'll stay."


Carmen Lee can be reached at clee@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1884.
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A Question of Quality: Minority teachers are a missing ingredient
By Carmen J. Lee, Post-Gazette Education Writer, February 5, 2003

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Terry Jackson, a math teacher in Upper St. Clair School District, believes he's making a difference in the lives of his students far beyond helping them solve word problems.

That's because he's one of just five black teachers in a district where 94 percent of the students are white.

"They need to see black role models. They need to see some black professionals," said Jackson, 27, a teacher at Fort Couch Middle School. "They need to get rid of stereotypes of minorities as being in gangs or mainly playing sports.

"Some kids asked me once, 'Can you dunk, Mr. Jackson?' I told them, 'No, all I can do is dunk doughnuts.' I want to break some of the stereotypes."

Mike Ivanusic and Rich Satcho are the flip side of Jackson's story.

Ivanusic, 30, is the middle and high school computer instructor for the Duquesne City School District. Satcho, 28, teaches physical education at Duquesne High School.

The two men, both white, believe they also are making a difference in a district where nearly 90 percent of the students are black, and they are among the 90 percent of the teachers who are white.

"I don't think it should matter what race you are to work here," Satcho said, though he added that "it's good for students to have teachers of different races."

Jackson, Satcho and Ivanusic also belong to another teaching minority -- males. Men make up about a quarter of the public school teaching ranks in the United States and about a third in Pennsylvania.

The relative lack of men in the teaching profession does not draw a lot of concern, but several experts believe more minority teachers are needed, including in mostly white districts.

"Children need to see different models of teachers," said Mildred Hudson, chief executive officer of Recruiting New Teachers, a national advocacy group. "Diversity is part of what America is about. It doesn't have to be proven. It's a reality."

And good teachers of any color can encourage young people to enter the profession, said Margaret Burley, an African American teacher at Miller Elementary School in Pittsburgh and a Teacher Excellence Foundation award winner.

"If you're doing an outstanding job, people will look at you and say, 'I can do that,'" she said.

Does diversity matter?

Nevertheless, across Western Pennsylvania, school officials and teachers differ about whether a teacher's race has any special impact in the classroom.

And even if they endorse the idea of having a diverse teaching staff, most districts do not have special recruiting programs to find minority teachers, and often don't think they need to.

"I don't see any aggressive strategy to get more diversity in teachers or administrators," said Charles Gorman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Tri-State Area School Study Council. "It's not a high priority in the region."

Shaler Area School Superintendent Donald Lee echoed many local administrators.

"We want to find the best persons," he said. "We don't have an active recruitment of males or minorities."

Even some black administrators agree with that approach.

"We just look at who has the best qualifications," said Duquesne City Superintendent JoAnne Green-Wells, who is African American. "We do look for minorities and there have been some. But we don't do any special recruiting."

The result in Pennsylvania is that only 6.4 percent of all public school teachers are minorities, compared with 22.3 percent of the student population.

The most recent national figures are higher on both counts: 15.7 percent of the country's public school teaching staff and 36.9 percent of the students were minorities in 1999-2000.

A slim pool

Districts that want to aggressively recruit minority teachers have a small pool to choose from.

It's a problem that recruiters in several white-collar professions face because of the relatively low percentage of black students who get degrees from four-year colleges and universities.

Margaret Burley, who teaches third-graders at Miller Elementary School in Pittsburgh, says good teachers need to be role models for all children. Burley will be inducted into the Teacher Excellence Foundation's Hall of Fame in May. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

While the number of minority students earning bachelor's degrees steadily increased during the 1990s, according to the American Council on Education, and minorities as a group earned about 21 percent of all bachelor's degrees in 2000, African Americans received only 8.7 percent.

It's a "pipeline problem," said Thomas Carroll, executive director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit organization dedicated to improving teacher quality nationwide.

"Students of color in elementary and secondary schools are less likely to get to college in the first place," he said. "When they get to college, their experience with school may not have been positive, and they may not see teaching as an attractive alternative."

In fact, the number of minority teachers has declined in recent years, and many education experts say it's because there have been growing opportunities in more lucrative fields that weren't as open in the past to people of color.

