CA looks for options to ‘highly qualified’ teachers for all
(Calif.) Even as state officials signed off on a federally-mandated plan designed to ensure experienced, quality teachers for all students, they also raised the specter of seeking a waiver from those same requirements.
Mike Kirst, president of the California State Board of Education, said during last week’s July meeting that federal requirements aimed at equalizing the level of teacher quality across classrooms may not work for California, where work is underway to create a new accountability system that may not align with antiquated Congressional mandates.
“This [Educator Equity Plan] is for the federal government, but we need something on this issue that we control and don’t have to have the federal government calling the shots,” Kirst said. “I think it’s something to think about in the future: How much do we want to do this through a federal compliance document? This may not be the exact right instrument to deal with the many issues that we have here.”
The federal government has tried to address the issue of educator inequity in schools through a series of updates to the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the most recent the 2001 reauthorization known as No Child Left Behind. NCLB called on state educational agencies to create plans for developing strategies to promote recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers for all students but particularly in schools with large numbers of low-achieving students.
Last fall, the Obama administration required states to submit updated teacher equity plans as part of its own “Excellent Educators for All” initiative, based on sections of NCLB that call on states “to ensure, through incentives for voluntary transfers, the provision of professional development, recruitment programs, or other effective strategies; that low-income students and minority students are not taught at higher rates than other students by unqualified, out-of-field, or inexperienced teachers.”
While acknowledging that efforts outlined in its State Educator Equity Plan have helped reduce the number of poor and minority children being taught by inexperienced or unqualified teachers, members of the state board suggested that the top-down structure of the policy and its compliance mechanisms may no longer fit the state’s new vision for its schools.
For one thing, Kirst pointed out, definitions in federal law for minority students don’t align with California’s student population, which is considered to be a “majority-minority” state with 75 percent of its student population classified as minority.
Sue Burr, a former education advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown, said the complex compliance reporting required of districts under the state plan is excessive and, combined with new state accountability requirements, overly burdensome.
California’s new tool for measuring school performance, Local Control Accountability Plans, must CA looks for options to ‘highly qualified’ teachers for all :: SI&A Cabinet Report :: The Essential Resource for Superintendents and the Cabinet: