Experience Counts

By JOHN SENA

One day last fall, two fourth-grade boys at Cesar Ch vez Elementary School, an economically disadvantaged school on the south side, spent most of the morning flinging bits of eraser at each other.

The teacher, in her first year in the classroom, tried everything. She separated the boys. She scolded them. Nothing worked. Eventually she asked them to leave. Later, a reading and writing exercise fell flat, leaving her frustrated and puzzled.

In contrast, fourth-grade students at Wood Gormley Elementary School, located in a middle-class neighborhood in downtown Santa Fe, were well-behaved. They followed directions. They listened as each took turns reading out loud. And while the teacher, a nine-year veteran, was meeting with groups of three or four students at a time to go over math problems, the rest of the class worked quietly.

These scenes are repeated daily across the country, where the least experienced teachers often have the toughest assignments.

“When you look at schools serving high poverty populations, there are twice as many new teachers as there are at schools that are not high minority or high poverty,” said Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality in Washington, D.C.

At Cesar Ch vez, for example, only 13 percent of teachers are Level III, the highest ranking and the highest paid in the state’s three-tier teacher licensure system, while 37 percent of Wood Gormley’s teachers are Level III.

“There were a lot of issues going on at home,” said Alicia Martinez, describing her experience as a new teacher last year at Agua Fra Elementary School. Like Cesar Ch vez, Agua Fra is a Title I school where all students qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Both schools serve primarily Hispanic students, many of whom are also English language learners. The students, Martinez said, sometimes behaved badly while others shut themselves off from teachers and friends.

Meanwhile, schools with large Anglo populations and few poor kids — more than two-thirds of Wood Gormley students are white, and fewer than one in six qualify for free or reduced lunches, according to recent data — are served by veteran teachers in classrooms of more-prepared students supported by highly involved parents.

Teacher turnover is higher in the poorer, more challenging schools with the least experienced faculty. The teacher in the Cesar Ch vez example no longer works there while the Wood Gormley teacher is back and preparing to start her

10th year in the profession.

As students and teachers prepare to return to school, administrators and school boards across the country are trying to address the staffing inequity, but few have had much success.

New Mexico and Santa Fe are no different. The biggest challenge is finding a balance that respects the needs of students and families as well as teachers.

“A little bit of

a meat grinder”

Laura Castille, the principal at Cesar Ch vez, is the local expert on how high teacher turnover affects schools.

Last summer, she had the arduous task of filling 12 teaching positions. Two years ago, that number was 16. The two combined represent more than a 50 percent turnover in staff in three years.

“It makes it really difficult to keep your programs going, to keep any consistency going,” she said. “I think it puts a tremendous strain on veteran teachers as well.”

Last year, nearly half of Castille’s teachers had less than five years of experience, according to district records. And only one- third of her staff had more than 10 years.

Her teachers serve some of the poorest kids in the district. And about two-thirds of the students who took state tests last year were classified as English Language Learners.

It could be an understatement that beginning a teaching career at Cesar Ch vez is baptism by fire. “I have felt for a while that we were a little bit of a meat grinder,” Castille said. “We have been bringing teachers in. It’s almost an initiation or hazing.”

For any teacher, the first year can be a test of wills, and there is a general consensus among school folks that it takes between three and five years for a teacher to be really comfortable in a classroom.

“Those kids that first year are kids that any teacher does some experimenting with,” said Libby Sternberg, a retired teacher who runs the district’s teacher mentoring program. “An experienced teacher’s classroom is in a flow. She knows how to assess needs. A new teacher is just learning how to do all that.”

“Very often, in a new teacher’s class, they teach to the middle of the class, and kids on both ends struggle,” Sternberg continued. “It’s very hard for a new teacher to meet individual needs.”

One way to help new teachers, Sternberg said, is to have strong mentors, either in the form of a principal or more experienced teacher.