Matching backgrounds

The disadvantages of hiring only young, white, female teachers go beyond race, said Martin Haberman, a distinguished professor of education at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

He contended that, particularly in urban areas, school officials should seek out older, second-career teachers of varied races and both genders whose life experiences make them better able to manage a classroom and to make a more mature commitment to teaching.

"If you can't relate to children, it doesn't matter how much you know," he said.

Teachers from different ethnic and racial backgrounds often can explain subjects using cultural terms and contexts that help children from the same backgrounds understand the lessons, added Jacqueline Jordan Irvine, a professor of urban education at Emory University in Atlanta.

"It's a standard principle of good teaching, no matter the color of the child, to give examples that come out of their everyday lives," she said.

Must a teacher come from the same racial or ethnic group as a child to do a good job with these cultural translations?

Carla Rubino, 32, a white English teacher at mostly black Duquesne High School, doesn't believe her race keeps her from reaching her students, most of whom are black.

"My kids realize, 'She does fight for us,'" she said. "I love my kids, even when they give me a rough time."

Ivanusic, another white Duquesne teacher, has talked with some of his students, many of whom come from poor homes, about some of the difficulties he has faced. He said he wants them to know he understands at least some of what they're going through.

"My dad lost his job and had to go on unemployment," he said. "I paid for college myself. I didn't have a free ride. I got in a few fights growing up. ... If you can teach, you can teach. It doesn't matter whether you are male or female, black or white. It's how you carry yourself."

Recruiting strategies

The Pittsburgh Public Schools, Upper St. Clair, North Allegheny, Gateway and Quaker Valley are among the few districts that do have minority recruitment programs.

Robert Devlin, director of human resources at North Allegheny, said a minority recruiter on staff maintains contacts with colleges to find minority candidates who could be successful there.

Sto-Rox, a low-income district, belongs to a couple of recruitment services that try to help find minority teachers, Superintendent Anthony Skender said.

The Pittsburgh Public Schools have been involved in several projects over the years to help boost the ranks of minority teachers, said spokeswoman Pat Crawford.

They include an African American fellowship program in which teaching interns are recruited from black colleges, and a three-year partnership with Indiana University of Pennsylvania in which teachers' aides were given the opportunity to go to college and earn their teacher certification.

In the Farrell School District in Mercer County, some students of color who graduated from the district have come back to teach there, and school board members have used their community contacts to find minority candidates, said Superintendent Richard R. Rubano Jr.

With a teaching staff that is 17.5 percent black, Farrell has the third-highest percentage of minority teachers in Western Pennsylvania, after Wilkinsburg and Pittsburgh. Nearly 78 percent of the students in Farrell are black.

In the end, though, the results of such initiatives have been unremarkable, particularly in suburban districts, where the number of minority teachers is often under a dozen.

That ratio is mirrored in the region's most prolific education schools. Frank White Jr., 22, an African American senior at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, one of the largest education schools in Pennsylvania, said he has had only two other black classmates in education classes there.

He thinks the current emphasis on test scores could discourage some black students from pursuing teaching careers.

"Some people are not good test-takers and that weeds out a lot of good teachers," he said.

Several national educators said that districts wanting to increase teacher diversity should consider a variety of methods.

"[Recruiting at] black colleges is not enough, though it's a good first start," Emory's Irvine said. "You have to go into the black community to the black churches, sororities and fraternities to the people who know who and where the teachers are."

Another effective strategy is working with community colleges and four-year institutions to urge minority students to consider teaching as a profession and nurture their progress, Hudson said.

Still, Irvine said that as more and more minority teachers in their 50s and 60s retire, replenishing their numbers will be difficult.

That's why she's been devoting more time to training teachers of any race how to relate to minority students, whose numbers are growing across the nation.

"White teachers can do it if they are trained to do it. We can't wait for more African American teachers," Irvine said. "It's not so much matching the skin color as the cultural experience.

"If a white teacher has similar experiences or the training, they can have an ear for the dialect, understand what kids are trying to say and translate it into standard English.

"I can train you to get an ear for it."


