Report of the Working Group on Professional Personnel Development

What Is Teacher Quality?

Teacher quality must be viewed not as a single point in time but as a continuous process throughout a teacher’s career. Teacher quality is not solely determined by a credential or a degree. Rather, it is an attribute that grows and diminishes based on conditions in which a teacher works, personal motivation, and opportunities for growth and development. The PPD workgroup rejects the concept of teachers as “fully qualified”, because this suggests a more static frame of reference. Rather, the workgroup considers the following qualities to be essential for a teacher to possess in order to be considered initially qualified, or qualified to begin work in the teaching profession with the expectation that much more will be added with time, practice, professional collaboration, and opportunities for focused growth and development:

• Subject matter knowledge that is broad, deep and related to the public school curriculum;
• Pedagogical knowledge and skill that includes a repertoire of teaching strategies that are responsive to a range of learning needs;
• Commitment to professional collaboration;
• Ability to examine student work and student data and respond accordingly;
• Belief that all children can achieve state adopted academic content and performance standards with appropriate time, instruction and intervention; and
• Ability to be reflective about their own teaching and modify practice as necessary and appropriate to enhance student learning.

What Is Administrator Quality?

Administrator quality is as dynamic as teacher quality and is equally impacted by the conditions of practice, internal motivation, and opportunities for growth and development. The PPD workgroup views the following qualities as essential for an administrator to possess in order to be considered initially qualified:

• Demonstrated teacher effectiveness and ability to expertly supervise instruction;
• Ability to use data to drive decision making;
• Strong overall leadership skills and the ability to lead, manage and direct change;
• Ability to effectively allocate financial and human resources; and
• Ability to communicate effectively with a diverse range of constituents, including fellow educators, students, parents and families, and community groups.

What Is The Value of A Credential?

Teachers and administrators in the K–12 community are required to hold credentials in order to serve in the public schools. Though, as mentioned above, the PPD workgroup does not view a credential as a sole determinant of quality, the group recommends that credentials be retained for K–12 personnel as an indicator of initial preparation and competence in the areas listed above.

The K–12 Context

The professional development needs of California’s teaching workforce have been significantly impacted by many ambitious reforms in recent years. The adoption of new academic content standards and performance levels for K–12 students and a new accountability system for K–12 schools requires that the state of California (1) provide for the retooling of K–12 teachers and administrators, and (2) ensure that colleges and universities that prepare the K–12 workforce are proactively responsive to the needs of the K–12 community. The increasing diversity of California’s student population coupled with recently enacted laws regarding the delivery of services to English learners in the student population creates additional needs for development of the workforce across the K–18 spectrum. Class-size reduction, coupled with an aging workforce and increasing difficulty to staff schools in some regions of the state call for the state to attend to the supply as well as the distribution of teachers and administrators. The PPD work group, recognizing the importance of these major shifts in the context of education in California, proposes that the Master Plan Committee address professional development of the education workforce systemically, as reflected in the recommendations at the end of this report.

The Reality

Public testimony as well as discussion with the teacher members of the PPD workgroup make clear that many teachers in the public schools are feeling overwhelmed and demoralized. They often feel they are not in control of their own professional destiny and, although they have a great deal of expertise and experience, their views on important reform issues are not seriously considered. Most especially, as the demand for accountability for their performance has increased, teachers have often not had significant voice in decisions that affect their ability to engage in pedagogy appropriate for the students they teach.

In many cases, the basics of the teaching environment—clean, safe schools; adequate, up to date instructional materials; and manageable class sizes, to name a few—are lacking. Many teachers assert that the professional resources necessary to succeed in the classroom, including effective principals, adequate support staff, technology, and time for professional development, are not in place. Other inequities plague the system as well. Finally, while the diversity of the student population continues to grow, the diversity of the professional workforce has remained fairly static.

School leaders appearing before or serving on the PPD workgroup reported that the responsibilities of school administration have grown and changed significantly with the implementation of California’s standards and accountability system. The range of responsibilities for a school principal include plant management, campus security, professional development, student discipline, communication with parents and community leaders, allocation of site-based resources, curriculum planning, hiring and evaluation of teachers and other staff, and instructional leadership. Overcrowding and high staff turnover in some schools make the work of school administration more difficult.

While there were myriad issues discussed by the PPD workgroup, there were five especially significant challenges impacting student learning that the group believed should be highlighted in the Master Plan work as indicated below.

Inadequate Teacher Quality in Low-Performing Schools.

Many California schools face serious shortages in the numbers of qualified and experienced teachers they are able to recruit and retain. This problem is especially acute in low-performing schools. At least 20 percent of the teachers in schools in the lowest decile on the 2000 Academic Performance Index (API) are on emergency permits,^[2] and in some districts, about half the teachers are on emergency permits or waivers.^[3] In contrast, more than 90 percent of the teachers in the best performing schools on the 2000 API are fully credentialed.

