Back to Indicators of Teacher QualityBy Stephen Clements
From Kentucky's Teachers: Charting a Course for KERA's Second Decade
pp. 25-29, published 1999
Turning from direct data about teacher quality, we consider related policy issues and decisions that will likely affect the teacher workforce over the next several years. The data presented in the earlier sections of this report suggest several areas. This chapter begins with a discussion of the need for better ways to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the Commonwealth’s teachers, a prerequisite to any meaningful reform. It next addresses key influences on the teacher population, turnover, and supply and demand. These issues are relatively straightforward compared with the complex issue of teacher salaries. Here, we sketch out some of the complexities and effects policymakers will have to take into account as they attempt to craft a pay plan that fosters quality teaching. Rewarding the incompetent and gifted equally is unlikely to yield the desired results. Finally, the chapter addresses two closely linked issues, performance-based education and the professional development of the state’s teachers.
During the process of identifying data indicating teacher quality and of undertaking the previously discussed transcript study, it became clear that far too little reliable empirical data exist about Kentucky’s teachers. Information about aggregate experience and graduate attainment levels, ACT and Praxis scores of recent teacher education students, and the various out-of-field teaching data cited provide a window into the teacher workforce. But that window needs to be enlarged considerably if we are to learn as much as we need to know about the knowledge and skill levels of the state’s teachers, and how these affect student achievement.
That the average teacher in the state has 15 years experience, a master’s degree in education, and adequate certification, for example, tells us that Kentucky’s preparation and certification system has created a cadre of competent individuals reasonably well schooled in pedagogy and the dynamics of the school environment. But these data tell us little about how individual teachers fare in classrooms full of students, or about the performance of those at different ends of the experience and graduate schooling spectrum, or about those in different academic disciplines.
Test score data on graduates of teacher training programs, alternatively, are only available for those who have recently entered the workforce. We do not know how 20-year veterans compare in terms of knowledge and skills with those currently entering the teaching force. Nor do we have enough data to determine if the test scores available for new teachers correlate with strong teaching capabilities. Indeed, the data system currently treats the young and the old, the enthusiastic and the burned out, the conscientious and the irresponsible, the ever-improving and the never-improving the same, as long as certification and paperwork requirements have been met.
As the out-of-field studies illustrate, much more could be learned about the preparation levels of Kentucky teachers if the Department of Education or an entity allied with it were encouraged and funded to create a more comprehensive data system on teachers and teaching. If course information for each teacher were entered into a database, along with other relevant achievement and quality information, and these data were in turn linked to the extant teacher tracking systems at KDE, researchers or department officials could provide the information necessary to make intelligent choices about resource allocation and policies. They could determine, for example, if teacher preparation levels were adequate for the courses that were being taught. They could explore the linkages between preparation and certification levels and student achievement. And it would also be possible to identify potential problems in the certification system. In addition, this system could greatly aid the Department in its pursuit of a well-designed and functional teacher professional development system. Recent research on Kentucky professional development—discussed later in this section—has revealed that professional development in Kentucky has improved in the KERA implementation period. But further changes need to be made, according to the best available evidence, if teacher content knowledge is to be strengthened and if in-service training is to lead to long-term behavioral change among teachers. Furthermore, a better data system would also aid the Legislative Research Commission’s public school watchdog agency, the Office of Education Accountability (OEA), in its efforts to track and report to the General Assembly on conditions in education.
In a sense, creation of a comprehensive data system to learn more about the knowledge and skill levels of Kentucky teachers could be the next logical step to take in statewide school reform. Systemic reform—the approach embraced by the General Assembly with KERA in 1990—is about building accountability and measuring outcomes, and then allowing educators and parents at individual schools to make the adjustments necessary to meet expectations. The Commonwealth has made a difficult but substantive start down this road with its student assessment system, the core curriculum, school accountability efforts, school councils, and performance standards for new teachers. KERA has to this point brought a measure of accountability to schools. But extending it to individual students and teachers, and even parents and communities, may need to be the focus of reform’s second decade.
The next few years provide an opportune moment to make further changes aimed at improving the teacher workforce, in part because a considerable portion of Kentucky’s teachers are nearing retirement age and may be leaving classrooms over the next few years. According to data generated in 1997 by the Kentucky Teachers Retirement System (KTRS), shown in Table 1, it appears that around a quarter of the teacher workforce in the state is at or within about three years of retirement eligibility, currently 27 years of experience. And as Table 2 illustrates, the average teacher does retire with about 27 years of service.
Table 1: Number of Kentucky Teachers at or Near Retirement Eligibility
It also appears that an increasing number of individuals who reach retirement eligibility are choosing to leave the classroom, based on data recently supplied by the KTRS to the Kentucky Long-Term Policy Research Center. As shown in Table 2, retirements have moved from closer to 1,000 per year in the early 1990s to within sight of 2,000 by the end of 1997-98. Note, too, that the average age of teacher retirement has been dropping from 60 to the mid 50s. Both of these facts might be attributable to the reduction over the years of the retirement eligibility age, to the increasing demands being made of teachers under reform, or to early retirement incentives offered by certain districts over the past few years. This rate of departures might also be viewed with some alarm, inasmuch as individuals in their 50s are in most professions deemed to be at the height of their skills.
