When Experience Doesn’t Pay

Wanted: Teachers. College grads needed to teach all grades and subject areas. No experience preferred. Minority applicants encouraged.

On June 24, the Los Angeles Unified School District had 1,800 teaching positions available with hundreds more expected before the start of the traditional school year in September. To fill them, the district recruits from state and local colleges, advertises across the nation, raids (although not very successfully) other school districts, issues credentials to about 240 teachers per year through the District Intern Program and accepts walk-in applicants.

The 640 district schools that have vacancies also do their own recruiting, largely from other LAUSD schools. Each spring, fliers announcing hundreds of openings are posted on school bulletin boards. Teachers seeking a change for any of a dozen reasons peruse the flyers hungrily.

According to Madonna Bowlay of the district’s affirmative action office, official policy states: “It doesn’t matter what ethnic background a candidate has. We’re looking for the best qualified based on merit.” And so it should. However, there’s a great disparity between the stated policy and the working policy.

For many years, West Los Angeles and west San Fernando Valley schools were most desirable locations, close to where many teachers lived. They filled their vacancies from the top June college graduates and with experienced teachers transferring from schools elsewhere in the city. As a result, some of the best public schools in the nation are in West L.A. and the Valley. But not for long.

All schools must comply with both the federally mandated Teacher Integration Program Guidelines and the Rodriguez Consent Decree, which settled a lawsuit brought several years ago by minority parents concerned that their children’s schools were being shortchanged.

To be in compliance with federal guidelines, K-12 schools must have a minimum of 30% and a maximum of 70% minority teachers. Sounds generous, but quotas can backfire.

Twenty-five years ago, the Valley was primarily a white suburb. Faculty at Grant, Birmingham, Taft, El Camino and other high schools reflected the majority population. Although the number of minority Valley residents has increased rapidly in the past 10 years, the teacher population has aged but not changed its racial makeup. Hence, West Valley schools are largely out of compliance, and nonminority teacher applicants are less likely to find employment there. Birmingham High School in Van Nuys, with its nearly 80% white faculty, couldn’t hire a science teacher recently because she was not a minority. She refused, when the suggestion was made to her, to hyphenate her name to include her grandmother’s Hispanic surname. Likewise, some inner-city schools with large minority faculties are searching for nonminority candidates. (It’s ironic: The movie “Dangerous Minds” was heavily criticized because it portrayed a white teacher trying to save a black student body even while federal guidelines mandate more white teachers in black communities.)

In addition to the integration compliance requirement, the Rodriguez Consent Decree impacts who can be hired. Rodriguez argued that some schools spend more for salaries per pupil--because they have more experienced teachers, who are therefore higher on the pay scale--which results in a better education for those students. Therefore, as schools hire teachers, they must attempt to balance the salaries-per-pupil spending until every school in the district is equal. It sounds fair, until you take into account that poorer, heavily minority schools receive massive state and federal funding for such things as computer labs, teaching assistants and tutorial programs, which are not taken into account when balancing salaries-per-pupil spending.

What does that leave us with? We now have a situation where most of the West Valley schools, and many others, are searching primarily for inexperienced (thus, lower on the salary scale), minority teachers, not necessarily “the best qualified based on merit” candidates available. Cleveland High School advertises “Band 1 Teachers Encouraged to Apply.” Fairfax High goes one further and states, “We are hiring Band 1 teachers.” (Band 1 is the lowest pay level.)

Although you won’t find it spelled out in the want ads, experienced nonminority teachers, even award-winning master teachers, are not wanted. LAUSD is not an “Equal Opportunity Employer.”

Michael Acosta, an administrator in the LAUSD’s Certified Employment Operations branch, assures me that every one of the 1,800-plus positions will be filled, and I’ve no doubt that he’s right. But we need more than warm bodies who come cheap and happen to be the correct color for a school’s compliance needs. Experience should not be a liability. All of our students deserve well-qualified, dedicated teachers who are themselves lifelong learners, without regard to their ethnicity or their price.

Instead of political correctness and rule by special interests, the district’s stated policy of hiring the “best qualified based on merit” should reign. Our children deserve no less.