Carmen Lee can be reached at clee@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1884.
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How a parent can be an advocate for top-quality teachers
Thursday, February 06, 2003
By Jane Elizabeth, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Education Writer, February 6, 2003

LINK

As a parent, you're probably accustomed to getting missives from school about your children -- report cards, tardy notes, overdue library books.

But have you received a note lately about your child's teacher?

Under the new federal education law, parents are supposed to be notified if their children have been taught for more than four consecutive weeks by a teacher who isn't properly certified.

So if your child's high school math class is being taught by someone who holds a teaching certificate in elementary education, you should have received a note from the school saying so.

The rule went into effect four weeks after the current school year began, but many area school districts haven't sent those letters -- at the risk of losing federal funding.

"We have made schools aware of their obligation to notify parents if their children don't have a highly qualified teacher," said Jeff McCloud, spokesman for the state Department of Education. "How they do that is up to the schools and districts."

Parents have always had the right to know the credentials of their children's teachers. Few have bothered to check. Under the No Child Left Behind Act, federal administrators hope that when parents are told that a teacher doesn't have proper credentials, they'll put pressure on school administrators and legislators to fix the problem.

"It's very unfair to ask teachers to teach math when they've studied English," said Craig Jerald, senior policy analyst at the Education Trust, a Washington D.C. nonprofit group that advocates for urban and minority students.

"It's an administrative responsibility; it can't be the responsibility of teachers. Teachers don't like to be assigned out of field."

Richard Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania education researcher, said that the "embarrassment [of improperly certified teachers] alone could bring pressure. It won't be just accepted with open arms. The principal's going to be in the hot seat."

While state officials have reported to the federal government that about 5,000 Pennsylvania teachers are on "emergency certificates" or improperly certified, that's not the whole story.

Another 8,500 are working as substitute teachers, and they often don't meet the new federal quality standards. In Pennsylvania, a substitute teacher needs only a college degree -- in any subject.

Starting this month, federal "accountability experts" are to visit the states and make sure they're meeting the law's requirements, according to U.S. Department of Education Undersecretary Eugene Hickok.

"These are not compliance officers," said Hickok, a former Pennsylvania education secretary, in a recent interview. "They are experts who are eager to work with" state officials.

But even if parents find that all their children's teachers are properly certified, does that mean there's nothing to worry about?

The federal definition of a highly qualified teacher gives "a false sense of security to parents," said John W. Butzow, dean of the school of education at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, because the standards are not that stringent.

Hickok said if teachers meet the new criteria, "in an ideal world ... you would like to think they are fully qualified. But in far too many cases, they are not."

How can parents assess for themselves the effectiveness of their children's teachers? And how can teachers and parents work together to find the best way to teach individual children?

Assessing your teachers

Based on interviews with teachers and other educators, and with researchers and parents, here are some points to consider:

During parent conferences, find out how well the teacher knows your child. "Talk with the teacher and listen to what gets talked about," said Alan Lesgold, dean of the education school at the University of Pittsburgh. "If the teacher can't explain to you" your child's strengths and weaknesses in words you can understand, "there's a problem."

Visit school when you can and observe the teachers. Determine if teachers "are energized by students in the classroom," said U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige. "Do they have a work ethic? Do they put a lot of energy into it? You need vigor and energy. I like to see people move around."

When did the teacher attend college? Graduates of certain years scored higher on statewide tests of K-12 teachers. Results can be found at www.tcs.ed.state.pa.us-/PDAP/YourReport.asp.

What's the success rate on teacher licensing tests at the teacher's alma mater? There's a wide range of pass rates among Pennsylvania's 93 schools of education. Pass rates can be found at www.title2.org/title2dr.

The site does not list individual teachers' test results, or how many times they took the tests before passing, or their college grade point averages. That information isn't necessarily helpful anyway, said IUP's Butzow.

"Some students who have very high grades and very high test scores didn't necessarily have the compassion and patience" to be a teacher, he said. There are teachers "who are excessively bright, who, when you don't get it, the first thing they want to do is throw you out."

