Study: Austin schools segregated by disparities in teacher quality

When it comes to teacher quality in the Austin school district, better ones are found out west, a study released Monday says.

District administrators quickly panned the report, saying their own research shows that students are improving academically at equal rates across the district. The study was commissioned by the Association of Texas Professional Educators and conducted by Ed Fuller, a researcher with the University Council for Educational Administration.

Fuller compared teacher experience, certification status, turnover and qualifications at 3,715 schools across the state for the 2008-09 school year, the most recent year for which comparable data were available at the time he started compiling it. And like other researchers who have studied the effect of teacher quality on student achievement, Fuller found that in Texas, students do better with better teachers, particularly in the middle and high school grades.

While Fuller found that discrepancies exist across the state, the quality gap in the Austin metro area is notable.

In the largely low-income Manor school district, the study found that about 48 percent of high school teachers had less than three years of experience, 19 percent of teachers weren't certified to teach their assigned subjects and 22 percent of teachers left each year.

The Texas Education Agency rated the Manor district academically acceptable in August, based on passing rates on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and attendance and dropout rates. One campus was rated academically unacceptable.

By comparison, in the Eanes school district, 19 miles to the west, fewer than 12 percent of high school teachers were novices, fewer than 14 percent weren't certified to teach their assigned subjects and about 10 percent left each year, the report said. The state awarded the Eanes district — and all its campuses — its highest rating.

Such discrepancies exist even within the Austin school district's boundaries, Fuller said.

At Reagan High School in Northeast Austin, 58 percent of teachers have taught less than three years, compared with 18 percent at Bowie High School, 16 miles to the southwest.

At Reagan, 19 percent of teachers were giving lessons in subjects for which they were not certified, and the annual teacher turnover rate was 26 percent. By comparison, 14 percent of Bowie teachers weren't certified to teach their assigned subjects, and 14 percent of teachers left each year.

Former Austin district Superintendent Pat Forgione tried to improve academic achievement at low-performing schools by shrinking class sizes, Fuller said. "And what we ended up with was a whole lot more inexperienced teachers, which didn't work."

Fuller lives in Austin and has worked with district administrators to improve teacher quality. He said segregated housing trends and district policies that paid all teachers the same salary no matter where they worked had contributed to the quality disparity.

"We've learned that you have to focus on quality and retention too," he said.

Responding to Fuller's report, Austin school district officials countered with research of their own that seemed to support teacher effectiveness districtwide and rebutted Fuller's assumption that teacher quality is affected by the type of certification earned.

"We agree that teacher quality is easily the most important school-based factor in the success of kids," said David Lussier, director of the Office of Educator Quality for the school district. But "where Ed chose to focus on educator qualifications, for us, those are secondary to actually looking at student achievement."

The state rated the Austin school district acceptable in August; one campus was rated unacceptable.

Fuller did say Austin should be lauded for its recent efforts to improve disparities.

Superintendent Meria Carstarphen "is taking this more seriously and addressing it in a more serious way," Fuller said, pointing specifically to the district's recent award of a $62.3 million grant to expand a pilot performance-pay program to more schools in East Austin.

The program started in a few Austin schools in 2007. This year, the district will give bonuses of up to $12,500 to teachers whose students meet certain performance goals or who teach at certain hard-to-staff campuses.

"It will be interesting to see if there is a change," he said, based on the performance-pay program's impact.

Officials with the Association of Texas Professional Educators said they will use the 60-page report in the upcoming legislative session to push for more teacher tutoring and training, tougher requirements for certification programs, a better system for tracking teacher inequity and more money for districts to improve inequities.

The state's accountability system, with its sanctions and increased oversight for struggling schools, tends "to punish the schools that need the most help," Fuller said.

He added that improving teacher quality by using strategies that include higher pay can help, but support — such as with training and good leadership — is even more crucial.

"Money can get a teacher to go to a school, but it's the environment that keeps them there," Fuller said. "Good teachers will follow a good principal in any school."