Thoughts on Equitable Teacher Distribution

In a U.S. News & World Report article (“In Urban Classrooms, the Least Experienced Teach the Neediest Kids”), the New America Foundation’s MaryEllen McGuire offers a compelling analysis of the problem of inequitable teacher distribution in American schools.

Why are our least experienced professionals consistently being handed the most challenging teaching assignments? Because of the way seniority is rewarded in teacher contracts. More often that not, union contracts dictate that veteran teachers get first dibs on available positions within a school system. As a result, when given the chance, teachers often choose to transfer to more desirable, low-poverty schools. As a result of these transfers, students with the greatest educational need are time and time again taught by the least experienced teachers.

This is a topic that the Education Optimists have written about previously (see here and here). In addition, The Education Trust has done some good work on this issue, including this 2006 report ("Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality") by Kati Haycock and Heather Peske.

But compared to her solid conception of the problem, McGuire somewhat misses the mark on proposed solutions to inequitable teacher distribution. She writes:

This will require a long-term commitment to systemic reform including investing in low-poverty schools to make them more attractive teaching placements and funding incentives to initially attract experienced and, we hope, higher quality teachers to low-income schools. Will this require dollars beyond what we have? Not necessarily. Federal law already provides schools with money to pay for this. It's just that the funds typically go to reduce class sizes or provide professional development for teachers instead - strategies that have mixed results. Some of these funds should be redirected to pay for incentives drawing teachers into high-poverty schools. This is also a great use of stimulus money.

Should some federal Title II dollars be used for recruitment incentives? Sure - but let's not take that idea too far. The distribution problem is one of retention as much as it is one of recruitment. Title II funding should and can be used for high-quality professional development and high-quality induction and mentoring focused on improving teaching practice – efforts directed at making teachers more effective that simultaneously improve retention and self-efficacy. This legislation, sponsored by U.S. Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, would go a long way toward these ends. Arguably, these approaches to teacher development are arguably a far better use of stimulus money than recruitment incentives.

In addition, as the author suggests (“more attractive teaching placements”), we need to work with school leaders and policymakers to improve the working conditions in these hard-to-staff, high-poverty schools and districts. We need to provide educators time to collaborate and a role in school decision-making—things that don't cost a whole lot of money but that do require a new way of doing business. Research has shown these factors are often more important than often paltry recruitment incentives in keeping the highest-quality, most effective teachers at hard-to-staff schools.

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$29 Billion Buys You A New Education System?

On Wednesday the Forum for Education and Democracy released a proposal to "transform the federal role in education." The conveners are a group of high-profile academics and educators, including Linda Darling-Hammond, John Goodlad, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Deborah Meier, and Ted Sizer.

The cynic in me might call this a $29 billion spending proposal which would result in a 75 percent increase in federal education spending ... but I'm an optimist, so I'll call it a proposed investment. And, in many ways, it is. There are many policy ideas worthy of consideration. I'm not sure it's transformational however.

First, the bad news: What it is, is a tough sell politically. The authors were aware of this, and noted that its cost is equivalent to the monthly price tag of the war in Iraq. But they could have done much more to suggest ways to use current educational resources more efficiently. For instance, what about all the federal funds squandered on spray 'n' pray professional development? Gotta be some savings there. And it would drape at least a paper-thin cloak of fiscal austerity over an otherwise jaw-dropping spending proposal.

Now, the good news: The report is right to call for additional federal investments to build human capital--particularly in so-called hard-to-staff and low-performing schools. In my opinion, the No Child Left Behind Act's biggest failures are (1) its lack of a serious focus on developing highly effective teachers and (2) its focus on punitive sanctions for 'failing' schools and districts rather than the provision of capacity building assistance to turn those schools around.

Let's stipulate two things. Number one, teacher quality is the most important school-based variable impacting student success. Number two, educational accountability is not a silver bullet.

(1) The 'highly qualified' teacher requirement is a meaningless designation. In most states, every teacher is highly qualified. What NCLB lacks is a coherent and sustained vision to enhance teacher development during the initial years in the profession and beyond. To the Forum's credit, it offers up some worthy ideas to move us off the dime: induction programs and teacher residencies as well as stronger school leadership preparation.

New educator support programs currently are allowable uses of NCLB's Title II, Part A dollars, but few of those monies are spent in such impactful ways. In 2006-07, U.S. school districts received nearly $3 billion under Title II, Part A--but 79 percent of the funds were used either to reduce class sizes (47%) or for professional development (32%). [See U.S. Department of Education Survey on the Use of Funds Under Title II, Part A (July 2007)]

(2) Educational accountability alone cannot transform schools. As one of my colleagues like to say, "You don't know what you don't know." Indeed. But the inherent presumption in educational accountability is that educators need a kick in the pants--and kids will learn. This--plus school choice--was W's and many social conservatives' primary argument for NCLB. But that's not how it works.

A main reason why educators in low-performing schools are unsuccessful is because they don't know how to work better or work differently--not because they're lazy or feckless. Changing this requires not just strengthening individual knowledge and skills but also organization-wide transformations in the conditions and culture of teaching and learning. Some of the Forum's ideas would move us in that direction.

Harvard's Dick Elmore makes this point quite cogently in a 2002 Education Next article:

"The working theory behind test-based accountability is seemingly—perhaps fatally—simple. Students take tests that measure their academic performance in various subject areas. The results trigger certain consequences for students and schools—rewards, in the case of high performance, and sanctions for poor performance. Having stakes attached to test scores is supposed to create incentives for students and teachers to work harder and for school and district administrators to do a better job of monitoring their performance.... The threat of such measures is supposed to be enough to motivate students and schools to ever-higher levels of performance.

This may have the ring of truth, but it is in fact a naïve, highly schematic, and oversimplified view of what it takes to improve student learning.... The ability of a school to make improvements has to do with the beliefs, norms, expectations, and practices that people in the organization share, not with the kind of information they receive about their performance. Low-performing schools aren’t coherent enough to respond to external demands for accountability.

The work of turning a school around entails improving the knowledge and skills of teachers—changing their knowledge of content and how to teach it—and helping them to understand where their students are in their academic development. Low-performing schools, and the people who work in them, don’t know what to do. If they did, they would be doing it already.

Test-based accountability without substantial investments in capacity ... is unlikely to elicit better performance from low-performing students and schools."


In sum, I don't begrudge the Forum for setting forth these ideas for improving American public education. I just don't think that federal policymakers or presidential candidates are in the market for something with a $29 billion price tag. Targeted investments to strengthen teacher quality in high-need schools and districts--such as those proposed in U.S. Senator Ted Kennedy and Congressman George Miller's TEACH Act or in U.S. Senator Jack Reed's School Improvement Through Teacher Quality Act--are much more likely to pass the political smell test and find their way into a reauthorized NCLB.

Further, during NCLB reauthorization (now likely to move forward in 2009-2010), one can hope that federal policymakers look toward capacity building strategies (such as those proposed in this report) to replace punitive sanctions and the use of external supplemental service providers. We have a good sense of what is takes to transform struggling schools and districts -- but it's gonna take more than cajoling, demanding and hoping to get the job done. It's going to require a financial and intellectual investment in strengthening the teaching profession and redesigning school leadership.

UPDATE: U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings's proposed rules for NCLB utterly ignore the capacity building needs I have articulated above. It's more of the same old-same old accountability and contracting out of services without support. This will not address the capacity of districts or schools to improve. See Education Week story here.

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