How to Turn Out Successful Teachers
Nancy Ichinaga has been principal of Bennett-Kew Elementary School in Inglewood for 26 years. Half of its 850 students are Latino, the other half black, with a smattering of whites. Three-fourths qualify for free and reduced-price lunches. It has been recognized as a “high-achieving” school for nearly two decades, with a teaching staff whose average length of service is 16 years. Three of the 40 teachers are Ichinaga’s former students.
Pressed to divulge her magic formula for retaining good teachers and helping poor students perform, Ichinaga laughs: “I’ll give you the secret. I’m very supportive of the teachers, and I tell them I want them to have the same attitude for their kids. I can’t yell at teachers and treat them badly and then expect them to be nice to kids. So there is this internal consistency. I create a situation for everyone to succeed. Teachers are not successful because they are not given manageable situations.”
It’s estimated that 30% to 50% of teachers leave the public schools in California within five years. No reliable statistics are kept by the state on the number of credentialed teachers who are not teaching, but experts agree it is substantial. Yet, the reasons why teachers leave the profession--burnout, low salaries, abysmal working conditions, bureaucratic interference, among others--must be addressed before true education reform can occur. The focus should be on replicating successes in schools with low teacher turnover, like Bennett-Kew.
Ichinaga, who was recently named to the state Board of Education, has three requirements for good teaching and learning, in what she calls a “teachable classroom”: 1) “The environment is clean and safe”; 2) “The teachers have all the materials necessary for them to teach”; and 3) “Children are grouped in a class so that there are not excessive numbers of children in one class who are extreme [behavior] problems or have learning or emotional problems.”
To deal with disruptive student behavior, that most complex of barriers to classroom success in many schools, Ichinaga uses several methods, startling in their simplicity. “Every once in a while,” she says of her classroom-placement strategies, “I have a saboteur, a disruptive kid, especially a smart kid who is older. If it’s a naughty boy making life difficult for a young woman teacher, I put him in a class with a big man teacher, so he can’t be a smartass.”
Former Secretary of Education Gary K. Hart, who shepherded Gov. Gray Davis’ education-reform package through the Legislature last year, has frequently visited Ichinaga’s school. “She has a very strong curriculum program, and she studies the data of the kids,” says Hart. “When she finds that a student is not doing well, that student has an interview with the principal. Nancy is the instructional supervisor, and she develops a corrective strategy.” Hart and others say that a consistent curriculum, along with close monitoring of student progress--and failure--are key elements of classroom success.
Ichinaga and other critics of teacher-training in California, which is largely the domain of the California State University system, disdain the current teacher-training schools as ineffective, even destructive to good teaching. “The teachers are not taught to teach,” she says. “They take the Methods courses, and they develop preconceived notions about what schools are like, what kids are like. Then they complain that nobody has ever told them. The colleges give them a whole lot of B.S. When they come here [to Bennett-Kew], we have to train them.”
Others say that college training programs, often slow to change, are convenient targets, that a balance must be struck between theoretical and clinical training for new teachers. “Too many people expect a new person to come in from teacher prep and be a full-fledged teacher,” says Elaine Johnson, a veteran teacher and past president of the California Council on the Education of Teachers. “When a person does well, she’s described as a ‘born teacher.’ When she does poorly, they blame teacher preparation.”
Whatever their differences, critics of teacher education in California say student teachers must be introduced to classroom teaching much earlier in their preparation. Although all teachers-in-training spend time in the classroom, some districts are implementing intense “apprenticeship” programs. Among them is the 45,000-student Elk Grove Unified School District in suburban Sacramento. Its Teacher Education Institute, staffed largely by district teachers and administrators, works with universities and community colleges in the area to provide student teachers a strong clinical program in the classroom, much like physicians train in hospitals as interns and, later, as residents.
Elk Grove Supt. David W. Gordon says students accepted into the teacher-training program spend about double the amount of time most student teachers spend in the classroom and are matched with experienced teachers who follow their progress as they transition into full-time teaching jobs. He says the teacher-departure rate among institute grads is “virtually nil.”
Much of the criticism of teaching in the elementary and secondary schools focuses on “out-of-field” teaching: A teacher does not have to complete an undergraduate major in the specific field he or she plans to teach, and “student teaching” doesn’t begin until the fifth, postgraduate year of college training, mainly through CSU schools of education.
There is a critical shortage of math and science teachers in California, in part because college graduates in those fields can make much higher salaries in private industry. But the shortages are throughout the system, exacerbated by an aging teaching force and high teacher turnover. The highest turnover--and the highest percentage of new teachers, or those with emergency credentials--is in inner-city schools. A recent state legislative report on low-performing schools found that 37% of poor districts in California have more than 20% uncredentialed teachers.
In addition to poor working conditions and noncompetitive salaries, teachers complain of increasing administrative pressures in this era of education reform and a sense that their work is not appreciated, their profession not valued. In areas with soaring housing costs, beginning or even veteran teachers can’t afford to buy a median-priced house.
Clearly, any effort to attract and keep experienced teachers, particularly in poor districts, will require not only solid improvements in administrative and clinical support for new teachers--a strong, supportive principal is essential--but financial and other incentives as well. The latter are key elements of the governor’s legislative package this year, which he has said may be expanded in the May budget revisions.
“There is a lot of attention being paid to getting folks into the classroom initially,” says Mary Bergan, president of the California Federation of Teachers. “But we need to pay attention to the fact that if everyone in California who had a credential were teaching, we wouldn’t have to be bringing in as many underprepared teachers. A lot of teachers are looking at retirement, but the bigger problem is the turnover rate, which keeps going up.”
