Necessary Steps to Ensure Effective Teaching for All Children

1.       Distribute experienced and effective teachers equitably across District schools.

            The District must actively manage staffing to ensure an effective and stable mix of novice and successful, experienced teachers in all schools.  To attract and maintain high performing teachers, the District must offer meaningful incentives and develop mechanisms to change the work environment in hard-to-staff schools.  The District should establish specific targets and timelines for achieving greater equity in the distribution of teachers.

 
Suggested Reforms

 ·              Use actual teacher salaries, not averages, in developing school budgets.  The District currently uses average teacher salaries to create school budgets.  However, some schools, especially high-need schools, have large numbers of new teachers with below-average salaries and, in effect, receive less funding. In these instances, the District must eliminate the disparity caused by the difference between average and actual teacher salaries. This can be accomplished by a) using actual teacher salaries in school budgets; OR b) allocating to schools with more new teachers, funding equal to the difference between the actual salaries of their teachers and the District’s average salaries.  The additional funds would be used by the leadership team at each school to improve the working environment and attract other experienced, effective teachers to their school.  The leadership team could choose from a menu of research-based options developed by the central administration, including additional teachers, coaches, mentors, social service supports, common planning time, materials and supplies, or other needs.  School-based decisions would maximize staff ownership of any intervention.

 ·               Assign effective principals to lead the hardest-to-staff schools. Principals who are strong instructional leaders, who create positive school climates, and who promote a professional learning community among teachers are more likely to retain teachers in their buildings.

 ·               Offer incentives for experienced, successful educators to teach in hard-to-staff schools.  Incentives should be designed to attract successful veteran teachers both from within the School District of Philadelphia and other districts.  Designed with the input of existing school teaching staffs, incentives might include: salary bonuses, performance-based pay or housing cost assistance. [i]^, [ii]

 ·              Track and share data on the distribution of teachers and make that information available to the public.

·                 Offer hard-to-staff schools advantages in the hiring process.  Offer principals from hard-to-staff schools preferred status in the hiring process.  This could include holding early hiring events specifically for these schools, so that candidates could learn about incentives before interviewing with other schools.