Good teachers for minority students

This week we asked our parent panelists: Last week a report showed

that a poor or minority student in the Newport-Mesa Unified School

District is more likely to get taught by a highly trained and

credentialed teacher than students in other districts. What do you

attribute that finding to?

It’s not surprising that we have many teachers with higher degrees

and experience who work with the district’s minority students. There

has been an effort by the board over the last 10 years to use many

remedies to teach the neediest students. Our community expects

improvement in the low-performing schools.

That the teachers stay to teach there says a lot about their

character. It is well known that many teachers spend their entire

teaching careers in the district because of the support teachers

receive here. Little by little, the test scores from these schools

are improving.

However, the downside of this is that all our other students may

not be getting the best education because of the costly focus on

minority students. Is this a fair way to solve the learning gap

problem? I don’t think so. It’s a kind of a reverse discrimination.

Education Trust-West published the report. The trust works to

promote high performance among low-income and minority students at

all levels. After years of efforts, learning gaps still exist in many

schools. How could that be?

One reason is that there is a reluctance among some educators to

accept that the gaps are created by the effects of illegal

immigration. Closing our borders would allow relief to teachers who

could teach to the same group without new students who don’t speak

English coming and going all year.

It is disappointing that Newport-Mesa schools are not on the

trust’s list of schools that have achieved success. What are these

schools doing? It’s time the board had a plan. A fundamental school?

An English-only center for non-English speaking newcomers? Why not

use the Open Court and Saxon materials, which have a proven record of

success for teaching minority students? How about a magnet school?

We’re sending our best teachers to these needy students. We are

using tax-supported programs together with programs involving

volunteers from the private sector to reach out and tutor minority

students, but it is taking too long.

* WENDY LEECE is a Costa Mesa parent, former school board member

and member of the city’s parks and recreation commission.

I attribute that statistic to a number of factors. Standards have

been raised and more well-trained teachers are coming into the

system. The Newport-Mesa area is a desirable place to live and work,

so even though teacher pay may not be the highest, it’s high enough

for many teachers to make a career of a job here. In Newport-Mesa the

gap between “poor and minority” students and the general population

isn’t as wide as it is in many other places in the state. It’s also

slowly getting narrower due to both conscious efforts and social

evolution.

This is a nice and encouraging statistic, but that’s all that it

is. Under the current system, teacher pay improves with higher-level

degrees and credentials, so teachers naturally want to improve both

their skills and bottom line by getting more training. That’s good a

thing, but lots of training does not necessarily make for great

teachers. Over the years, my kids have been taught by some truly

awful teachers with great credentials and by some great teachers with

lesser credentials. In fact, I’d submit that truly great teachers

have skills that may not be able to be taught. They have a passion

for the job and an ability to connect with kids.

I’d still like to see some form of teacher merit pay so that we

can focus not on these types of statistics, but on the actual results

that teachers deliver. There are multiple paths to teaching

excellence, and we’d better serve our students by encouraging

excellence in as many ways as possible.

If this statistic is reflected in real improvements in reading

levels and test scores, I’ll take it more seriously. As I have said

in this space before, things are improving in our public schools. The

pace of change is still too slow for my taste, but things are moving

in the right direction.

* MARK GLEASON is a Costa Mesa resident and parent.