March 2004 Newsflash
Teacher equity platform
We the students, parents and community members of Philadelphia public schools are concerned about the unequal distribution of qualified and experienced teachers across our schools. For far too long, many of our highest poverty schools with the most difficult working conditions have consistently had the least qualified and least experienced teachers.
More than twenty organizations representing student, parent, education, civic and clergy groups have joined together to seek strategies to overcome these unfair and unequal barriers to learning. These strategies include: improving District hiring and transfer policies to ensure a more equitable balance of certified and experienced teachers across schools; providing extra incentives to attract and retain certified and experienced teachers in hard to staff schools; increasing the number of schools that adopt site based teacher selection; strengthening principal leadership in hard to staff schools; implementing a "grow your own" program to further expand the teacher pipeline; and involving students and parents in the preparation and professional development of teachers.
We look forward to the opportunity to discuss this platform with the School Reform Commission, other District officials and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers as we work to ensure that more of our hard to staff schools have a stable, certified, experienced, and well supported teaching force. We hope that the School District and teachers union will acknowledge the concerns of the community as they pursue their negotiations for a new contract.
1. Continue to implement policies and practices that will expand the pool of certified teachers in the District.
2. Provide extra incentives and supports
for hard-to-staff schools
We urge the District to provide additional supports to improve conditions
in the hardest to staff schools in the form of "teacher incentive
grants." Individuals who teach in hard to staff schools endure
the toughest working conditions and require more supports than are
provided to individuals at schools with a more stable teaching force.
National research on the most effective teacher recruitment and
retention strategies and surveys of new and experienced teachers
have identified extra incentives as an effective strategy for creating
a positive working environment and maintaining a stable teaching
force. In Minneapolis and Seattle, school district officials provide
hard-to-staff schools with extra resources and professional development
opportunities and assist them with the development of individual
teacher recruitment and retention plans.
Possible process for distributing "teacher
incentive grants":
Hard to staff schools would select from a pre-determined set of
proven teacher recruitment / retention incentives or make a strong
case that another strategy should be employed in order to ensure
better working conditions for teachers. We believe it is essential
that the entire school community including school administrators,
teachers, parents and students be involved with the selection of
incentives.
Potential list of approved incentives: teacher coaches, teacher mentors, smaller classes, additional staff support, financial incentives, mental health and discipline supports and personnel, additional money for classroom supplies, professional development and training opportunities to establish professional culture, reduced work loads and administrative duties, literacy supports and extra planning and prep time, strategies to ensure a regular cadre of substitutes.
3. Improve the District's teacher hiring
and transfer policies to ensure a more equitable distribution of
certified and experienced teachers
We urge the District to consider a variety of strategies to ensure
a more equitable balance of certified and experienced teachers at
schools across the District, including placing a cap on the number
of emergency certified and inexperienced teachers that could exist
at a school. Policies should also be created to ensure that all
schools have a balance of new and experienced teachers. Cities across
the nation, Districts and teacher unions have worked together to
implement policies that assist in creating a more equitable balance
of certified and experienced teachers across schools. In Chicago
and Detroit, "teacher experience" is explicitly named,
along with race, as a key factor to consider within teacher hiring
and transfer polices. Detroit has a Transfer Review Board consisting
of union and District officials to ensure this balance. In Cincinatti,
union and District officials work collaboratively to identify schools
with the highest recruitment and retention challenges and jointly
set targeted goals to obtain experienced teachers at those schools.
Establish an early hiring and teacher assignment
process for the hardest-to-staff schools.
We urge the District to adopt a hiring policy that would ensure
that individuals willing to teach in hard-to-staff schools are interviewed
and offered teaching positions in early spring. National research
on teacher hiring practices has revealed that one of the top reasons
why large urban districts lose high caliber teachers to the suburbs
is due to hiring delays. Potential teacher recruits are often left
in limbo about their teaching assignments for months and are not
offered a position until mid-to-late summer, after they have to
meet a deadline for accepting other job offers. Moving up the hiring
process for hard-to-staff schools would help to attract a more talented
pool of teacher candidates and ensure that teachers are well acclimated
to the school staff, students and environment well before the start
of the school year.
