Lack of Qualified Teachers Undermines State Reforms

California’s multibillion-dollar effort to improve its schools is being threatened by expanding legions of unprepared teachers with little or no training, state educators say.

The troubling predicament is underscored by a report to be released today that shows the numbers of uncredentialed teachers climbing steadily in the state over the last four years.

More than 42,000 teachers who lack full credentials now staff California classrooms, up from about 34,000 in 1997. Uncredentialed teachers account for 14% of the work force, with the bulk concentrated in the lowest-performing schools. Students whose schools are at the bottom of the state’s performance ratings--generally minority children from families with little money--are five times more likely than peers at higher-ranked schools to have an uncredentialed teacher.

Over the last five years, California has begun some of the country’s most aggressive efforts to improve its public schools. But education experts are virtually unanimous in saying that the quality of teachers is the single most important factor in raising student achievement.

“Student success in school is teacher-dependent,” said Margaret Gaston, co-director of the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning, the Santa Cruz-based group that issued the new report.

Currently in California, “those children who need a fully prepared and effective teacher the most are the children who are most likely not to have one,” she said.

Researchers from the center say California is “quickly institutionalizing” a system in which the least trained teachers go disproportionately into schools with the neediest children. That leaves new instructors to learn their craft on the fly at precisely the time that the state’s education reform plans put pressure on failing schools to improve.

Programs Aim to Ease Teacher Shortages

“We have not kept up the educational infrastructure. We are reaping the results of our neglect,” said Jeannie Oakes, a UCLA education professor and a leading authority on teacher preparation. “Now we’re paying the price. We’re not going to solve the problem until we have qualified teaching staffs,” she said.

Oakes was among leading educators who oversaw the report, which was sponsored by several California think tanks and research organizations.

In the last two years, the state has implemented several new programs designed to ease the teacher shortage--doling out recruitment bonuses, loan assistance and other aid to people who agree to teach in low-income schools.

State officials say that while it is too soon to see the fruits of those efforts, they will help over time.

“Our challenges are great,” said state Education Secretary Kerry Mazzoni. “We are working hard. The news is good about what’s happening in California’s schools.”

The authors of the new report offer a more pessimistic assessment, suggesting that the situation will worsen as the state struggles to hire 195,000 additional teachers over the next decade to keep up with attrition, surging enrollments and retirements.

Good Intentions but Little Experience

The state’s only recourse, the analysts say, will be to continue sending waves of people into classrooms with good intentions but little background.

Alex Bodnar is a case in point.

Bodnar, 26, was selling camera equipment on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica before he became a teacher last summer.

Now he presides over 20 kindergartners at Cahuenga Elementary School in Los Angeles. He attends classes five night a week in an exhausting routine that will eventually result in a teaching credential.

“I never experienced working with little children before,” Bodnar said of his six months as a teacher. “I didn’t know that kindergartners didn’t know their alphabet.”

Bodnar has a bachelor’s degree in fine arts and interactive multimedia from USC--a background that offers little help in his new job where he is trying to teach phonics to 5-year-olds.

“I do feel a bit of guilt because I’m not as experienced as the other teachers,” he said. “It’s very tough.”

The job will get even tougher as California continues to phase in its new school accountability system. The program is designed to dole out rewards to schools with rising test scores but punish low-performing schools that founder. One possible sanction is to transfer teachers from failing schools to other campuses.

Such schools will be hard- pressed to improve--partly because they are staffed by so many inexperienced teachers, critics say. Reversing the trend is particularly difficult in hard-to-staff urban schools with bleak working conditions and a scarcity of accomplished staff, according to the new report.

Given the demand for new teachers, those with full credentials generally can move to districts with less difficult schools.

State education officials acknowledge a “crisis” in the supply of qualified teachers and concede that the shortage strikes hardest in schools with mostly minority children.

The number of uncredentialed teachers in California rose steadily after the state began reducing the size of elementary school classes about five years ago.

Reduction in class sizes increased demand for teachers and outstripped the ability of universities to produce credentialed teaching candidates. That forced school districts to hire thousands of instructors with little or no training. The new staffers would teach full-time and earn their degrees in “intern” programs at night and on weekends.

That ad hoc system represented a sharp departure from the state’s prevailing method for training teachers, who traditionally attended yearlong credentialing programs on university campuses before taking on classrooms of their own.