Castille isn’t opposed to having new teachers, but she finds — with nearly 40 teachers and only one assistant principal — that she doesn’t have as much time as she would like to support her staff. And because the school has so many new teachers, there aren’t enough experienced teachers to serve as mentors, she said.

By contrast, schools with fewer poor students have a much more even distribution of new and experienced teachers.

At El Dorado Elementary School last year, eight teachers had less than five years of experience and eight teachers had more than 20 years. At Carlos Gilbert Elementary, six teachers had less than five years and six had more than 20. At Wood Gormley, there were three teachers with less than five years and six with more than 20.

Do monetary incentives work?

There is no shortage of ideas for how to recruit experienced and effective teachers to poor schools.

Offer incentives. Raise pay. Tap into more programs like Teach for America, a sort of Peace Corps for teachers that recruits top graduates from some of the most elite colleges in the country.

School administrators, though, often run into two major roadblocks, a scarcity of funds and lack of support from teachers and teacher unions.

State Secretary of Education Veronica Garcia, who spent much of her career in high-needs schools in Albuquerque’s South Valley, thinks the best way to get the best teachers into struggling schools is to offer monetary incentives. But, she acknowledges, “that’s been the kicker, coming up with the money.”

The other issue is making sure there is a return on investment. School officials must hold teachers accountable if they are going to be paid more. And that’s where much of the controversy originates.

Some argue test data should be used to measure a teacher’s effectiveness. Others believe it would be unfair to judge a teacher on a single measure when student performance is also affected by things at home and in the community.

Teacher unions especially are opposed to merit pay systems that reward or punish teachers based on student test data or whether students meet requirements under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Both Christine Trujillo, president of the American Federation of Teachers-New Mexico, and Sharon Morgan, president of the National Education Association-New Mexico, argue that instead of merit pay, teachers need more resources and better professional development.

Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, agrees teachers shouldn’t be judged on one set of criteria. But she thinks there should be some measure of effectiveness.

In addition to test scores, teachers can also be evaluated by their performance history and the progress of their students. “Did a teacher help kids grow 20 percentage points or 1 percentage point?” Walsh observed.

Walsh acknowledges that while some officials — Michelle Rhee, head of Washington, D.C., public schools, and Denver Superintendent Michael Bennett, for example — are pushing innovative teacher-pay structures in an effort to improve teacher quality, most districts, especially those with an overwhelming number of poor students, haven’t been successful addressing the issue.

A top priority

Before taking over the top job in July, Santa Fe Superintendent Bobbie Gutierrez said one of her top priorities was increasing the number of experienced teachers at schools like Cesar Ch vez.

She’s thrown around the idea of offering a one-time stipend to experienced teachers who would move to a low-performing school. The local teachers union would prefer the increase be on a recurring basis.

To come up with a solution, Gutierrez said, the district is forming a committee made up of district personnel and union representatives. Their discussions, she said, will probably focus on the above mentioned topics — incentives, accountability and fairness. But it’s unlikely any of the ideas will be implemented during the upcoming school year.

Meanwhile, Castille and Cesar Ch vez Elementary School will continue to deal with a novice staff. Fortunately, turnover at the school has slowed in the past two years. Castille had to fill only half a dozen teacher positions this year.

To ensure she got the most experienced and qualified, she tried to hire primarily from a pool of teachers requesting transfers. Only two of the six teachers she hired were new, she said. Castille also asked that her school be given priority in hiring. “As an administrator, I felt I couldn’t absorb any more new teachers,” Castille said, but that request was not granted.

She hopes by hiring a handful of experienced teachers this year she will start to break the “perpetual cycle” of new teachers who struggle, get frustrated and leave the school.

“It’s a disservice, I think, to the teachers,” Castille said, “and it’s a disservice to the children.”

Contact John Sena at 986-3079 or jsena@sfnewmexican.com.

(c) 2008 The Santa Fe New Mexican. Provided by ProQuest LLC. All rights Reserved.