How much student-teacher time did your child's new teacher put in? Some schools of education offer as little as 12 weeks of real classroom teaching time. On the other hand, students in the University of Pittsburgh's master's program spend a full year as full-time teaching interns in an area school. But only 37 of Pennsylvania's 93 schools of education offer such intern programs.

It's likely that your child will be in a classroom with students who have a wide range of mental and physical abilities. How much training has the teacher had in dealing with student differences -- including language differences? Ask the teacher or the principal.

How technically adept are your child's teachers? Can they use e-mail, efficiently search the Internet, and use computer software? Ask the teacher or the principal.

Is your child's middle school teacher certified to teach middle school grades, or is he or she actually certified for elementary school?

Middle school in Pennsylvania can mean anywhere from grades 5 through 9, depending on the district. But teachers who are certified to teach elementary school -- grades K-6, under federal guidelines -- can be found teaching eighth-grade math in Pennsylvania, for example. State officials currently are working to get those teachers properly certified, but it could take years.

Print out a copy of the state's suggested teacher evaluation form from www.teaching.state.pa.us-/teaching and conduct your own evaluation.

Dealing with problems

Parents should first meet with the teacher to resolve conflicts. If that's unsuccessful, go to the principal, other administrators such as curriculum specialists, or the school board.

Don't make accusations without getting the facts. If there's a problem, find a way to visit the classroom as often as possible, quietly and unannounced.

Don't be accusatory with school officials. "The question you should pose is: What are you doing to help this teacher get better? Are you providing any kind of coaching?" said Lesgold. Understand that teachers, like everyone else, "all go through good times and bad times and that's not going to go away ... We all need help going through those times."

Join parents' organizations in your school. "Parent groups can raise the bar," said Phyllis C. Comer, who teaches gifted students at Dickson Intermediate School in Woodland Hills School District. "Parents can put teachers' and administrators' feet to the fire."

Some schools, including those in Pittsburgh Public Schools, have parent advocates who can help mediate problems.

Make sure your school has provided ways to reach teachers. Is there e-mail or voice mail? Is there a telephone in the classroom? Will teachers promptly answer handwritten notes? Can you contact them at home in emergencies?

Finding solutions

Be proactive. At the beginning of each year, meet with teachers. John Merrow, author of "The School Sleuth" and an education talk-show host on National Public Radio, suggested "a note, a handshake, some sort of early connection that establishes that the parent sees him/herself as a partner in learning."

"If the teacher knows that you are involved, [he or she] will take extra steps ... We always tried to write a note to our kids' teachers early in the year: 'Josh really loves what you're doing in science. It's great to see him so excited.'"

Make your opinions known. "Parents should get very angry and go to the school board and yell and scream," when there are problems with incompetent teachers. "There has to be some anger," said Leon Lessinger, an education researcher who served as undersecretary of education in the Nixon and Johnson administrations.

Encourage the use of data. School districts can use computer programs to determine if a teacher's students are making progress.

Ask your district to strengthen "induction" programs for new teachers and use highly talented mentor teachers to help new teachers. Programs for new teachers are mandated by the state, but the quality varies considerably.

Make sure your district offers plenty of opportunity for teachers to learn more about their subject matter and find out about new research. Susan Sclafani, Paige's top assistant, says that for some teachers, education "can be more like a religion instead of a science." Longtime teachers may become devoted to a certain way of teaching and ignore practical research.

Do administrators give teachers a regular chance to "vent" and explore common solutions to teaching problems?

"We end up playing the blame game when some structural changes could prevent most of the bad situations," said Merrow. "Give teachers permission and regular opportunity to talk about kids in constructive ways."

Merrow recently visited a public school "in which teachers get to meet every day for 45 minutes, in small groups, to talk about strategies, goals, kids, problems.... How rare is that, and how wonderful."

Offer a way out. "Sweeten the pot for early retirement" for teachers who are admittedly burned out, said Lessinger.

"These are human beings. You can't just throw them out."
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A Question of Quality: Paperwork and legal threats discourage teacher firings
By Jane Elizabeth, Post-Gazette Education Writer, February 6, 2003

Jeffrey F. Moyer taught high school social studies in the Whitehall-Coplay School District in eastern Pennsylvania for years before someone started keeping book on him.

