Recent Research For Action Report….

on the teacher gap in the Philadelphia area.

The reports gets into various topics including teacher retention, meeting “Highly Qualified Teacher” goals under the NCLB bill, and distribution of teachers.

If you believe in “Highly Qualified Teacher” rules which I do the report says that school district has around 95% of them meeting this goal.

The report says they have problems finding teachers in the hard to staff areas such as math and science.

The report says that 65% of the students in the school district are black while only 38% of the school teachers are black which is a problem.

The report says the school district due to budget cuts dumped the New Teacher Coaches program. Those people got moved over to the School Growth Teachers program that works on the 129 schools that are not meeting AYP goals. This to me is a no-no. All first-year and new teachers in the school district need a mentor no matter what.

They also showcased long term retention rates for new teacher from the 1999-2000 school year. The trend they show looks the same for like most school districts in the USA.

The report showcases what a lot of schools have. Lower experience levels for schools with the highest amount of students in poverty.