The Untrained Bolster O.C. Teaching Staffs

Increasing numbers of students in Orange County public schools are taught by teachers who lack full training, newly released figures show.

At more than 60 public schools in the county, at least 1 in 5 instructors stands before a classroom every day armed with pencil and books but without a full teaching credential.

The number of emergency credentials given to new teachers jumped statewide after the state started its drive to reduce classes in kindergarten through third grade to 20 students, setting off a sudden scramble for educators. But the public received its first large-scale glimpse of the phenomenon’s growth just last week, when the state listed the numbers of emergency-credentialed teachers along with each school’s rankings in the Academic Performance Index.

Emergency credentials are given to people with a bachelor’s degree who have passed a basic skills test but lack the state’s mandated training in pedagogy: for example, how to present material and how to keep children focused.

At one new Santa Ana school, fully two-thirds of the teachers are unlicensed, though they are working toward their credentials. And in more than half the schools in the Santa Ana Unified and Anaheim City school districts, at least 1 in 5 teachers is unlicensed, the data show. Orange Unified is in a similar fix, although that also could reflect turnover in a district that has faced extraordinary turmoil over the last few years.

Many uncredentialed teachers are eager and talented educators but are still learning the skill of teaching.

That means “a big, big difference in the quality of education students receive,” said Bill Habermehl, an associate superintendent in the Orange County Department of Education.

“The system now is that you come out of college and a school district hires you,” he said. “They give you 30 students at the elementary level, they put you in a classroom and close the door. Unless you have a really good mentoring system, you’re left on your own. You’re 24, 25, 26 years of age and now you wonder how to keep everybody moving along because you’ve got to get to the end of a book by a certain time and be ready for a test at a certain time, but the students all have different abilities.”

In all, about 7% of the county’s teachers do not have full credentials, less than the statewide average of 11%. In California, teachers can earn a full credential in as little as 18 months under some programs at state universities.

Need for Teachers Expected to Grow

The lack of fully trained teachers is only expected to worsen as the state braces to hire 250,000 to 300,000 teachers over the next decade because of retirements and the growing school-age population.

That’s considered a troubling development for the state because teacher training is a crucial element in student performance. In fact, the percentage of teachers without full credentials counted as an educational handicap in the state’s Academic Performance Index rankings released last week. The index, which included the figures on which schools had teachers with emergency credentials, relied on 1998-99 data. Figures for the Capistrano Unified School District were not available.

The practice of hiring emergency-credentialed teachers has become so commonplace that a third of Orange County schools count uncredentialed instructors as 10% or more of their staff. Novice teachers often land in school districts with students who need the most help. They disproportionately end up in poor, predominantly minority neighborhoods where many children are just learning English. Those children, in turn, tend to fare the worst in the state’s $242-million program to rank schools and measure their growth.

It can be a vicious circle, said Kris Marubayashi, associate director of the Sacramento-based California Center for Teaching Careers, created in 1997 by the Legislature to increase the pool of prospective teachers.

“Students who come from a background . . . where their parents have not gone to college or maybe even graduated high school, going into a school where teachers haven’t received full training in how to teach or who aren’t competent in their subject matter--of course it’s a recipe for disaster,” she said. “It will be very difficult for them to succeed academically.”

The county Department of Education and individual school districts offer beginning teacher training programs, new teacher academies, workshops and training sessions to help teachers develop the necessary skills. And the governor has set aside millions of dollars in his new budget to woo and retain qualified teachers.

But many new teachers call it quits--frustrated by the low pay, their inability to procure enough books and supplies without dipping into their own pockets and their insecurity leading a pack of squirming kids or world-weary teens. Other novices start in underprivileged districts and bolt to more affluent areas once they earn a credential and gain some experience.

