This edition of the Notebook NEWSFLASH is also available online at: www.thenotebook.org/newsflash/2005/March
Notebook NEWSFLASH: March 2005
Target of 100 percent 'highly qualified' teachers still far from reach
School hopes to overcome opposition from longtime community activists
Pilot course aims to 'demystify' Africa
Events
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by Paul Socolar
An important deadline laid out in the federal No
Child Left Behind Act, aimed at insuring teacher quality,
is now just 15 months away.
But for the Philadelphia School District, this requirement
that all public school teachers in core academic subjects
meet standards as “highly qualified” by
June 2006 appears to be even further from reach than
previously reported, based on recently released data
from the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
According to the state's report “Highly
Qualified Teachers in Pennsylvania,” only
85 percent of Philadelphia public school teachers
in 2003-04 satisfied the state's definition of “highly
qualified.” That compares to a state report
that 90 percent of School District teachers were “highly
qualified” in the 2002-03 school year.
Statewide, about 97 percent of Pennsylvania public
school teachers meet the state's standard for “highly
qualified” teachers.
The drop in Philadelphia’s percentage of “highly qualified” teachers, in the midst of a major District push on teacher recruitment and retention, appears to reflect a more thorough application of the standards by the state in 2003-04. This resulted in a determination that many Philadelphia middle school teachers in seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms lack a certification demonstrating their content-area expertise.
A spokesperson for the state Department of Education commented, “For the 2003-04 Highly Qualified Teacher Report, middle school teachers needed to have their Mid-Level Certification in order to be considered ‘highly qualified.’” This standard was not applied last year, she explained.
The state offers a middle grades certification in
English, math, science and social studies for those
teaching grades seven to nine.
Teacher workforce shows improvement
Despite the reported decrease in the percentage of
“highly qualified” teachers in Philadelphia,
evidence suggests that the qualifications of Philadelphia
School District teachers are actually improving, says
local researcher Ruth Curran Neild, who has also just
completed a study of teacher quality in Philadelphia.
Neild, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania,
observed that the overall percentage of certified
teachers in Philadelphia rose slightly in 2003-04,
to just below 90 percent.
She also said there has been a “dramatic decline”
in the percentage of emergency permit teachers in
middle schools last year -- teachers who have a bachelor's
degree but have not passed all their licensing exams.
Growing portions of Philadelphia middle school teachers
are at least “intern-certified,” Neild
said. This means they have passed basic skills exams
and a test in any content areas they are teaching
and are enrolled in a teacher certification program
– though they may be lacking education coursework
and classroom experience.
In Pennsylvania, to be deemed “highly qualified”
according to NCLB, a teacher does not have to be “fully
certified” – that is, to have completed
all teacher preparation coursework and passed licensing
exams in the appropriate content area and grade level.
Teachers who are "intern-certified" can
also be considered "highly qualified" in
Pennsylvania.
But certification is only part of the picture. The
state determines whether teachers are “highly
qualified” by looking at whether their certification
is appropriate to their classroom assignment.
One of the big stumbling blocks for teachers in Philadelphia
and other urban districts is that middle and high
school teachers (including special education) must
either achieve a passing score in each of the academic
subjects they teach or have a graduate degree or undergraduate
academic major in these subjects.
In Philadelphia, most certified middle school teachers
have elementary (K-6) certification and have not passed
tests in the subject area or areas they teach.
Neild commented, “There are relatively few teachers in middle schools with secondary subject-area certifications that would automatically make them highly qualified, assuming they were assigned to teach the subject in which they were certified.”
Philadelphia's middle school teachers have also been passing the state licensing exams for their middle school content areas at disappointingly low rates.
Pennsylvania has created the “Bridge Certificate Program,” allowing some experienced teachers (in middle schools, alternative schools, special education, and English as a second language) to be deemed highly qualified in subjects without passing a content test or having a college major in these subjects. The bridge certificate gives teachers three years to earn points toward a permanent certification for factors including experience, course work, professional development, and writing articles.
“We’re talking to principals and regional superintendents about reminding teachers of this possibility,” said Tomas Hanna, the District’s senior vice president of human resources. But he noted that simply passing the state’s Praxis exam is “an easier requirement for teachers to get through.” The District offers free Praxis test preparation courses for teachers.
Hanna mentioned several other initiatives to keep improving the quality of the teacher workforce, including marketing the District to prospective teachers, attracting student teachers, and offering positions to new teachers earlier in the year.
“The new teachers’ contract with its site-based selection provision will be helpful as well,” he noted. The provision allows schools to interview and select teachers for many openings, rather than using a centralized teacher assignment process.
‘Quest for quality’
Neild said the story of Philadelphia’s troubles
is one that could be told about many urban districts,
including others like Philadelphia that have made
efforts to upgrade their workforce in response to
the requirements of NCLB.
