Press Releases

Nation Still "At Risk": Call for a New Compact Between America and Its Teachers, Starting with Immediate Salary Increases

07/12/06

The College Board's Center for Innovative Thought, whose members include business and academic leaders, calls for a new education compact between America and its teachers, starting with the establishment of a public-private Teachers' Trust to finance an immediate pay increase of 15 to 20 percent and targeted programs to increase the number of qualified math and science teachers.

In the report, Teachers and the Uncertain American Future, the Center outlines a six-part plan. In addition to providing "salaries for the real world," the Center calls for making teaching a preferred profession, creating multiple pathways into teaching, closing the teacher-diversity gap, addressing the math and science crisis, and creating the funds necessary to carry out these initiatives through the Teachers' Trust.

"By bringing together some of the best minds in the education, the College Board hoped the Center could help foster a national passion for education and create an environment in which students enter and succeed in higher education," said Gaston Caperton, president of the College Board. "The very first issue the group chose to address was the urgent need to focus on our nation's teachers."

Teachers and the Uncertain American Future states, "It is hard to sugarcoat the obvious.... When professions are sorted by starting salaries, teaching ranks at the bottom." Teaching is a revolving door, the group declares. "At the end of five years, almost half of all new teachers have bid the classroom goodbye," in large part because working conditions and staff morale are so poor. The report cites estimates that the annual costs of teacher turnover are at least 50 percent of leaving teachers' salaries.

The state of American math and science teaching is at the "crisis" stage, says the panel, with almost 30 percent of middle school students taught by unqualified biology teachers, a figure that rises to 40 percent in the physical sciences (chemistry, geology, and physics). At the high school level, between 8 and 15 percent of all students are instructed by teachers who do not hold major or minor degrees, or certification, in teaching the subject. Meanwhile, less than half of high school graduates are ready for college-level math and science. "How does a nation that has bet its future on innovation and technology tolerate this state of affairs?" asks the report.

Diversity in the teaching workforce also remains an elusive challenge. "To create a more representative teaching workforce would require…doubling the proportion of African American teachers, and tripling the proportion from Hispanic, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islander, and other backgrounds," notes the panel.

Meanwhile, a "sterile debate" between traditional and alternative teacher preparation programs, along with cumbersome labor agreements, makes it hard to staff schools properly, the report says.

To respond to these challenges, the Center recommends a six-part plan, a "compact" between America and its teachers:

• Provide an immediate 15 to 20 percent hike in teachers' salaries (and rising to 50 percent in the foreseeable future), with provisions for an 11-month contract and a differential pay system based on challenging schools, shortage disciplines, and outstanding teaching contributions.
• Make teaching a "preferred profession" by improving working conditions, implementing career ladders, and creating communities of learning within schools and districts.
• Encourage multiple pathways into teaching, with a cease-fire declared between proponents of traditional and alternative certification programs, which frequently take enthusiastic liberal arts graduates and put them in front of classrooms after a few weeks of training.
• Close the diversity gap so that the teacher population more closely mirrors the student population. The report recommends intensive and targeted recruitment programs that emphasize financial aid and loan forgiveness for minority teachers.
• Enact recent recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences to increase college enrollments in math, science, and engineering majors. Provide 10,000 merit-based scholarships in math and science fields for first-year undergraduates willing to teach for a minimum of five years, along with 25,000 undergraduate scholarships annually (and 5,000 graduate fellowships) for U.S. citizens entering science and technical programs.
• Invest for success in teaching now, rather than paying for failure later, through the establishment of a public-private Teachers' Trust that would hold federal, state, local, and private funds for salary increments.

"Workforce demands for America's future require employees to have some college success. That success is directly related to the quality of our nation's classroom teachers," said Sally Clausen, president of the University of Louisiana System and member of the Center for Innovative Thought. "The Center's report highlights challenges that inhibit student success and offers recommendations to ensure a more certain future for our country. It is now time for America to act."

To advance these recommendations, the Center proposes helping to shape a national consensus around critical domestic issues by convening a conversation among leaders of American education and other areas of economic need, such as health care. "The complex trade-offs required to steer America through the stormy waters it is entering involve domestic and foreign policies, trade and budgetary issues, tax and spending decisions, and choices between consumption today and investment for tomorrow," says Teachers and the Uncertain American Future. An advisory panel of university teachers and administrators helped the Center develop its main education recommendations.

Read the full report: Teachers and the Uncertain American Future (.pdf/713K).

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