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flight: Why School Districts are Losing Their Best Teachers
As schools nationwide send out recruiters, troubled
districts like Philadelphia face further risk of losing their
best.
By Jeff Gammage, Philadelphia Enquirer,
August 17, 2002
Here's the problem in California: The population is growing by
leaps and bounds.
The schoolteachers are retiring in droves.
And the size of the average lower-grade-school class, under
order of the state legislature, is shrinking like a cheap
suit.
Here's the result: In the next 10 years, officials say, the
state will need to hire 250,000 teachers. That means if
California could somehow persuade the entire population of
Rochester, N.Y., to come work in its schools, it would still
be about 30,000 teachers short.
But Golden State educators have an idea where they might find
qualified candidates. A place where, they believe, many
teachers are sufficiently overworked, underpaid and fed up to
consider uprooting their families and moving clear across the
country:
Philadelphia.
A squad of eager California recruiters invaded Center City in
June, and they brought more than a tan. They came bearing pay
raises, bonuses, tax credits, and an ocean of statistics
showing that teachers' money buys more and goes farther out
West. It's no coincidence that they descended on Philadelphia
while the district is in financial and organizational turmoil,
reeling from episodes of school violence and the turnover of a
growing number of schools to private, for-profit companies.
State lawmakers took control of the nation's seventh-largest
district in December.
"It definitely creates a ripe situation," says Beth Fetterman,
a recruiter for CalTeach, a teacher-hiring program run by the
California State University system.
CalTeach - motto "Left Coast, Right Job" - isn't targeting
only Philadelphia. Philadelphia was the fifth stop on a
six-city tour. And the search for teachers - particularly in
math and science - isn't limited to California or the western
states.
Today the search for capable teachers has become a
preoccupation of school districts across the country. In the
next decade, according to the National Center for Education
Information, American schools will have to hire an estimated
2.2 million teachers, a trend driven by rising enrollments and
mass retirement of educators from the baby-boom era. One
effect is that short-staffed schools, particularly in cities,
are trying to lure teachers not just from nearby towns or
states but from across the country and even around the world.
As Fetterman spoke, she stood on the carpeted third-floor
balcony of the Doubletree Hotel, overlooking the warm brick
walls and flickering gaslights of the Academy of Music across
the street. Dozens of job-seeking teachers milled around,
chatting and picking at hors d'oeuvres. A table was heaped
with trays of melon, cucumbers and tomatoes, bowls of chips,
two silver urns of coffee, and a plastic tub packed with icy
bottles of Coke. A second table held brownies and
chocolate-chip cookies. And a third offered scores of
give-away goodies - pencils, pens, Frisbees, mouse pads and
key rings, all stamped with the CalTeach logo and most a
bright golden yellow, the color of sunshine.
In two days of meetings, CalTeach workers expected to make
their pitch to about 350 candidates, 70 percent of them
veteran teachers. Not all who came to listen hailed from
Philadelphia. Some traveled from New Jersey, and others drove
from across Pennsylvania. Several said they were ready to move
west.
"We're going to where the jobs are," says Leslie White, who
teaches science in a school near Altoona.
Her husband, Dan White, is a physical-education teacher who
has been unable to find work in Western Pennsylvania. Instead
of continuing a futile search, he says, he and his wife are
going to move to a fast-growing state that's eager to hire.
"We just can't get a job," he says, "so we'll go."
It used to be that teachers earned lower salaries than people
in other professions.
But that's changed.
Now they earn a lot less.
And that's sapping efforts to hire new teachers.
In 1990, the average pay for teachers was 10 percent less than
the average for accountants, and 50 percent less than the
average for computer analysts, according to the Economic
Policy Institute, a Washington research agency. By the end of
the decade, the gap between teachers and accountants had grown
to 20 percent, between teachers and computer analysts, to 65
percent. Starting salaries offered to college education majors
are about $8,000 less than those tendered to the next-lowest
group, liberal arts majors, the institute says.