Why are there severe staffing problems in some schools? One study determined that, “...school staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a ‘revolving door’ where large numbers of teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement.”^[4] The study went on to conclude that, “...improvements in organizational conditions, such as increased salaries, increased support from the school administration, reduction of student discipline problems, and enhanced faculty input into decision-making, would all contribute to lower rates of turnover, thus diminish school staffing problems, and ultimately aid the performance of schools.”^[5]

The PPD working group believes the reasons teachers do not stay in some schools—particularly low-performing schools—include:

• Lack of a professional culture for teaching and learning
• Dirty, unsafe and overcrowded schools
• Lack of support staff
• Lack of up to date instructional materials and technology
• Lack of effective, supportive leadership
• Lack of time and space for professional development and collaboration.

Ultimately, teachers will stay where they believe they have a reasonable chance of success, which is unlikely where the above conditions occur.

Teacher Professional Development Inadequate

In recent years professional development opportunities to ensure teachers have mastery of the state’s academic content standards have been significantly expanded. However, many professional development programs often fail to take into account career stages of teaching professionals or the status of teachers’ knowledge of subject matter or pedagogy (only about one-quarter of California teachers surveyed report that their staff development often recognizes and builds on their knowledge and experiences^[6]). In addition, although teachers most frequently suggest that they need more time to talk to one another about curriculum and the tough problems they face, fewer than half report that their overall professional development experiences often or very often promote collaboration. And, only about 26 percent of California teachers report that their professional development is often sustained over time, with ample participant follow-up and teacher support. Professional development is frequently characterized as a single event, lacking cohesion and having little impact on teaching or learning.^[7]

State requirements for specific professional development activities have grown cumbersome over time as there is no mechanism to review, revise, or delete those that are out of date. Further, while the state has made strides toward supporting new teachers just entering the profession, the same focus on quality and consistency that has characterized beginning teacher support has not permeated the whole of the teacher development continuum. Even though teachers are now required to deliver a more dynamic, complex and challenging curriculum to a larger and more diverse group of students, the policy focus has not kept pace to step up the improvement of professional development for the more than 250,000 experienced practitioners who teach the majority of the students in the public school system.

Even if there were more time for professional development and even if services were provided based upon teacher expertise and experience, poor coordination of professional development services remains a serious problem. Currently, there is little attention paid to helping teachers engage in, understand and apply research and new information about how students learn, and few ways to dialogue and collaborate with colleagues regarding new strategies that emerge as California’s student population changes. At the state level, there is no mechanism for continuously reviewing and refining a professional development system that can be responsive to shifts in a dynamic world such as inclusion of special education students and the infusion of significant numbers of English language learners.

Teacher Diversity Lacking

Data from the California Department of Education show that over the last fifteen years, the number of non-Anglo teachers more than doubled from 33,294 in 1985-86 to 68,795 in 1999-00. However, this increase has not begun to keep pace with the state’s pupil demographics. (see chart at right). In particular, persons of Hispanic descent comprise 42 percent of the pupil population, but only 13 percent of the teacher population.

Recent research has shown the beneficial effects of teachers with backgrounds similar to those of their students. A study of Tennessee test score data found that a one-year assignment to an own-race teacher significantly increased the academic achievement of Black and White students.^[8] We know, however, that for the foreseeable future there will be a mismatch between teacher and student diversity. Therefore, teacher preparation programs must pay substantial attention to issues of diversity.

Teacher Compensation Lagging.

Teacher pay, especially in large cities, has failed to keep up with comparable wages in the private sector. Large city teacher salaries grew 36.5 percent from 1990-91 to 2000-01, but annual earnings for all workers in the United States grew during the same period by 45.9 percent.^[9] With an average of $46,326, California ranked eighth nationwide in teacher salaries in 1998-99.^[10] Adjusted for the cost-of-living, however, Los Angeles, San Jose and Oakland ranked 100^th, 99^th, and 98^th respectively in teacher salary among the country’s largest 100 cities (see Table 1).

Failure to properly compensate quality teachers has led to serious problems of recruitment, retention and demoralization among the California teaching force. While there are many worthwhile targeted programs to deal with these issues, one crucial part of the solution is certainly better pay for quality teaching.

Recruitment and Retention of Skilled Administrators Increasingly Difficult.

Throughout the country there is concern that it is becoming increasingly difficult to attract and retain high quality candidates to the school principalship. Surveys by national professional organizations have documented this alarming trend; for example, 60 percent of respondents to a National Association of Elementary School Principals (NAESP) survey cited insufficient compensation as a factor that discourages potential applicants for principal positions. ^[11]

In California the situation is exacerbated by a number of factors including: inadequate facilities that lead to serious overcrowded conditions, a more stressful work environment and the poorest site administrator student ratios in the country.^[12]

However, in California and elsewhere the most serious cause for concern is that standards-based legislation is holding principals accountable for student achievement, but is not providing principals with the authority to manage the available fiscal and human resources under their control.

Given the documented importance of strong school leadership in school improvement, it is essential that greater attention be paid to support for school principals.