Disparities in teacher pay: Lower income equals higher risk

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By Sheena Dooley | Monday, August 27, 2007 |

Mikkie Edmonds works with her students at Rock Island Intermediate Academy. According to an analysis by the Quad-City Times, teachers at high-poverty schools in Davenport and Rock Island have the least amount of experience and the fewest advanced degrees, and consequently are paid less than their peers who teach at schools with fewer impoverished students.(Larry Fisher/Quad-City Times) Buy this Photo

Many of Mikkie Edmonds’ students don’t have much experience being read to or taking trips to museums or zoos. They haven’t gone on family vacations or traveled. Their access to technology is limited.

Instead, some of the third- through fifth-graders at Rock Island’s Intermediate Academy have parents who are incarcerated. They live with foster families or their grandparents. Some don’t have electricity and scramble to do their homework on the bus while it’s still light out. Others don’t have homes. Just more than 97 percent of the students attending the school come from poor families.

Their obstacles put them more at risk for failure in the classroom and make Edmonds’ job harder. Some students take their frustrations out in the classroom. It’s harder for her to connect with parents, some of whom work several jobs or don’t have a phone or vehicle.

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One local school district leader said schools like the Intermediate Academy need the most skilled staff to deal with the problems teachers at those schools face. However, it is often the most inexperienced teachers who are assigned to them.

According to an analysis by the Quad-City Times, teachers at high-poverty schools in Davenport and Rock Island have the least amount of experience and the fewest advanced degrees. That is why the teachers educating the two districts’ neediest students are paid thousands of dollars less each year than their peers who teach at schools with fewer impoverished students.

The Times analysis compared the salaries, years of experience and level of education of Rock Island and Davenport teachers at high- and low-poverty schools. High-poverty schools were identified based on the number of students who qualified for free and reduced-cost lunches. Other area districts were not included in the study because they did not have large enough numbers of low-income students.

Among the findings of the analysis:

-- Davenport teachers at high-poverty elementary schools had, on average, almost six years less experience than those at low-poverty schools.

-- At Rock Island’s neediest elementary schools, teachers had five fewer years of experience, on average, than their counterparts in the district. In addition, they earned almost $5,000 less a year on average.

-- In Davenport, 47 percent of teachers at the district’s poorest schools hold master’s degrees, compared to 59 percent of teachers at more affluent schools. The gap narrowed in Rock Island, where 58 percent of educators at low-poverty schools have master’s degrees, and 55 percent of those at high-poverty schools hold the higher degree.

School districts in the Quad-Cities base teacher salaries on their years of experience and the number of college credits they earn. There are no financial incentives for teachers to work at the most at-risk schools.

“There is a lot more work involved in teaching kids not prepared for school and without as many supports at home,” said Marguerite Roza, a research professor who studies such issues at the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington. “It’s a harder job and then you can imagine teachers that teach (at the neediest schools) say, ‘I could make the same amount of money and not have the same amount of demands placed on my job.’ ”

Dealing with inexperience

The discrepancies not only create funding inequities between schools but pair the area’s neediest students with the most inexperienced teachers, many of whom are in their first years on the job. They are still learning how to manage their classrooms and students, connect with parents and put the theories they learned in college into practice, leaders from the two districts said.

Roza said it takes about five years for those teachers to become fully effective in the classroom.

The gaps also mean that once teachers gain enough experience, they often transfer to jobs at low-poverty schools that are seen as “less difficult,” said Davenport Superintendent Julio Almanza and Rock Island superintendent Rick Loy.

That’s why high-poverty schools have more turnover in their staff, which makes it harder to create continuity for the students who need it most, Almanza said.

In addition, the teachers who leave low-income schools take with them their knowledge of the building and students, along with any additional training the school gave them, they said. Often, districts use a portion of the money they receive specifically to help at-risk students to fund additional teacher training. That training leaves with the teachers.

“If the district is trying to use staff development in order to put new programs in place for those schools, it doesn’t help if the teachers walk out the door with the training they got,” Roza said. “It becomes a dilution of the investment.”