More than salary is at issue. The liberalization of American
society has also played a role. Fifty years ago, women and
minorities had few attractive career options. Teaching was a
way to earn half-decent money and step into the middle class.
Today, however, opportunities have increased, and that
once-captive labor pool has fled to other professions.
That flight has contributed to a national shortage of teachers
that ranges from irksome to acute, depending on the particular
state and school district. Of the 2.2 million teachers needed
in the next decade, the National Center for Education
Information estimates, fully a third - more than 700,000 -
will be required in the cities. Those are precisely the places
where it's hardest to hire, with schools that typically offer
teachers lower pay, larger classes and fewer resources.
Thomas Carroll, director of the National Commission on
Teaching and America's Future, says big-city schools are
kidding themselves if they think they can hire their way out
of the shortage. The real issue is not how to hire new
teachers, he says, but how to retain those already there.
Every year, Carroll says, American colleges turn out about
200,000 teachers - more than enough to meet demand. But only
half will actually go into teaching. Many will change their
plans after unhappy student-teaching experiences in city
classrooms. Of the 50 percent who do become teachers, a third
will quit within three years. Some schools will lose half
their new teachers within five years.
"Across the country, we're facing what appears to be a
teacher-shortage problem that is actually a teacher-attrition
problem, a teacher burnout problem," Carroll says. "It's a
shortage of people who will teach in the schools, today, with
the conditions and at the pay that we're offering."
Schools have to attack the problem at the front by improving
salaries and situations to keep good teachers, he says, not at
the back by trying to entice people to take jobs that others
have quit.
"It's not an easy solution, it's not a quick solution,"
Carroll says. "But it's a strategy that school districts need
to take if they don't want to be in the same situation three
or four years from now."
Pennsylvania produces more teachers than it can use. It's
actually an exporter of teachers.
But it doesn't send them to Philadelphia. Or rather, they
don't go.
Last year, a study by the Philadelphia Education Fund
concluded that the city had "a serious and worsening teacher
staffing problem" because of "special conditions that
discourage teachers from applying to and staying in its public
schools."
Those conditions include large classes, poor student
discipline, the city wage tax, lack of tuition reimbursement,
and comparatively lower salaries. On average, the study found,
starting salaries in suburban districts were $3,000 higher.
For experienced teachers, the gap could approach $10,000.
The report found that at any given time, the Philadelphia
district had between 100 and 250 vacancies, although school
officials say the number hovered under 100 last year. Still,
that means some classrooms have no permanent teachers, and the
students are taught by substitutes and fill-ins.
"People don't want to come to districts where there are 33
kids in a class, and a wage tax, no tax incentives," says
Betsey Useem, coauthor of the study and director of research
for the Education Fund, a nonprofit agency that works to
improve the public schools. ". . . It's seen as a system where
the dust has not settled. And who knows when the dust will
settle?"
One big question was resolved last month when former Chicago
schools chief Paul Vallas was hired as the district's top
executive. And recently the school district has taken some
some steps to make itself more attractive to teachers. It
offers a $4,500 hiring bonus. Teachers willing to work in one
of 19 hard-to-staff schools get an additional $2,000.
Philadelphia has also joined other districts in an
international search for candidates.
Philadelphia has sought teachers in India, Houston has looked
in Moscow, and Maryland went hunting in Spain. New York hires
from Austria, and Chicago has hired four dozen teachers from
two dozen countries.
It can be hit or miss. Last year, says Marj Adler, the
Philadelphia district's director of human resources, a
recruiting trip to Miami netted eight bilingual teachers. So
that was worthwhile. But advertisements placed in the Los
Angeles Times produced little return.
Most years, the 200,000-student district hires 850 to 900
teachers, she says. It expects to hire the same or slightly
more for the new school year. What's concerning, she says, is
that the number of teachers being produced by Pennsylvania
colleges has dropped from about 20,000 to about 14,000
annually. That means the city has a smaller pool to draw on.
And at the moment, applications are down 15 percent from last
year.