Table 2: Kentucky Local District Retirements
Presuming that many teachers who reach eligibility in the next few years continue this trend and opt to retire, Kentucky’s 176 school districts will have to engage in a flurry of hiring activities to find replacements. If a more comprehensive data system were created over the next year or two, while much of this hiring is taking place, then Kentucky will be in a much better position to assess the efficacy of its recruitment and certification policies in five or ten years than it now is.
It is noteworthy that at least one source external to the state education bureaucracy has affirmed that a host of teachers will need to be hired in Kentucky over the next few years. Kentucky’s Workforce Development Cabinet in 1997 published its projections of occupational hiring likely to take place through 2005. According to that document, over the next seven years three of the five top job growth categories for occupations requiring at least a bachelor’s degree involve public school teaching jobs. Based on these projections, Kentucky’s companies will annually hire around 1,600 managers and executives, and medical offices will hire about 1,100 registered nurses. But the state’s schools will hire around 900 elementary teachers per year, another 600 or so secondary teachers, and just shy of 400 special education teachers.(1) Hiring around 2,000 teachers per year would seem to provide grounds for learning more about the effects of this hiring on the overall teacher workforce.
Teacher Supply and DemandGiven that thousands of teachers will likely have to be hired by Kentucky school districts over the next few years, it is prudent to ask what factors will most affect the recruitment and retention of high-quality teachers. Teacher hiring needs will vary considerably from place to place, and it does not appear that the data currently available are sufficient to shed light on this variation and potential future needs.
At the aggregate level, Kentucky does not appear likely to face significant shortages of certified teachers, although there may be problems in certain parts of the state and certain disciplines. In 1996, Data and Decision Analysis, Inc. (DDA) analyzed Kentucky teacher employment patterns from 1989 to 1995 and concluded that the Commonwealth would actually have slight surpluses in most subject areas. According to the DDA report, produced in conjunction with the SREB, Kentucky should expect a 1 percent to 4 percent surplus of teachers in elementary schooling, social studies, language arts, math, biology, and art. Slight shortages will likely exist in the subject areas of chemistry and physics, with greater shortages—6 percent to 8 percent—in teachers certified to deal with learning disabilities, speech disorders, and those with multiple handicaps.(2)
KDE officials, however, have hesitated to rely upon these findings, which are based on teacher turnover, training, and student enrollment assumptions that may be problematic. Indeed, other data suggest there might be greater shortages than the DDA study indicated. Again relying upon analyses of the 1993-94 SASS data generated by the National Center for Education Statistics in Washington, D.C., it appears that between 11 percent and 17 percent of Kentucky high schools have had difficulty finding math, physical science, biology, and English teaching positions (see Table 3). One in five elementary and secondary schools reported problems finding special education teachers. But Kentucky will not apparently have shortage problems in other areas. Table 3 also shows the extent to which Kentucky’s shortage problems reflect similar problems elsewhere.
Table 3: Percentage of Schools Reporting Difficulty Filling Vacancies in Selected Teaching Fields
The issue in Kentucky will more likely be one of distribution of appropriately trained individuals within the state rather than shortages in numbers of available teachers statewide. Indeed, reports from local districts suggest that recruitment problems in some places may be acute. KDE officials report that they frequently receive calls from superintendents who cannot fill slots with qualified individuals, especially in high schools and subject areas such as science and math.(3) Given the reluctance of school district officials to publicize these sorts of problems, it is possible that other districts may face similar difficulties.
Two important points should be made regarding supply and demand. First, it is likely that teacher shortages would be much worse in many parts of Kentucky if the certification system did not mask the unevenness in teacher preparation levels revealed by the out-of-field teaching data. As shown by the previously cited studies, for example, significant percentages of math and science teachers at the middle school level—and some percentage of high school teachers in an array of subjects—have not studied the academic discipline they are teaching enough to possess an undergraduate minor. If the certification system in Kentucky were changed immediately to at least a minor in the subject one teaches as the minimum qualification for teaching, then it is likely that teacher shortages would be a more serious problem that communities statewide would have to confront. It is unclear how local and district officials would respond.
Second, potential teacher shortages could conceivably be addressed by attracting into the classroom qualified individuals who live in Kentucky and possess valid or expired certifications, but are not currently teaching. According to KDE, around 104,000 individuals currently hold valid teacher certifications, although only around 40,000 are classroom teachers and another 5,000 to 6,000 are administrators. This implies that over 50,000 people in the Commonwealth possess teacher certifications that have not yet expired but are not teaching. Many of these certificates are held by retired teachers or those who have relocated to another state—KDE has no easy way of determining what these individuals are doing, whether they would like to be teaching, or what it would take for them to enter or return to the classroom. It is possible, however, some portion of Kentucky’s potential teacher shortage problems could be resolved by enticing certified individuals from this pool to claim difficult-to-fill teaching posts.
Another factor in teacher recruitment and retention, quite obviously, is teacher salary levels. How teachers are prepared for the classroom and certified will also play an important part in this picture, as will the ways Kentucky meets the training needs of teachers once they have accepted a teaching position.
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Kentucky Workforce Development Cabinet, Research and Statistics Branch, Kentucky Occupational Outlook to 2005 (Frankfort, KY: Author, 1997) 8. Return to text.
Southern Regional Education Board/Data and Decision Analysis, Educator Supply and Demand in Kentucky: Report on Phase Two, March 1996. Return to text.
Interview by author of officials of KDE’s Office of Teacher Education and Certification. See also, for example, Linda B. Blackford, "Kentucky Running Low in Teacher Supply for Some Subjects," Lexington Herald-Leader, 12 Aug. 1998. Return to text.