Sheri Womack, principal of Davenport’s Madison Elementary, said keeping teachers at a school doesn’t always hinge on the type of students they teach. Under the Times analysis, Madison qualified as a “low-income” school with 78 percent of its students coming from low-income families. Even so, Womack said, teachers rarely leave. If they do, it’s usually because they are retiring or moving.

She attributes the low turnover to the supports put in place for new teachers at the school. Some of those include pairing less experienced teachers with veterans who teach students in the same grade level, holding regular meetings with teachers to talk about problems they are having and possible solutions, and putting schoolwide policies in place so teachers can more easily address behavior problems and other classroom management issues, she said.

“You can go into an at-risk building (as a new teacher) and be OK if you have certain supports in place,” Womack said. “If you don’t, then it would be more difficult. You have to have a net below your teachers to catch them if they falter.”

Seniority counts

Womack, like other principals in Davenport, has little say over who works in her school.

The school district is one of two in Iowa to use a bidding system to fill teacher openings, according to Almanza. The system guarantees the most senior educators get their pick of jobs within the district. For example, if a position opened at Madison, the district would post it internally. In the spring, any teacher in the district could bid for the job. If multiple people place bids, the one with the most seniority would get it.

Principals have no say in the process, except if no one bids on an opening at their school. If that happens, they would then look at outside candidates. Most often when the district hires an outside candidate, it tries to save money by hiring the least experienced and educated teacher, Almanza said.

The system allows teachers to move more easily throughout the district once they gain experience. Most often, they move to the schools with the fewest at-risk students, Almanza said.

“Part of the effect is you are not able to recruit the teachers to the areas where you need them,” he said. “When the data is put on the table and compared, you can see the discrepancy. The least experienced teachers are in the most at-risk schools.”

The bidding system is guaranteed to teachers by their contracts and has been around for more than 20 years. The district challenged it this spring during teacher contract negotiations with the Davenport Education Association. Officials, however, failed at their attempt to gain more of a say in where their employees teach after taking the matter into arbitration.

Jodi Tupper, president of the DEA, said the union supports the bidding system because it “rewards and honors” teachers with experience.

“I do not believe your average teacher is looking at it as this is a more affluent school than that one,” Tupper said. “They are looking at it as teams and principals that they can work with as a group in order to turn out the best product they can.”

In RI, tenure helps

In Rock Island, principals have more of a say in where teachers work. According to their teacher contract, teachers in the district with four years or more of experience, also known as tenured teachers, are considered for openings before outside applicants. Transfers are granted only “to serve the best interests of the students.” In other words, seniority is not the primary consideration.

Even so, tenured teachers tend to move out of the district’s low-income schools, Loy said. The Rock Island superintendent said high-poverty buildings often have few teachers looking to transfer into them, while there is a large applicant pool to choose from at the district’s low-poverty schools.

“You have a large number of students with massive needs, and that can be overwhelming,” Loy said. “Teachers in high-poverty schools go through phases where they feel like they are at this alone. Each has their own reason (for wanting to leave).”

The teacher contract also allows administrators to move teachers to a different school involuntarily. Loy used that authority three years ago when Grant, Hawthorne-Irving and Lincoln elementary schools were closed because of their failure to get enough students to reach state achievement standards.

Two of the buildings were reopened as the Primary and Intermediate academies. As part of that, Loy transferred teachers from the three old schools to other buildings in the district and hand-picked the academies’ staff. Teachers in the district and outside candidates applied for the positions.

Despite his efforts, Loy said he still didn’t get his ideal mix of teachers for the two schools, which serve about half of Rock Island’s elementary-aged impoverished students. He had hoped for an even blend of new, midcareer and veteran teachers. Instead, the staff at the academies ended up having fewer veteran teachers and more who are at the beginning of their careers, he said.

“Most districts aren’t aggressive to do anything to fix the problem,” Roza said. “The (pay discrepancies between schools) are important because they illuminate the problem. It’s important to look at the finances and hope that will wake people up and make them realize how important this is.”

Sheena Dooley can be contacted at (563) 383-2363 or sdooley@qctimes.com.