There was the time he showed the R-rated "Silence of the Lambs" to his underage students, according to state Department of Education records. He let them play pingpong in his classroom and kick balls in the hallway.

He often allowed his students to wander the school, state officials charged. Even students who weren't in his class would come to him for a hall pass.

Once, when a student asked about a historical figure, Moyer responded that the person was "some [expletive] in history." He told one boy to drop a pencil on the floor and ask a girl to pick it up so he could see her breasts when she leaned over.

He gave students answers to test questions -- during the tests -- and brought a 2-by-4 to school to threaten a study hall teacher.

Such complaints led to two ratings of "unsatisfactory" performance during the 1991-92 school year.

But it would take nine more years and dozens of documents before the state removed the Lehigh County teacher's license, citing incompetence, immorality and negligence.

Why does teacher discipline take so long? And if it takes that much effort to remove the credentials of an educator with such over-the-top bad behavior, will administrators even bother with more run-of-the-mill incompetence?

Moyer was one of only 11 Pennsylvania teachers who have lost their licenses for incompetency over the past decade, according to state records -- compared with the dozen or so teachers who lose their licenses each year in Pennsylvania. Most of those licenses are removed after teachers have been convicted of sex-related offenses or other crimes.

Incompetent teachers often are simply eased out of their schools. Then, they may show up in another district.

"The sentiment is, 'Thank God that person is not at my school anymore,'" said Richard Sternberg, principal at Pittsburgh's Grandview Elementary School and the state's 2001 Principal of the Year.

"Incompetence is probably the most difficult [issue] to prove" when trying to remove a teacher's license, said Sternberg, who also is president of the Pittsburgh Administrators Association. "A really good lawyer could probably show that, just because a teacher got an unsatisfactory review, it was just a snapshot in time" and might not reflect the teacher's overall performance.

While some poorly performing teachers choose to leave rather than face discipline or bad evaluations, others are "counseled out" of the profession by supervisors, union leaders or co-workers.

But many remain on the job, either because administrators ignore their poor work or don't want to go through the hassle of trying to fire them.

A teacher dismissal can be expensive and time-consuming, as evidenced by a recent Milwaukee case that ended up in the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

According to court records, parents were complaining about middle school teacher Gema Salvadori as far back as 1991, saying she berated their children and didn't properly grade papers. The school district gave her various "plans of assistance" over the next several years and moved her to another school, but the complaints and bad evaluations continued.

Still, she taught until 1998, when her contract was not renewed. She sued.

Eleven years after the first parental complaints, the case was finally closed when a judge ruled against her last June.

While its insurance carrier paid all but $5,000 of the district's legal fees, "We spent a lot of employee time" defending the case over those years, said Superintendent Gerald Frietag.

School administrators are keenly aware of the ever-present threat of court action in firing teachers.

The Pennsylvania School Boards Association holds seminars on "The Four Ds: Documentation, Discipline, Demotion and Dismissal." Readers of the American School Board Journal and other education publications often see advertisements for legal consulting firms. "Fire him today and you could find yourself in court tomorrow," reads one such ad.

Pennsylvania's school code on the firing of teachers -- which has been revised significantly only once, in 1996 -- gives the following as "the only valid causes for termination" of a teacher's job:

Immorality, incompetency, intemperance, cruelty, persistent negligence, willful neglect of duties

Unsatisfactory teaching based on two consecutive ratings, not less than four months apart

Physical or mental disability that interferes with performance

Advocating or participating in "un-American or subversive doctrines"

Conviction of a felony or the court's acceptance of a plea of guilty or no contest

Breaking state or school board laws.


A lifetime job?

Parents and community residents often have two misconceptions about teacher employment.

One is that "tenure" means teachers can't be fired.

And the other is that a union member can't be fired.

Al Fondy, president of both the local and state chapters of the American Federation of Teachers, said unions only ensure that due process is followed in any union member's dismissal.

"The union should not defend incompetence," he said. "We don't want them teaching either. It's not in our best interest."

