Academic Progress Stagnant Despite More Teacher Hires (IA)

November 8, 2010

Nearly 1,000 full-time teaching positions were added at Iowa’s public schools during a five-year period when improving students’ academic skills was heavily emphasized.

Yet students’ academic achievement saw little growth during that time, according to data from state reading and ma th tests and national exams such as the ACT. In addition, enrollment in Iowa’s public schools fell by 9,108 students.

State data for the five-year period show increased percentages of students from poor families or with limited English-speaking skills.

Iowa education officials largely attribute the increase in the number of teachers to efforts to bolster student achievement and meet federal mandates. In addition, the state provided more than $60 million to districts for preschool, although the exact number of teachers hired is unknown.

The additional teaching positions have kept students’ academic performance from slipping, Iowa educators say.

"Those students need more support, so they can get caught up to and perform as well as their peers," said Kevin Fangman, interim director of the Iowa Department of Education. "At the same time, our achievement overall in the past five years has gone up. It hasn’t gone up a lot, but it has gone up. And that is a positive for us as a state."

The Des Moines Register analysis looked at changes in the number of full-time and part-time teaching positions in Iowa’s public school districts between the 2004-05 school year and 2009-10. Specifically, the analysis found:

• Iowa added 982 full-time teaching positions, bringing the statewide total to 34,643. Statewide, the number of full-time teachers increased 2.9 percent. At the same time, 414 part-time teaching positions were eliminated.

• Four of Iowa’s fastest-growing districts – Ankeny, Johnston, Southeast Polk and Waukee – added a combined 451 full-time teaching positions to address an enrollment increase of almost 5,900 students. That amounts to one new tea cher for every 13 new students.

• Five of Iowa’s eight largest urban districts – Cedar Rapids, Council Bluffs, Des Moines, Sioux City and Waterloo – added a combined 256 full-time teachers. Those districts, whose total enrollments fell by 2,811 students, hired one full-time teacher for every 11 students they lost.

• Davenport was the only urban district in Iowa to cut full-time teaching positions while losing students.

• Dubuque and Iowa City, the state’s other two largest districts, gained a combined 1,232 students, a 6 percent increase. In response, the districts added 194 full-time teaching positions.

• As enrollments fell in Iowa’s small, rural districts, cuts in teaching positions were minimal. For example, the Seymour school district lost 104 students, or 31 percent of its enrollment, and cut three of 29 full-time teaching positions. However, those districts have less wiggle room to make reductions because they have to meet state requirements on course offerings and teacher certification.

As the number of teaching positions increased in Iowa, student achievement stayed stagnant. A quarter of Iowa’s 1,427 public schools last school year fell short of federal student achievement goals on reading and math tests. In addition, a record 356 schools landed on the state’s "in need of assistance" list.

The percentage of fourth-graders at grade level in state math and reading tests declined almost 1 percentage point between 2004-05 and 2009-10, while 11th-graders lost the same amount of ground in math. About 80 percent of fourth- and 11th-grade students performed at grade level. Eleventh-graders saw a slight improvement in reading, with the percentage at grade level increasing nearly 3 points to 79 percent.& lt;br />

Eighth-graders made gains of about 2 percentage points in reading and math. Nearly 74 percent performed at grade level in reading in 2009-10; 76 percent were at trade level in math.

In addition, 30 percent of Iowa high school students who took the ACT met the benchmark scores to show they were prepared to pass college classes. The average composite score for the Class of 2010 was 22.2, down from 22.4 the previous year.

High school graduation rates were also stagnant with nearly 87.2 percent of the class of 2009 graduating; 88.8 percent from the class of 2008 graduated.

"(Schools) haven’t seen the kinds of improvements we had all hoped for," said Marguerite Roza, senior economic and data adviser to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The cost for the nearly 1,000 teaching positions added in Iowa is significant. Spending statewide on teacher salaries increased $390.8 million – or 28.5 percent – from 2004-05 to 2009-10, reaching nearly $1.8 billion. Those figures also include 4 percent average yearly pay increases and a more than $165 million infusion of state money to boost teacher salaries, according to the Iowa Association of School Boards and Iowa Department of Education data.

It is unknown how spending cuts to education in 2009-10 affected teacher levels this school year. The state has not yet released teacher figures for the current year. However, educators expect to see a significant loss, despite $96 million in federal money meant to help restore the positions.

"Last spring we were hearing there were going to be between 1,000 and 1,500 layoffs," said Chris Bern, Iowa State Education Association president. "That doesn’t incl ude positions lost through attrition. That was impossible to keep track of."

Nationally, the economic downturn has forced districts to cut back on spending on teachers, Roza said. Some say, though, the reductions have helped bring staffing back to sustainable levels.

