Letters to the Editor: More LAUSD classroom coaches? Take it from a teacher: This won’t work

To the editor: It is very alarming that the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District is redirecting funds away from the lauded Primary Promise and is partially using said funds to hire 200 classroom coaches.

As a teacher in Southern California for nearly 30 years, I have witnessed the results of the coaching model in my school district for many years.

The coaching model does not work. Hiring coaches to improve instruction does not work.

The teachers hired to coach are seldom experts in their field, nor are they skilled at improving teacher performance. In all but a few rare cases, they are sharp-elbowed teachers looking to escape the classroom.

Here in my district, they refuse to substitute for classroom teachers to provide more planning time for us, and they are universally less skilled at instruction than the teachers they are assigned to mentor. This makes sense — in many cases, their unsuccessful classroom performance prompted them to seek a coaching job in the first place.

Money not spent on front-line educators is money wasted.

Ann Greenan, Escondido