"It makes me a little nervous," Adler says. "The national
teacher shortage has to put some kind of drag on every urban
area's number of applications. The turmoil [in Philadelphia]
has to have an impact. What I think is sad is if somebody is
committed to teaching in an urban middle school, they say:
'I'll go to Baltimore, New York or Newark, which is more
stable right now.' And that hurts."
Forty people wriggle on hard metal chairs inside the Aria
Room, their attention focused on a man in a royal-blue shirt
who introduces himself as David Harrison. He has traveled to
the Doubletree from his CalTeach office in St. Louis to
deliver a simple, powerful message:
California needs you. And it's willing to pay.
California is not merely the most populous state, with 34.5
million people. It's also the fastest-growing, according to
Census Bureau projections. From 1990 to 2000, California grew
13.6 percent, dwarfing Pennsylvania's 3.4 percent and New
Jersey's 8.6 percent growth.
"Those families that come to California, they bring their
kids," Harrison says. "And those kids have to be educated in
public school."
Each year the state enrolls 75,000 to 100,000 more children
than it did the year before, he says. At the same time - and
this is part of the rub - the state legislature has mandated
that class sizes in kindergarten through third grade be shrunk
to 20 students per teacher.
More families, more children, smaller classes - that's
creating jobs for teachers.
The salaries start at $34,000 to $44,000, well above the
national average of $27,000, Harrison says. He flashes a
series of slides that show it's cheaper to live in several
major California cities than in Philadelphia, an assertion
that local officials dispute.
"Anybody nationally board-certified here?" Harrison calls out.
Nobody answers.
"Anybody working to be board-certified?"
Silence.
"Anybody know what it is?"
One person raises a hand: A national certification, obtained
after rigorous study and testing, qualifies a teacher to work
in any school district in the country.
If you come to California with a national certification,
Harrison says, the state will pay you a $10,000 bonus. If you
earn a national certification while in California, the state
will pay you a $10,000 bonus. If you're willing to work in a
low-performing school, you'll be paid an additional $20,000
over four years. The state also will give you a $1,500 break
on your state income tax, along with other tax incentives to
encourage you to buy a home.
"The idea is if you put in the sacrifice, if you put in the
effort, the state will be there to assist you financially,"
Harrison says.
Two floors above Harrison, Michael Wong of the Palm Springs
Unified School District is interviewing a succession of
candidates, trying to interest them in teaching in Palm
Springs. "We're looking for qualified people," Wong says.
"It's a positive message, and it gets a positive response."
Yet the lure of sun, sand and surf only goes so far.
What is unsaid by the California recruiters is that many of
their vacancies are in the state's toughest schools. What is
acknowledged is that most teaching candidates aren't going to
move across the country - leaving their family, friends and
network of doctors, plumbers and mechanics - solely for money.
So the recruiters often have to look for a particular type of
candidate, somebody ready to make a leap. Maybe somebody who
previously lived in California, somebody looking for a fresh
start.
Somebody like Paula Bucci.
Bucci works in the cash-starved Chester Upland School
District, and until recently she wasn't planning to change
jobs, schools or states.
Then, last fall Edison Schools was hired to manage nine
district schools, schools that continue to struggle with
student suspensions, truancy, and serious behavior problems.
The school system announced, then rescinded, plans to close
two schools. It's going ahead with an austerity budget that
eliminates 84 teaching jobs and 129 other support and
administrative positions.
Bucci, 53, says she barely escaped being laid off.
She figures any further financial deterioration could
eliminate her job. As a single parent, that's too big a risk.
So she headed to the Doubletree to see if California could
offer her dependable employment.
"I wanted to stay," she says. "I'm not happy I have to pick up
and leave."
She lived in California years ago, so she's not worried about
the change in climate or culture. Nor is she deterred by the
prospect of working in a city school. Not long ago, she says,
she put her hand on the collar of a student who was throwing a
fit in class. The kid told the principal she tried to strangle
him. Can California be tougher than Chester?
"These are the most desperate areas of California," Bucci
says. "Salinas. I know Salinas. It's a migrant community. I'd
be willing to teach there."
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