State to Tap Middle-Aged for Teachers

The emphasis on improving California’s public schools is shifting from what is taught to who will teach it. In this regard, Alicia O’Connor represents hope.

O’Connor teaches science at Gage Middle School in Huntington Park, where three in four lab sinks don’t work and her primary textbook is older than her students. For this, she sacrificed a career as an engineering consultant in which she made twice as much money. But she’s not sorry.

“I get the satisfaction of knowing that the students are learning,” said O’Connor, 38. “That’s why I stick around.”

What brought O’Connor to an urban classroom--a desire for more flexibility and fulfillment than the business world offered--may provide California’s best chance of filling an anticipated 260,000 teaching spots over the coming decade.

Attracting mid-career professionals such as O’Connor to California classrooms is the goal of “It’s Your Turn,” a statewide advertising campaign scheduled to begin today.

“We are finding we have a lot of people who graduate and go into something else, because teaching is not the most financially rewarding career,” said Beverly Young, teacher education director for the California State University system. “Then they find out that [the other career] is not rewarding in other ways.”

Despite the notoriously low salaries--average pay for California’s starting teachers this year was less than $30,000--a surprising number of professionals and businesspeople feel the urge to teach when they reach middle age. Cal State administrators report an average age of 40 among interns in a new program to help uncredentialed teachers get licensed.

“They are artists, radio broadcasters . . . somebody with a PhD, a couple attorneys,” said CSU Vice Chancellor Chuck Lindahl.

Even in Cal State’s traditional college programs, the average age has crept above 30.

The new advertisement trades on middle-age nostalgia, juxtaposing black-and-white images from an old-fashioned chemistry lab with the question: “Remember how your teacher turned you on to learning and how those lessons helped you choose your career?”

If so, the ad continues, consider becoming one. The spots refer viewers to a central clearinghouse known as CalTeach for teacher training and career advice.

Announced at a news conference by CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed and California First Lady Sharon Davis, CalTeach was originally approved by Gov. Pete Wilson.

This year the state budget includes $1 million for the ads, which will run mostly on cable television between now and July. Two companies--Aetna Retirement Services and Edison International--have each added $25,000 to the campaign.

Until now most efforts to improve public schools have emphasized raising expectations and testing whether students are learning enough. But public attention appears to be turning toward teacher quality.

Just last week, new figures were released showing the uneven distribution of underqualified teachers in this state. The nonprofit Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning has found that in the poorest schools, 16% of the teachers lack credentials, but in the richest, only 4% are uncredentialed.

This year alone, about 22,177 new teachers will be needed statewide, more than a third of them in Los Angeles County, according to the state Department of Education.

Class size reduction increased the need for teachers, bringing about 10,000 uncredentialed teachers into the state’s primary grade classrooms. But a tidal wave of teacher retirements and continued growth in the student population also play significant roles.

Teacher union contracts, which establish seniority bumping rights and prevent mandatory transfers, have exacerbated deficits of experienced teachers at the most troubled schools.

Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento) this week opened the first of four hearings on low-performing schools by talking about how impressed he was with his daughter’s veteran kindergarten teacher.

“I remember leaving that first day with a great sense of relief,” he said. “The same cannot be said for parents of thousands of children in California, and that is wrong.”

Though the CalTeach campaign emphasizes the thrills of teaching, those attending Steinberg’s conference dwelt on its agonies.

Low salaries continue to be a major obstacle to teacher recruitment. In a poll conducted for CalTeach, 59% of respondents in the state said they would consider a career in the classroom if teachers made $60,000 a year instead of the $45,000 they now average.

Consequently, the CalTeach ad plays up recent legislation that increased entry-level salaries to $32,000, noting that “many class sizes are getting smaller, starting salaries are rising and the personal rewards are unlimited.”

Just as notorious as poor salaries are lousy working conditions. And fledgling efforts to bring more minority teachers into classrooms, to more closely mirror the diverse student body, have been only moderately successful.

Although the proportion of minority students in public schools has grown from half to nearly two-thirds during the past decade, the proportion of minority teachers has only grown to 22% from 18%, the California Teachers Assn. reports.

According to Barbara Kerr, CTA vice president and a first-grade teacher, teaching remains a hard sell in some minority communities: “Minority students say, ‘I went to those schools that were broken down and smelled like urine. Why would I want to go back there?’ ”

CalTeach can be reached at www.calteach.com or 888-CALTEACH. The Web site for CSU’s new credential program for working teachers is www.calstateteach.net. The site for research on teacher shortages is www.cftl.org.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Teacher Shortage

California will need an estimated 260,000 new teachers in the next decade. Already, districts are struggling to fill openings. For the 1999-2000 school year, an estimated 22,177 teachers are needed statewide.

Counties With Largest Teacher Shortages

Los Angeles: 7,545

Orange: 1,799

San Diego: 1,771

Santa Clara: 1,375

San Bernardino: 1,316

Riverside: 1,252

Alameda: 869

Sacramento: 836

Contra Costa: 774

Fresno: 595

A new study shows the poorest schools are the most likely to have teachers who lack credentials.

Average % of Teachers Lacking Credentials

Poverty as Indicated by % of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch.

Sources: California Department of Education; the Center for the Future of Teaching & Learning, 1999 figures.