The nation’s teaching force increased between the 1999-00 and 2007-08 school years at more than double the rate of enrollment gains, according to figures from the National Education Association. The additional positions were aimed at reducing class sizes, staffing reform efforts and providing teachers with in-house trainers, Roza said.

"The way school districts did reform over the past decade was to add positions," Roza said. "A lot of it has been a drive to improve schools. But it creates long-term financial sustainability problems. The future holds more constrained revenues, and so in order to meet increasing expectations for students, how do we get there?"

Educators also partly attribute Iowa’s hiring patterns to federal accountability requirements that spurred a slew of reform efforts. Many of those reforms required additional teachers, including efforts to reduce pupil-teacher ratios and equip teachers with new skills to reach struggling students. Also, schools hired reading teachers because students weren’t performing at grade level on state tests.

Additionally, state leaders spent $60 million to expand preschool to 4-year-olds, prompting districts to create programs and add positions. It’s unclear, however, how many teachers were hired as a result of the state’s efforts because officials haven’t tracked it.

Schools have also added teachers to help teach an increasingly at-risk student population that comes t o school behind its peers. Iowa districts have seen a 21 percent increase in the number of students from poor families, while the number of students who don’t speak English has grown 43 percent. Those students require more help in the classroom, which means more teachers, officials said.

Urban districts have seen the largest influx of poor and non-English speaking students. The students bring additional federal and state money into districts which helps offset the cost of needed staff, officials said.

For example, the Cedar Rapids school district saw its low-income population increase by more than 15 percent between 2004-05 and 2009-10, doubling the amount of federal Title I dollars it received, according to district figures. A large portion of that money paid for elementary math and reading teachers, who work with small groups of struggling students in the classroom, district leaders said.

"Our first priority is to put that money into staff," said Mary Ellen Maske, Cedar Rapids executive administrator of elementary education. "We don’t use it for programming or professional development. We use it for at-risk kids."

As its low-income population grew, Cedar Rapids’ overall enrollment declined by more than 760 students over a five-year period. Still, the district hired 157 full-time teachers and eliminated 17 part-time positions, state data shows.

The district added most of the positions to staff classroom math and reading initiatives for at-risk students at all levels and programs for English Language Learners. A majority of positions were paid for with state and federal streams of money and grants, district officials said.

Cedar Rapids’ spending on teachers increased $13.9 million, or 3 5 percent, between 2004-05 and 2009-10. That figure includes yearly pay raises, but doesn’t factor in the state dollars aimed at raising salaries.

"I don’t dispute the fact we have less students now than we did five years ago," said David Benson, Cedar Rapids’ superintendent. "We acted responsibly to cut the budget pursuant to the governor’s action last year. We took a whole series of steps to reduce the budget, and we reduced staff as part of that.

"I always try to match staffing to enrollment. It’s important to do that on a year-to-year basis, and we will look at that next spring," he said.

Des Moines also saw an influx of at-risk students during the five-year period that leaders say led to additional teachers. Hiring for full-time teachers increased 2.5 percent, while the district’s enrollment declined 2.9 percent. New programs aimed at increasing rigor at the middle and high schools, keeping students in school, and an expansion of the preschool program and offerings at Central Campus contributed to the growth, Superintendent Nancy Sebring said.

Also, the district added some staff as part of a push three years ago to decrease pupil-teacher ratios in kindergarten through third grade, she said.

"We have been committed to increasing the number of teachers overall," said Twyla Woods, Des Moines schools’ chief of staff. "Even in the bad times economically when we have had to make reductions we have still been able to increase our teaching force."

Rural districts face different staffing challenges. They have also seen increases in low-income and non-English speaking students, state figures show. However, some districts have rapidly lost students , which generate state aid for districts, but are unable to cut teachers who staff courses required under Iowa law.

"A lot of the rural districts, while they may have been losing students, the loss was not large enough to warrant the elimination of an entire class," Bern said. "You still have to have a first-grade teacher and a second-grade teacher."

The juggling act is familiar to David Lockridge, Seymour’s superintendent. The district lost 104 students in the past five years, bringing enrollment to 235 in 2009-10. The decline has meant the loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars in state aid.

However, the district has cut only three full-time teaching positions, according to state data. That’s because leaders have found other ways to reduce expenses, including combining administrative positions and sharing several non-teaching positions with a neighboring district. Also, retirements provided a cost-savings, because the district was able to fill the positions with younger, less expensive teachers, said Lockridge said.

"You want your best people in front of students," he said. "We are still offering pretty much what we have in the past. We feel pretty good with where we are positioned as far as getting kids what the state is requiring."