Baltimore schools CEO Andres Alonso debated national school officials Thursday about how to attract, retain and reward competent teachers, a discussion he deemed vital as teacher contract negotiations continue and state and federal programs place more emphasis on teacher performance.
In a forum hosted by the ACLU of Maryland Education Reform Project, school leaders discussed a recently released study by the National Council on Teacher Quality, which showed that Baltimore's teachers should be paid more but have too long been afforded overly generous benefits and evaluations from principals.
The study, released last month, also took the school system to task for shuffling weak teachers rather than firing them, granting tenure to nearly all teachers who serve the required time and placing too much emphasis and money on obtaining academic degrees.
Kate Walsh, president of the council and a member of the state school board, presented the findings to a room full of principals, teachers and school advocacy representatives, opening the discussion with the acknowledgment that impoverished cities like Baltimore face challenges.
"The whole operation of building teacher quality in high-poverty areas is very difficult," Walsh said. She added that some policies, whether contracts or state law, make attaining teacher quality that much harder.
But still, Walsh said, "Baltimore is bleeding teachers," with a 65 percent retention rate over three years; that 28 days of leave a year — 30 percent more than the national average — granted to teachers can have a "horrendous" impact on students if taken advantage of; and that the 98 percent of teachers rated satisfactory in the 2008-2009 school year dilutes the pool of "true superstars."
Baltimore does a good job, the council says, of attracting talent. Many city teachers have high SAT scores and degrees from selective or highly selective colleges. But with a mentoring system that needs to be improved, the council concludes, teachers aren't staying.
Alonso said he agreed with many conclusions found in the study and would pursue recommended solutions, but many of the findings had to be put into the context of a long-standing culture of the school system.
"These practices are very much about the culture of schools rather than the opposition of unions," Alonso said. "It's about the culture of schools and how they take care of people."
He said that many of the benefits that teachers receive in their contract, which the school system is negotiating with the Baltimore Teachers Union, represent a time when teachers were underpaid and the school system offered favorable benefits to compensate for lower salaries. City teachers' pay lags behind that of counterparts in neighboring jurisdictions.
Both Alonso and Walsh agreed that there needed to be a more objective way of measuring teacher performance, especially as the federal Race to the Top program offers funding to states that embrace reforms. The Maryland General Assembly passed a law last session that links teacher evaluations to student achievement.
Alonso said that this year 220 teachers were rated unsatisfactory, and 100 were let go as a result. Eighty-two were given an extra year to improve their performance.
Baltimore Teachers Union representative Neil Ross said that tenure is often sought for security.
"Incompetence is not difficult to prove," Ross said. "The cards are stacked against teachers."
Ross also challenged the notion that teachers abuse their leave, saying that there is an attendance reliability policy designed "to cause us grief if we use it."
Walsh and Alonso concluded the conversation by saying that teaching was moving away from the foundation of relationships and too much toward technicalities, which some teachers said was the most interesting part of the discussion.
"In early childhood, we focus on social and emotional development," said Janis Dorr, a pre-kindergarten teacher who sparked that discussion. "Teacher quality and student outcomes would both be increased if we focused on laying a good foundation."