The county has one notable exception to the trend: the Huntington Beach City School District has only fully credentialed teachers at all of its nine campuses. For reasons of quality, district officials make it their “practice and commitment” to eschew hiring uncredentialed teachers, except in the high-demand area of special education, said Assistant Supt. Kathy Kessler. She knows her district is lucky, though, to have a good pay scale, a desirable location and an achieving student body.

“We believe that fully credentialed people are going to be better instructors in the classroom,” she said. A fully credentialed teacher has gone through supervised student teaching and “course work on how to teach reading, how to teach science, how to teach math.”

While Huntington Beach City is the only district without uncredentialed teachers, more than 80 individual schools scattered among districts across the county also rely only on fully-qualified instructors.

That’s a luxury many schools administrators don’t enjoy, although they defend the quality of their unlicensed teachers.

Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary in Santa Ana had little choice but to hire uncredentialed teachers when it opened four years ago. Teachers are scarce and veterans are often loath to leave schools they know.

But administrators said uncredentialed teachers are expected to finish their course work in a timely fashion. Though 67% of King teachers were uncredentialed when the data was collected last year, four or five have gained credentials since March.

“In order to work, they have to be in a credentialing program,” Principal Frances Byfield said. “They just can’t be sitting around twiddling their thumbs. They teach all day, and then they go to school at night. They are very, very inspirational.”

Without the option of an emergency credential, King first-grade teacher Rebecca Nelson doesn’t know how she would have afforded her schooling. She has been teaching three years in the school’s prestigious dual-language immersion program and she’s almost ready to take the final credential tests.

“Teaching was something I’ve always planned on doing,” Nelson said. “But the previous job I had didn’t allow for me to go to school at night. I don’t think I would have been able to become credentialed otherwise. I wouldn’t have had the time or the money.”

Compromises Made to Reduce Class Sizes

Ideally, every school would have a fully credentialed, enthusiastic teacher in every classroom, said Ann Beavers, the assistant superintendent for human resources in Anaheim. And every school district wanted to participate in the state’s efforts to reduce class sizes.

So many districts compromised.

Before class size reduction, Anaheim didn’t hire emergency-credentialed teachers except in areas of extreme need. Now, Beavers is more liberal with her screening process, and she has widened her net to Utah and the Midwest.

When everyone is hiring, it’s hard to compete, even with a great pay scale (salaries start around $35,000). Some teachers don’t want to live where they can’t buy a new house, or they don’t care for the crowding in Anaheim’s schools, where some teachers must share classrooms and work on staggered schedules.

“We can only hire from the people who apply,” she said. “. . . We’ve hired approximately 175 teachers this year, and will hire another 200 next year. Fifty-one percent of our [1,000] teachers have been here five years or less.”

In Orange, the hiring dilemmas are further complicated by a low pay scale, part of a messy, years-long contract dispute and ongoing debate over decisions made by the conservative school board. The district employs about 270 unlicensed teachers, with more than a fifth on emergency credentials in nearly half of its schools.

“Emergency credential in truth means no credential,” said Orange teachers union president John Rossmann. “. . . Most people with them might someday be great teachers, but at the moment they lack fundamental degrees, certificates, training and experience. The children of the city of Orange are guinea pigs for training inexperienced people.”

Orange Assistant Supt. Wes Poutsma, however, says teaching is a calling. The tools of the trade can be taught, but enthusiasm cannot.

“Do I think the children of Orange are being guinea pigs? No way,” he said. “. . . I would have no concern at all for my children to go in [the teachers’] classrooms, whether they have a credential or not.”

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Times correspondent Chris Ceballos contributed to this report.

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O.C. Academic Performance Index: The Teachers

At least a fifth of the teachers at the following schools lack full credentials, according to data released last week with the state’s new Academic Performance Index. The data is based on the 1998-99 school year.

Many schools in poorer areas of Orange County have found it hard to attract fully credentialed teachers, although this has become a problem virtually throughout the county as schools open new sites to relieve overcrowding, and smaller class sizes in primary grades require the hiring of more teachers.

The API, which ranks the state’s 6,700 schools based on results from the standardized Stanford 9 exams, includes a numerical score for each school and a ranking of 1 to 10 to show how the school compares statewide and with other campuses that have similar student demographics.

How to read the tables:

* For each school, the table first lists the 1999 API score, on a scale of 200 to 1,000. The statewide median is 630; the statewide target is 800.

* Next comes a statewide ranking, on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 representing the bottom 10% statewide and 10 representing the top 10% statewide.

* The third column is a second ranking from 1 to 10 comparing the school with a group of 100 schools that are similar in certain regards, such as poverty rate, language ability of students, pupil mobility, student ethnicity and the percentage of teachers with emergency credentials.

* The fourth column shows the percentage of teachers at the school who were using an emergency credential during the 1998-99 school year.

Teachers With Less Training

At least a fifth of the teachers at these public schools in Orange County are working without a full California teaching credential.

Anaheim City

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg Barton Elementary 632 6 7 23 Edison Elementary 428 1 5 29 Franklin Elementary 440 1 4 26 Gauer Elementary 554 4 8 20 Henry Elementary 477 2 7 24 Jefferson 438 1 5 29 Juarez Elementary 632 6 10 23 Key Elementary 487 2 9 24 Madison Elementary 568 4 9 22 Mann Elementary 442 1 6 30 Palm Lane Elementary 391 1 2 24 Revere Elementary 425 1 5 23 Ross Elementary 489 2 7 24

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Buena Park

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg Whitaker Elementary 522 3 4 21

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Fullerton Elementary

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg Fern Drive Elementary 785 9 2 20

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Garden Grove Unified

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg Barker Elementary 787 9 6 22 Bryant Elementary 549 4 7 30 Carrillo Elementary 554 4 6 21 Cook Elementary 617 5 7 27 Faylane Elementary 683 7 7 20 Lawrence Elementary 627 5 7 24

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Newport-Mesa Unified

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg Rea 5th and 6th Grade Center 472 2 8 29

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Orange Unified

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg California Elementary 472 2 4 24 Cambridge Elementary 560 4 3 44 Crescent Intermediate 812 9 6 24 Esplanade Elementary 553 4 8 21 Fairhaven Elementary 461 2 3 25 Handy Elementary 587 5 6 36 Jordan Elementary 469 2 4 30 Lampson Elementary 588 5 7 23 Linda Vista Elementary 824 10 8 26 Sycamore Elementary 523 3 5 30 Taft Elementary 676 7 8 28 Villa Park Elementary 826 10 5 20 West Orange Elementary 551 4 6 29 Cerro Villa Middle 762 9 7 21 Portola Middle 488 2 3 30 Santiago Middle 705 7 9 23

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Santa Ana Unified

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School 1999 State Sim. % API Rank Rank Emrg Adams Elementary 486 2 8 27 Carver Elementary 416 1 6 29 Davis Elementary 381 1 4 25 Fremont Elementary 477 2 8 23 Garfield Elementary 432 1 8 28 Harvey Elementary 462 2 8 20 Heninger Elementary 504 3 10 21 Hoover Elementary 414 1 5 26 Jefferson Elementary 562 4 7 21 Kennedy Elementary 393 1 4 26 King Elementary 416 1 6 67 Lincoln Elementary 445 1 7 25 Lowell Elementary 437 1 9 25 Madison Elementary 502 3 10 27 Monroe Elementary 512 3 10 27 Monte Vista Elementary 429 1 8 24 Pio Pico Elementary 413 1 6 41 Remington Elementary 505 3 9 32 Romero-Cruz Elementary 402 1 5 45 Roosevelt Elementary 420 1 7 37 Washington Elementary 477 2 8 26 Spurgeon Intermediate 433 1 6 22 Willard Intermediate 441 1 6 20

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Source: California Department of Education

Los Angeles Times