4. Strengthen the capacity for principals
to be effective leaders
We urge the District to implement strategies that will ensure that
hard to staff schools have highly qualified and well supported principals.
Research has revealed that hiring high quality, supportive principals
is a key component to ensuring a positive, high achieving school
environment with a stable teaching staff. Specifically we support
the following incentives and supports in hard to staff schools;
offering financial incentives to attract and retain principals,
providing support staff to assist with non-instructional duties,
providing outstanding principals with opportunities to mentor principals
in hard to staff schools.
5. Expand opportunities for schools
to adopt a site based selection teacher hiring process
We urge the District to move towards adopting universal site based
selection of teachers by changing the criteria for the process so
that more schools have the opportunity to participate. We recommend
that every school be required to hold a vote on a site based selection
hiring process, that the current two-thirds majority vote required
for schools to adopt site based selection be changed to a simple
majority and once a school votes in favor of a site based selection,
this process should remain for more than one year. It is also critical
that site based hiring decisions include the principal and a committee
that includes teachers, parents and students in real decision making
roles. Research and experience suggest the effectiveness of this
strategy in schools in Philadelphia and across the nation. When
applicants interview at a school site with the principal, teachers,
parents and students, they begin to understand the school's students,
mission and curriculum and are better able to determine if the teaching
assignment would be an appropriate match. In addition to creating
a better "teaching fit," individuals hired through a site
based selection process tend to form quicker working relationships
with other staff and often receive earlier teaching assignments.
Currently a number of big city school districts including Los Angeles,
New York, Minneapolis, Denver, Baltimore, Dallas and Detroit have
had success in employing a system wide site based selection process
for hiring teachers. It is vital, however, that expanded opportunities
for site based selection be paired with the aforementioned policies
ensuring a more equitable distribution of certified and experienced
teachers.
6. Include students and parents in
teacher training and professional development
We urge the District to adopt a policy that would involve students
and parents in District wide teacher trainings and professional
development activities. Students and parents often have critical
insight into the unique learning styles of our young people and
effective teaching strategies for reaching students, but have few
opportunities for sharing this information. Students and parents
should have the opportunity to participate in finding ways to address
barriers to learning in our schools. Mechanisms should be created
for students and parents to give constructive feedback about what
is happening in their classroom. Their voice is essential to ensuring
that classroom instruction is interactive and engaging and relevant
to the diversity that exists within Philadelphia's student body.
7. Implement a "Grow Your Own"
program in Philadelphia
We urge the District to implement a "grow your own" program
that would provide instructional aids and other para-professionals
currently working at hard to staff schools with opportunities to
become fully certified teachers. National research suggests that
individuals who participate in these programs are highly invested
in the neighborhood schools that they work, often live in the communities
surrounding hard-to-staff schools and tend to return back to the
hard to staff schools and remain as teachers for significant periods
after receiving their full certification. In a 12-year-old North
Carolina grow-your-own program that involves about one third of
the state's hard to staff schools, individuals involved in the program
have an 89% retention rate in hard-to-staff schools once they receive
full certification. A similar program in Chicago's Logan Square
community yielded an 80% retention rate in hard to staff schools
among individuals who completed a grow your own program. In Philadelphia,
it is estimated that 1,000 out of 1,700 SSA's are interested in
pursuing teaching careers in Philadelphia public schools.
Endorsing
organizations:
Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN),Cedar
Park West Community Development Corporation, City Wide Youth Agency,
Delaware Valley Council for Early Care and Learning, Dugan and Associates,
Eastern Pennsylvania Organizing Project (EPOP), Education Law Center
of Pennsylvania / Pennsylvania School Reform Network, Institute
for African American Mobilization, Institute for the Study of Civic
Values, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP), Pennsylvania League of Women Voters, Philadelphia Chapter
of the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), Philadelphia
Citizens for Children and Youth, Philadelphia Education Fund, Philadelphia
Futures, Philadelphia Home and School Council, Philadelphia Student
Union, Philadelphia Voter Mobilization Coalition, Rev. Arthur White,
Pennsylvania State Baptist Convention, Urban League of Philadelphia,
Inc, Youth United for Change, 2000 African American Women [back
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