KC District’s Teacher Placement is Called ‘Horrendous’ (MO)

January 18, 2011

The Kansas City School District missed its chance while closing schools to ensure that it was putting its best teachers in its classrooms, says a study to be released today.

A broken human resources department, combined with an “alarming” history of poor recordkeeping, has impaired a district that has pledged to make reforms but still has hurdles to cross.

“Teacher placement was horrendous,” said researcher Emily Cohen with the National Council on Teacher Quality. “Principals had little say over who was assigned to their buildings. The layoffs by seniority were harmful to a lot of schools.”

The researchers spent four months studying the district’s practices and interviewing staff and community. The research was funded primarily through a grant from the Kauffman Foundation, which is preparing to open a charter school this year.

The timing was good and bad for the district, said Mary Esselman, an assistant superintendent.

The district is working to shore up its data management as well as reform its staffing methods. Given another year, many of the flaws noted in the study may be largely corrected, she said, but the findings can also help with the reforms.

“It’s a chance to highlight the things we have started and enhance what we are doing,” she said.

Many reforms recommended by the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Teacher Quality reflect weaknesses it believes hamper the ability of public schools nationwide to increase the quality of their teachers.

The council supports paying teachers for performance. It says traditional pay scales waste resources by rewarding teachers for obtaining advanced degrees whether they help in the class or not.

Evaluations need to rely more on evidence of performance, the council says. Principals need to be able to choose their staffs. And districts need to be able to dismiss poor teachers more easily.

Some of the weaknesses the researchers cited in Kansas City fall on district practices. Some center on how the district contracts with the teachers’ union. And some recommendations involving the ability to dismiss teachers would require changes in state law.

In many cases, the National Council on Teacher Quality and Kansas City Superintendent John Covington see eye to eye.

Covington decried the district’s troubled human resources department from the start when he took the superintendent post in July 2009.

The district needed a strenuous evaluation process, he said. It needed to critically review those teachers who were not performing so they could be dismissed.

Covington’s team knew layoffs were coming with the school closings and stepped up teacher reviews in the 2009-2010 school year with in tentions of avoiding broad cuts by seniority.

But making the changes has been difficult.

Turnover in the leadership of human resources continued under Covington, following a history of turnover under a long line of predecessors.

Kansas City is the fifth district to undergo the council’s review, Cohen said. It previously reviewed Baltimore, Boston, Hartford, Conn., and Seattle. Although the districts share many of the same criticisms and roadblocks, some of the findings in Kansas City stood out, she said.

Only six teachers last year received a “needs improvement” or “did not meet standards” rating. And more than a third, though evaluated, did not get a rating, the study showed.

Records on teacher absences showed that the highest percentage of absences — 25.1 percent — occurred on Fridays. But the figures are suspect because the review of records also indicated that 20 percent of teacher absences occurred on Saturdays, and some on Sundays.

The researchers also reported they could review absence data only from 2009-2010 because records for 2006 through 2008 were improperly documented.

“The district historically has not had good data management in place,” Cohen said.

The district has created what it calls a “data dashboard” that organizes that kind of information and more, Esselman said. And a strategic planning process with community teams last summer included plans to better involve both the teachers and the schools in making teacher placements.

Among other recommendations in the study:

•The council urged the school district to deepen its evaluation process, giving teachers better chances to improve and allowing the district to dismiss weak performers. This would help make the crossover to tenure in a teacher’s fifth year more meaningful.

•The district’s starting salary, which stands among the lowest in the region, needs to be increased to be more competitive.

•Obtaining tenure should be a more rigorous achievement and come with a substantial pay increase.

Kansas City Federation of Teachers President Andrea Flinders agreed that the district needs stronger evaluations to strengthen the work force. But she said seniority and due process protections need to play a role.

Teachers worry that they too often can be cast down at the whim of a principal’s poor evaluation process.

“People don’t understand that you’ve got to have quality principals to have quality evaluations,” Flinders said. “We’re talking about people’s livelihoods here.”

The council and the Kauffman Foundation want the study to spur community involvement in public education and partnered with Urban League of Greater Kansas City and the Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce.

The civic groups helped involve community members in the review and intend to help lead discussions going forward, said Gwen Grant of the Urban League.

“I’m hoping it will be a catalyst for action,” Grant said.

The district welcomes the community’s help, Esselman said.

“It’s nice to have that third set of eyes.”