By Joetta Sack-Min
It’s well known that students in high-poverty, predominantly minority schools are most likely to be taught by teachers who have little experience or low qualifications.
That problem becomes more pronounced in secondary schools, researchers have found. Recruiting, preparing, and retaining well-qualified teachers is becoming increasingly difficult for high-need, urban high schools, but districts can make systemic changes that will improve their prospects.
“Research shows that not every teacher graduate is cut out for working in an urban school, but a lot more could be successful,” said Barnett Berry, the founder and president of the Center for Teaching Quality.
There are solutions, said Jeremy Ayers, a policy and advocacy associate at the Alliance for Excellent Education, which recently convened a panel to discuss ways to attract and keep highly qualified teachers in low-achieving urban schools.
Ayers urged districts to reconsider their recruitment strategies and explore the use of alternative teacher preparation programs, grow-your-own initiatives, and incentives for teachers who work in high-need secondary schools.
Experts agreed that one major obstacle to hiring is district bureaucracy and teacher union contracts that prohibit school leaders from filling positions until all transfers are completed. Often, this means schools will not have all their staff hired when the school year starts, leaving administrators scrambling to hire any candidate they can find, regardless of qualifications.
“When an HR department is asked why not all the positions are filled for a school, they’ll say, ‘nobody wants to work there’ -- but they had piles of applications in April and May,” said Timothy Daly, president of the New Teacher Project in New York City.
“We’ve bought these explanations because there’s no data and little scrutiny,” but anyone who’s worked in an urban district knows that’s not the case, he said.
To overcome bureaucratic hiring practices, districts should streamline their application process using such tools as online postings and applications and ensure that job openings are posted early, Ayers suggested.
Panelists also recommended that school boards create policies that give high-need schools a head start to make offers to candidates and also give incentives, such as bonuses.
Districts’ recruiters can significantly hinder the process, said Barbara Jenkins, the chief of staff for the Orange County, Fla., district. She described the recruiters for an unidentified district as “largely administrators in ‘time out,’” who were biding time before retirement and had little interest in their jobs.
Instead, “you must choose people who have a customer focus,” she said. “Keep in mind that these are the first people [candidates] see when you go out on the road. You can’t have people packing up before the fair is over, and you can’t just offer free pencils.”
And while it’s important to pay more to teachers who take on challenging assignments, improving working conditions is usually the biggest incentive for teachers, Ayers said. “Even then, we know some teachers will not work in low-performing schools.”
School leadership is the most important factor in working conditions, followed by job assignment, colleagues, and professional development opportunities, according to Ayers’ research. Resources and safety are also important considerations.
New teachers should undergo a comprehensive induction, Ayers said. They should also be given access to professional development and ample opportunities to collaboration is a big indicator of teacher retention," he said.
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