Neild's report, co-authored by Betsey Useem and Elizabeth Farley and titled “Quest for Quality: Recruiting and Retaining Teachers in Philadelphia,” is scheduled to be released this month. Neild and Useem have previously reported on the shortage of qualified teachers in Philadelphia schools that serve mostly high poverty populations and students of color.
In their upcoming report, the authors write, “Given Philadelphia's difficulties in attracting and retaining seventh and eighth grade teachers who have any type of certification, we are skeptical that Philadelphia will be able to meet the NCLB requirements for ‘highly qualified’ teachers in the middle grades, despite the District's evident will to comply with the letter and spirit of the legislation.”
They go on to say that the continued high rate of teacher turnover among middle school teachers would makes it difficult for the District to maintain 100 percent “highly qualified” status among its teachers even if it were somehow able to achieve that status.
Troubling data from the state
The most recent state report on “highly qualified”
teachers shows that 26 Philadelphia public schools
– less than one in ten – had a staff that
was 100 percent “highly qualified” in
2003-04.
But at 56 District schools, one-fourth or more of the teaching staff fell short of the criteria for “highly qualified” teachers. Of those 56 schools, 39 were middle schools, representing nearly all the middle schools in the District.
At Shoemaker Middle School in West Philadelphia, only 38 percent of the staff was considered highly qualified in 2003-04, and at Vaux in North Philadelphia the figure was 48 percent. At seven other middle schools, highly qualified teachers made up only 50 to 55 percent of the staff. Three of the lowest-rated schools – Vaux, Rhodes, and Sayre – are middle schools undergoing a conversion to high schools.
The schools with the poorest results for “highly qualified” teachers are schools that have struggled for years with high teacher turnover. This group of schools includes several middle schools run by education management organizations – Edison, Victory, and Foundations – that were also troubled by heightened teacher turnover after they were privatized in 2002.
Contact Notebook editor Paul Socolar at 215-951-0330, x107 or pauls@thenotebook.org.
The varied ethnic community of Chinatown formed a cohesiveness in the 1960s when it fought city efforts to build a Vine Street Expressway ramp where the Catholic Chinese school and church stood, and again to fight a plan to locate a stadium there.
But divisions have emerged in Chinatown now that a new school – a proposed charter school -- is being considered by the School Reform Commission in the neighborhood of some 3,000 residents. Ironically, those in opposition include the founder and director of the organization that nearly 40 years ago emerged from the fight to save that church and school, Holy Redeemer.
Commission members were prepared to approve the Folk Arts and Cultural Treasures Charter School (FACTS), but tabled the resolution after three speakers denounced the proposal at a February SRC meeting. Commissioners said they were hoping that a postponement until the March 9 meeting would ease opposition to the school, proposed by the community group Asian Americans United in association with the Philadelphia Folklore Project.
John Chin, executive director of the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. (PCDC), told the commission the community was already well served by two elementary schools: Holy Redeemer, a tuition-charging Catholic school with about 285 students in grades 1-8, and McCall School, a K-8 District school almost a mile away at 325 S. 7th St., with about 450 students, 45 percent of whom are Asian.
Noting strong support for the school, particularly among the neighborhood’s often less-acknowledged new immigrants, Asian Americans United co-president Helen Gym said that the school proposal had “rocked the boat” for a few who remain “comfortable or even benefit from the existing situation in Chinatown.”
“Some of the arguments have been that the Chinatown community doesn’t need services, it doesn’t actually even need a school, that less is more for some,” Gym offered. “Others have claimed that there is negative impact on other schools. But we would ask you to reject the notion that less is more. . . We ask you to consider not framing our proposal by pitting one school against another – that a program that’s healthy and successful isn’t threatened by the opening of another healthy and successful school.”
If the School Reform Commission approves the charter, FACTS will opens its door in September, initially serving 286 students in K-5, and eventually, 438 through the 8th grade.
It would be the first public institution ever built in Chinatown, in a community that AAU’s Gym testified “has no playground for the 1,000 plus children who live there, . . . no public health clinic in its borders, no publicly funded recreation center.”
To support the school, the group has collected 1,200 signatures, and brought large crowds of parents and supporters to several SRC meetings. Days after the postponement, in a letter to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Hoyu Chinese American Association’s Jimmy Chang wrote that “95 percent of the community associations in Chinatown have endorsed this school.”
But Cecilia Moy Yep, a PCDC founder, spoke against the school at the February 16 SRC meeting. Calling AAU confrontational, she told the SRC, “Parents are concerned that their children will be indoctrinated in an ideology of protest.”
Another speaker scheduled to testify in opposition to the school, but who chose not to speak, was Kenneth Wong, of Holland, Pa., active in the Asian community, and whose wife owns Chinatown Learning Center, a for-profit pre-school for children ages 3 - 6, and after-school program.
While school supporters after the SRC meeting complained about a perceived unfairness in that the views of a few stood in the way of the desires of so many, Schools CEO Paul Vallas said the opposition was varied, and that commissioners had received “many” letters and e-mails in opposition to the school.
Press reports stated that many were form letters.