ABOUT THE SERIES

The Quad-City Times has spent the past seven months scrutinizing teacher salaries in the Quad-Cities. The analysis of salaries from eight school districts has resulted in a three-day series:

--Sunday: Teacher pay varies dramatically between Illinois and Iowa, with educators in the Illinois Quad-City districts earning thousands more than their counterparts in Iowa with the same experience and educational levels.

--Today: Teachers in schools with predominantly low-income students tend to have less experience, less education and are paid less than those in schools with more affluent students.

--Tuesday: School districts are evaluated based on the core subjects of math, English and science, but teachers in those subjects are paid less on average than those in business, music, physical education and family and consumer science.

ABOUT THE ANALYSIS

The Times analyzed salary, years of experience and level of education information from the 2006-07 school year for full-time elementary teachers from Davenport and Rock Island-Milan school districts to see if discrepancies exist between teachers at high- and low-poverty schools.

Brad Thiessen, an assistant professor and the chair of the mathematics department at St. Ambrose University, aided in the analysis.

The Times used the number of students during the last school year who qualified for free and reduced-cost lunches in labeling the districts high- and low-poverty buildings. Those numbers were provided by the Iowa Department of Education. To qualify for free meals, federal guidelines say children must come from families with incomes at or below 130 percent of the poverty level, which is $20,650 a year for a family of four. To receive reduced-price meals, a student’s family must have an income between 130 and 180 percent of the poverty level.

For the study, schools with less than 40 percent of students on free and reduced meals were labeled as low-poverty, while those with more than 70 percent were marked as high-poverty schools.

Other area districts were not included in the analysis because they did not have a large enough population of impoverished students.

For salaries, the Times used Davenport teachers’ base pay and the additional money they received from Teacher Compensation and Phase II funds. Both funds were established by lawmakers to raise teacher wages in the state. Teachers do not have to take on additional responsibilities to receive the money, which serves as an automatic pay bump. Rock Island salaries included teachers’ base pay.

Benefits, such as health insurance and retirement plans, were not included in the analysis.

— Sheena Dooley

ABOUT THE REPORTER

Sheena Dooley, 27, has been the education reporter for the Quad-City Times for the past year and a half. Previously, she worked at the Bismarck Tribune in North Dakota and the News-Sentinel in Fort Wayne, Ind. She is a graduate of the University of Minnesota Duluth and has covered education issues for the past five years.

In February, she attended an Education Research and Statistics Boot Camp at Harvard University, where a mentor, professors and journalists helped her refine the ideas that led to this series.

LOW- MID- AND HIGH-POVERTY SCHOOLS IN THE QUAD-CITIES

Davenport School District

Low-poverty schools: Elementary schools where 12 percent to 40 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches. They include:

Blue Grass (13 percent)

Harrison (25 percent)

Adams (34 percent)

Walcott (40 percent)

Eisenhower (40 percent)

Mid-income schools: Elementary schools where 49 percent to 58 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches. They include:

Garfield (49 percent)

Truman (51 percent)

Buffalo (52 percent)

McKinley (52 percent)

Wilson (55 percent)

Jackson (57 percent)

High-poverty schools: Elementary schools where 72 percent to 88 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches.They include:

Fillmore (72 percent)

Hayes (74 percent)

Washington (75 percent)

Lincoln Academy (76 percent)

Madison (78 percent)

Buchanan (85 percent)

Jefferson (85 percent)

Monroe (88 percent)

Rock Island-Milan School District

Low-poverty schools: Elementary schools where 26 percent to 39 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches. They include:

Eugene Field (26 percent)

Horace Mann Choice School (39 percent)

Mid-income schools: Elementary schools where 52 percent to 69 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches. They include:

Denkmann (52 percent)

Ridgewood (55 percent)

Thomas Jefferson (58 percent)

Earl Hanson (60 percent)

Audubon (69 percent)

High-poverty schools: Elementary schools where 80 percent to 98 percent of students qualify for free and reduced-cost lunches. They include:

Longfellow (80 percent)

Frances Willard (85 percent)

Rock Island Primary Academy (96 percent)

Rock Island Intermediate

Academy (98 percent)

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