Dale Lee: The way we hire teachers isn't broken
Raising salaries, increasing positions would help a lot
I am intrigued by school "reformers" who consistently point fingers at teachers and teacher unions as standard-bearers of the status quo.
Quite the contrary.
The West Virginia Education Association and our members have always been concerned about moving education forward by providing relevant, engaging instruction that includes the rigor necessary to prepare our students for a diverse, competitive and technologically complex world.
Many so-called 'reformers' simply want to turn back the pages of time and allow administrators to make decisions regarding what is best for teachers and students without regard for data or research.
Only a handful of teaching practitioners are on the business- and administration-heavy 21st Century Jobs Cabinet. I am intrigued by the cabinet and its mission.
First, why is the hiring of teachers the group's foremost priority, and what expertise do members have in the field of teaching and teacher qualifications?
Secondly, why is taking a step backward the key to moving forward?
And finally, let's address the real problem of teacher graduates leaving the state and not place blame on the current hiring system.
West Virginia statutes with regard to personnel evolved over time so all personnel decisions would be objective and without personal or political considerations.
WV Code 18A was enacted to ensure our schools would be staffed on the basis of qualifications, so our most qualified and experienced personnel would be selected for positions within our schools.
These laws were closely reviewed and amended in the 1990s.
The key factors in the hiring process are the use of the comprehensive hiring criteria found in 18A-4-7a. Specifically, in the event two or more qualified candidates apply for a position, counties are required to use a seven-point matrix to determine the successful candidate.
The hiring criteria takes into account appropriate certification and-or licensure, total amount of teaching experience, the existence of teaching experience in the required certification area, degree level in the required certification area, specialized training directly related to the performance of the job as stated in the job description, receiving an overall rating of satisfactory in evaluations over the previous two years, and seniority.
As you can see, seniority is simply one of the seven factors and not an overriding factor, as is commonly stated.
We worked to amend the hiring criteria by adding an additional set of criteria to use when hiring individuals from outside the system.
Those criteria allow greater flexibility on the part of the administration in the selection of filling vacancies. In essence, initial hires are at the total discretion of the administration.
Through the use of the two sets of hiring criteria, it ensures candidates will be selected based on their abilities.
Any veteran teacher can recount the days when someone's relative, friend or neighbor was awarded the job over people in the system who were obviously more qualified. Those hiring decisions weren't about quality, but about nepotism and favoritism.
It was those many instances of hiring abuse that led to the creation of the hiring matrix.
The matrix recognizes the longevity and expertise of the staff as well as the need for objective and nonpolitical decisions. The current system has and continues to serve us well.
As state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Miller wrote:
"In the case of the classroom teacher, . . . seniority implies more than just a reward for length of service. The performance of the classroom teacher is evaluated regularly, with an eye toward constant improvement of his or her professional skills.
"Consistently positive evaluations reflect not only professional accomplishments, but indicate invaluable practical knowledge that can be brought to a new position. In this context, seniority itself connotes some element of qualification."
The WVEA certainly agrees that the Jobs Cabinet has identified a very real problem in that we are not retaining our newly trained educators. West Virginia continues to train gifted new teachers and then exports them to other states.
Why?
Many of the teacher graduates of West Virginia institutions are out-of-state students who will return to their home states to teach. Those students come to West Virginia to get a high-quality education at a good price. They never intended to stay in our state to work.
Some in-state graduates will strike out on their own and move elsewhere. Some cannot find teaching vacancies in their chosen fields and will be forced to go elsewhere.
Others will seek states with better salaries and benefits to begin their careers.
Unfortunately, none of this is new, and changing the criteria for hiring will not help the situation. Simply tinkering with successful personnel laws will not ensure that graduates remain in state.
Graduates need reasons to stay in the state and teach. A number of changes may help the situation.
First and foremost, we need to change the school aid formula and increase the number of teaching positions funded by the state. The school aid formula's professional personnel ratios have been virtually unchanged since they were created in the 1970s.
While staffing patterns have remained the same, curriculum offerings have expanded, employees are asked to do more, and standards have increased.
Research has shown the most effective way to increase student achievement is to lower class size. Increasing the formula allowances will reduce class size and offer positions for our new graduates.
We do agree with the Jobs Cabinet recommendation to use incentives to entice new teacher graduates into hard-to-staff areas of our state.
The Underwood-Smith Scholarship is an excellent way to entice students into our remote areas by forgiving their student loans. It has attracted teachers in the past and will work again.
We also agree with the proposal to increase the beginning teacher salary to the SREB average within three to five years. If more high school students chose to enter teaching, we could compensate for those graduates who leave the state.
Unfortunately, in this day and age, there are many professions more attractive than teaching in terms of respect and salary.
In many regards, teaching is unlike any other profession. We don't have state committees formed to look at hiring criteria for doctors, auditors, lawyers or just about any other profession.
The self proclaimed "reformers" and politicians have always set their sights on teachers and our public schools.
Perhaps that is why the number of people entering the profession is low.
Lee is president of the West Virginia Education Association.