One of the chief aims of the African history course that the School District of Philadelphia is piloting in three high schools this term is to “demystify the myths of Africa.”
According to Dana King, lead academic coach in the District’s African and African American Studies Department, the course focuses on classical African civilizations, including the origin of human existence in Africa, the Nile Valley civilizations of Egypt and Ethiopia, and modern African history.
Said Cecilia Cannon, associate superintendent of curriculum and instruction, “When we look at African history in world history, which all students take, the history of Africa has not been treated fairly.” The District is therefore seeking ways to instruct students on the history, in a manner that “stimulates interest in these topics,” she said.
The pilot course debuted at Strawberry Mansion, William Penn and Bartram (main campus) high schools this spring. In some form, it will be put in place in all high schools in the fall, a decision voted on unanimously as part of a resolution by the School Reform Commission in February.
But whether the course will be mandatory for all students, be allowed as a substitute for a mandated class, or be integrated into another mandated course, remains undecided by SRC members.
Also undecided is whether the mandated course will be an African history course, an African-American history course, or some incorporation of the two.
The course is not yet using textbooks, but rather modules, with which King had worked on with Molefi K. Asante, professor of African-American Studies at Temple University, author and renowned pioneer of the theory of Afrocentricity.
“For the African history course, I believe there isn’t a textbook below a college level developed to date,” Cannon said. “That’s why the modules are so key, so that we can assure they are appropriate and user-friendly and teacher-driven.”
However, she said King had been examining possible textbooks that could be used, and had thus far narrowed selections down to about three texts, which would be given further internal and external consideration.
From the pilot program, Cannon said, the District will examine the effectiveness of the modules on high school teachers and students, and determine in what type of course offering they might best be used.
March 2: Registration begins for Naylamp Street and Puppet Theater (teatro callegero y de marionetas) opportunity for 16 and older to create masks, puppets and a video to be used as props in theatre production. Every Tuesday, Wednesday & Thursday, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m., Taller Puertorriqueno, 2557 N. 5th St. Contact Dora Viacava, 215-426-3311, naylamptheater@yahoo.com.
March 5: Educators to Stop the War: 8:30 a.m. Hunter College High School, 71 E. 94th St. at Park Avenue, New York City, Conference of anti-war educators and students, addressing curriculum, anti-recruitment issues, work within unions, the social effects of war. For more information, go to www.educatorstostopthewar.org.
March 9: School Reform Commission Planning Meeting. 1 p.m., School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 2nd floor auditorium. To register to speak, call 215-299-7850 by 4:30 p.m. the day before the meeting.
March 10: School District Parent and Community Roundtable. 12 noon. School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, Room 224. Parents and leaders of community-based organizations gather to discuss District programs and provide parent insight into initiatives. RSVP to at 215-299-2995.
March 12: “School Choice Opportunities: Application Procedures and Deadlines” workshop. 10 a.m. – 12 noon. Women’s Christian Alliance, 1742 Cecil B. Moore Ave. Sponsored by the Pennsylvania Parent Information & Resource Center. Attendance free. Registration required. 215-763-0883, www.papirc.org.
March 16: School Reform Commission Action Meeting. 1 p.m., School District of Philadelphia, 2120 Winter Street, 2nd floor auditorium. To register to speak, call 215-299-7850 by 4:30 p.m. the day before the meeting.
March 16: “Violence: What’s Going On? How Can We Increase the Peace?”: Alliance of Black Social Workers 10th Annual Conference. Holiday Inn, 4100 Presidential Blvd. 8 a.m. – 12 noon. Pre-registration deadline: March 9. Early registration, $75. On-site: $90. ECUs: $15.
March 28: The Franklin Conference on School Design: 3:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. World Café Live, 3025 Walnut St. First in a series of public forums on school/community renewal. University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutman and a panel of national experts on school design, planning and pedagogy, will speak. Free, open to the public. Light supper provided. Seating limited. RSVP to school@design.upenn.edu, or 215-573-8720.
Every Thursday: Talk radio program with Sandra Dungee Glenn, School Reform Commission member. 10:30 a.m. – 1:30 p.m. WURD 900 AM. Call-in number: 215-426-1310.
July 21-24: 2005 National Coalition of Education Activists Conference: "The Real Mandate: Educate and Fight for Social Justice." St. Joseph’s University. For information: 215-735-2418, conference@edactivists.org.
School Calendar
March 4: Early dismissal.
March 7: High School Benchmark Week.
March 10: Extended Day program ends.
March 11: “Multiple Acceptance” letters due to the Office of Student Placement. Letters should be returned to the District with final school choice selected.
March 21 - 23: K-8 Report Card Conferences.
March 24 - 28: Spring Recess: Schools closed.
The Notebook NEWSFLASH welcomes brief announcements
of events addressing issues of quality and equity
in Philadelphia public schools. Email your submission
to flash@thenotebook.org
with ‘coming up’ in the subject line.
We cannot guarantee the listing of your event.
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