Less turnover, but teacher quality gap persists

Organizers say extra support is needed at hard-to-staff schools

by Dale Mezzacappa

Many schools in Philadelphia's poorest neighborhoods have been consistently plagued with a revolving door of teachers, who frequently lack experience and proper qualifications in their subjects.

For more than a decade, organizing groups and education advocates have been pushing District and teacher union officials to grapple more directly with the problem, especially as research evidence has mounted that even one dismal teacher can significantly set back a child's academic improvement.

With the District in the midst of a leadership transition and a new teachers' contract coming up, these activists are hoping that renewed attention to this issue will build on progress already made.

“What we've seen is that districtwide, there's been a large improvement,” said Ali Kronley, chief organizer for ACORN in Philadelphia, who called activism around teacher quality ACORN's “signature work” over the past few years. “There are fewer vacancies, and teachers have higher level of experience districtwide than five or six years ago.”

Still an issue, though, she said, is how those teachers are distributed. “We continue to see huge disparities among schools,” Kronley said.

The highest-poverty schools and the ones serving mostly students of color still have trouble attracting and keeping stable, experienced faculties, she said – a conclusion backed up by a May report from Research for Action.

The RFA report found that the District has improved teacher recruitment, reduced first-year attrition, decreased its reliance on emergency-certified teachers, and upgraded teacher qualifications overall.

However, it “has not been successful in moving toward greater equity in the distribution of fully certified and experienced teachers across all schools,” the report said.

Kronley said that she was hopeful that new School Reform Commission chair Sandra Dungee Glenn, who has been outspoken on teacher quality issues, could make an impact. “Her recent comments reflect the…concept that equity doesn't mean equal dollars for schools, but figuring out what schools and students need” and seeing that they get it, she said.

But other organizers are cautious. “Putting more resources in the neediest schools – that's something the District has hesitated to do that I think is necessary,” said Eric Braxton, an organizer with the Philadelphia Student Union.

PSU has long advocated that the hardest-to-staff schools should get smaller class sizes, top-notch leadership, ample materials, and other amenities that will attract and hold the best teachers. Braxton says that students in his organization still complain about teachers who don't know their subjects and about classes taught by a parade of substitutes.

“It's still a huge problem,” Braxton said.

In 2004, the year when the last teachers' contract was negotiated, the Education Law Center filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR), arguing that the District's method of placing teachers discriminated against poor students and students of color.