However, union members rarely if ever initiate such complaints against poor teachers. In a recent round table discussion the Post-Gazette conducted with several outstanding teachers from around the region, most said they had known of poor-quality teachers in their school districts, but none had ever reported an incompetent teacher.

Patsy Tallarico, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, the state's largest teachers union, says unions don't want poor-quality teachers in the classroom. (Annie O'Neill, Post-Gazette)

Teachers can get tenure after three years, up from the old standard of two years. Patsy Tallarico, president of the Pennsylvania State Education Association, knows that some people believe that tenure gives teachers "a lifetime job."

They're wrong, he said. Tenure "tells you how to fire someone," while allowing newer, non-tenured teachers to be more easily dismissed.

In many school districts, two "unsats" -- teacher slang for unsatisfactory evaluations -- are needed to begin the process of either rehabilitating or terminating a teacher.

Unions in some states have begun working with administrators to create a process that both sides can agree on, said Stanford University education researcher Linda Darling-Hammond. Often in those new approaches, struggling teachers work with "mentor teachers," and if they don't improve within a specified time, the union agrees not to challenge the dismissal.

"The union's interest is due process and the opportunity to improve" and this system gives them both, said Darling-Hammond.

Pittsburgh teachers have a similar system using what they call ITL teachers -- instructional teacher leaders. They also have an "induction" program for new teachers that includes several after-school training sessions at the union's South Side headquarters.

Induction programs are required by the state, but how extensive they are is up to each district. Theoretically, the system keeps new teachers from becoming bad teachers; and if they do, retrains or removes them.

But, acknowledged Tallarico, "There aren't quality programs in every district."

Teacher rot

Just as inexperienced teachers don't necessarily mean low-quality teaching, experience doesn't necessarily translate to high quality.

In fact, several studies have concluded that after the first few years, teaching experience seems to make little difference in student achievement.

A 2000 study of teachers in five states showed that elementary school teachers with more than 25 years of experience had students who scored significantly lower on national tests than students who had teachers with six to 10 years of experience.

One reason for this trend could be, said Darling-Hammond, that "that older teachers do not always continue to grow and learn and may grow tired in their jobs."

Some parents believe that too often, "burned out" teachers are allowed to stay in the classroom. If enough parents complain, those teachers sometimes are assigned to lower-level courses or a position where they'll have less student contact and therefore provoke fewer complaints.

"I think some of these older teachers need to get out and retire and let the younger generation get in there and have a chance to work with the children," said Babette Guballa, a parent whose children have attended Catholic schools and schools in Clairton and West Jefferson Hills districts.

While she's met some excellent older teachers, Guballa said, "My daughter shows much more excitement about the class if there's a younger teacher with fresher ideas."

But new teachers in Western Pennsylvania are a relative rarity. Laura Wennecker's children, now in Pittsburgh middle and high schools, have never had a teacher with less than 10 years' experience.

She doesn't mind. "Experience is really good," she said, because she believes those teachers know how to manage a classroom and be creative when challenging students to do their best work.

Good teachers often can be the best judges of bad teachers.

Sallie Peck, a math teacher at Dorseyville Middle School in the Fox Chapel Area School District, wonders if twice-a-year evaluations are enough to judge a teacher's quality. (Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette)

The poor teachers "are the [ones] who race the school bus out of the parking lot," said Sallie Peck, a middle school teacher in the Fox Chapel Area School District and a Teacher Excellence Foundation award winner. "Peer pressure doesn't work very well because they really don't care."

Rosalie Dibert, a 38-year Pittsburgh teacher, has mentored enough student teachers to know who's going to excel and who will barely become mediocre.

"You have some folks coming out [of college] who are just so passionate about teaching," she said. "They want to know every little nuance of teaching and suck it up like a sponge. There are other people who come with moderate skills and they're satisfied with that. Those are sad."

Those teachers won't leave or get fired, Dibert said. "They still have a job teaching kids. They're not going to be awful." But, she said, "They're never going to love it. They're never going to light a fire."

Like many parents, Leslie Lancaster of Ben Avon has known teachers with such chilling reputations that parents dread the beginning of the school year. She knows of one teacher, for instance, who publicly