Teacher Shortage Hitting Inner Cities Hardest, Study Says

California’s teacher shortage is growing worse, and the crisis continues to strike hardest in schools that serve mostly poor and minority children, according to an analysis released Thursday.

The study, unveiled before a state Assembly committee, showed that urban schools are more than twice as likely as suburban campuses to have teachers without full credentials.

It also found that the percentage of such teachers increases dramatically as the poverty rate rises. California’s poorest children are nearly four times as likely as the most affluent to have uncredentialed instructors.

The problem is concentrated in urban centers.

Nearly half of the state’s uncredentialed teachers are in Los Angeles County, with the Los Angeles Unified School District driving up the numbers.

L.A. Unified has 9,872 uncredentialed teachers, nearly one-quarter of all those in the state and 28% of the district’s teaching staff.

By contrast, Ventura County has only 525, or about 1% of the state total.

The disparities, as well as the overall statewide shortage, will continue to grow as the state’s public school enrollment expands and teachers retire.

“The numbers we’re seeing now are truly unprecedented,” said Margaret Gaston, co-director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning in Santa Cruz, which prepared the study with SRI International, a think tank in Menlo Park.

“We are hoping the public keeps its collective eye on this condition,” Gaston said.

California has about 291,000 teachers. Fourteen percent of them, more than 40,000, lack full credentials. They teach primarily at elementary schools, where smaller class sizes have required thousands of new instructors.

The shortage has become a top priority in Sacramento.

Over the last two years, Gov. Gray Davis and the Legislature have devoted more than $1 billion to hire and train teachers. Much of that money has been aimed at low-performing schools in the form of signing bonuses, housing subsidies, loan assistance and other aid.

“The governor is clearly aware of the importance of this issue, and that’s why he has focused on recruitment, training and retention,” said Ann Bancroft, a spokeswoman for the state secretary for education.

Bancroft said the study inflated the number of uncredentialed teachers by including teacher “interns,” those who hold emergency credentials but have passed competence exams and are enrolled in credential programs. Still, Bancroft agreed that the state faces an extraordinary challenge in staffing its schools with qualified teachers.

That challenge comes at a time when California is demanding more accountability from its schools, which can face state takeover if they do not improve their Stanford 9 test scores but can also enjoy generous bonuses if their students improve.

Thursday’s report underscored the role that qualified teachers play in student performance. The study found that the lowest achieving schools in the state have four times as many uncredentialed teachers as the highest achieving campuses.

State officials said they will continue to explore options for narrowing the gaps.

“I think we need to intensify our resources and effort in our very lowest performing schools because that’s where the problem is the greatest,” said Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento,), whose Assembly committee on low performing schools discussed the report. “We need to keep our focus on the issues of teacher quality and teacher distribution in California.”

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Filling the Gap

Total emergency permits for teachers issued in California:

*

1991-92: 16,808

1998-99: 32,706

*

Source: SRI International

Filling the Gap