February 4, 2002 Teacher preparation pushed as key to student achievement Symposium subjects include teacher development, retention By Jennifer McNulty More than half of all new teachers in California last year entered the profession underprepared, and teachers who lack full credentials are concentrated in the state's poorest schools. "There are certainly enough teachers graduating from teaching institutions to staff every classroom in the country, so why aren't they teaching?" said Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association. In light of research that shows teacher quality is the single most important factor in student achievement, educators fear that California's race to relieve its teacher shortage by issuing emergency credentials may ultimately shortchange the state's neediest children. Last week, the UC Santa Cruz New Teacher Center hosted its fourth annual symposium on teacher development, drawing hundreds of teachers, school administrators, union officials, and policy makers to the Fairmont Hotel in San Jose to hear the latest news about what's being done to improve the quality of teaching in California and across the country. Participants called for greater investment in teacher preparation and induction, higher salaries and better working conditions for teachers, and a "redesigning" of schools to give teachers more time to refine and develop their classroom skills. The UCSC New Teacher Center (NTC) is a national leader in the development of programs that support beginning teachers and administrators. "What's good for novices is good for the profession," said Ellen Moir, executive director of the NTC. Bob Chase, president of the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, said the teaching profession suffers from a turnover rate that claims about 50 percent of new teachers during their first five years in the profession in urban areas and 20 to 30 percent in rural and suburban areas. "There are certainly enough teachers graduating from teaching institutions to staff every classroom in the country, so why aren't they teaching?" said Chase. Teachers leave the profession because it lacks adequate mentoring programs, burdens novices with the same workload as veteran teachers, offers new teachers no role in the governing of schools, and fails to pay salaries commensurate with the knowledge and skills required of teachers, he said. These are "correctable" problems, said Chase, citing the structure of schools in Japan, where teachers have less contact with students and more contact with parents, mentors, and collaborators. "What we do is like saying attorneys aren't working unless they're in the courtroom trying a case," he said. Linda Darling-Hammond, a professor of education at Stanford University and former director of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, noted that teacher salaries in Japan make up about 70 percent of the country's education budget, compared with about 40 percent in the United States. "You'll hear that salaries make up 80 percent of our education budgets, but those aren't teachers' salaries, "she emphasized. In Japan, the average teacher's salary is pegged to the salary of the average engineer's salary. "If we did that, we wouldn't have a shortage of math and science teachers," she added. In California, 40,000 teachers are in the classroom without credentials, said Darling-Hammond, yet the latest research shows that teacher quality is the "single most important" component in student achievement. "It's at the crux of everything that makes a difference in the success of our students and schools," she said. "We have to be able to get and keep good teachers." Mary Bergan, president of the California Federation of Teachers, underscored the need for greater investment in changes that would support teachers. "Our hearts are in the right place, but our pocketbooks aren't," said Bergan. "We need mentors and more support for new teachers. We are talking about a profession in which experience counts. But these programs cost money and will require more teachers." Addressing the challenge of teacher preparation in the midst of the state's acute teacher shortage is daunting, but it is more necessary than ever. In 2000-01, 1.7 million children in California attended schools in which 20 percent of the teachers were underprepared, according to NTC associate director Gary Bloom. Yet there are bright spots in the midst of the gloom. Schools like UCSC, Stanford, Mills, and San Jose State University offer model teacher preparation programs that emphasize the integration of practical and theoretical learning. Partnerships between universities and K-12 schools offer invaluable opportunities for collaboration, said Darling-Hammond. "California is pressing the use of emergency credentials, and we have a lot of people trying to learn to teach without ever having been a student teacher," said Darling-Hammond. "Yet we know that the time spent student teaching is a predictor of how long a person will stay in teaching." Sixty percent of teachers with emergency credentials leave the profession within two years, she said. By contrast, a full year of student teaching really "pays off," she added, noting that quality preparation sets up teachers to take on leadership roles at the beginning of their careers. Investing in the preparation and support of new teachers is the key to transforming the profession, agreed Moir and Darling-Hammond. "They'll pull the profession along," said Darling-Hammond. "They'll change schools." Return to Front Page