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For Public Comments to the Commission, please click here
149
1 signing bonuses, but a lot of districts actually are
2 using signing bonuses.
3 Housing is an issue in many of these places,
4 and in order for these teachers to take these jobs they
5 do need signing bonuses to start the jobs, with the end
6 goal at the end of the year we can go back and say,
7 look, what we have decided as a commission is rather
8 than take a very broad shotgunn approach at this issue,
9 let's focus in on the teachers.
10 The data are there. How can we -- what kind
11 of interventions can come out of this that will help
12 train teachers, help them remain engaged in the
13 profession, help them develop professionally, and again
14 ultimately provide the leadership that will perpetuate
15 the profession and continue to grow and become better
16 and better and better.
17 And that's I think the report. I would
18 invite my other commissioners to respond.
19 MR. HANNA: Are there any comments from Pat?
20 MS. MAZZUCA: I think that Alex said it all
21 and did an excellent job. Thank you, Alex.
22 MR. HANNA: Norma, do you have a question?
23 After vice.
24 MS. GARZA: When you all discussed teachers,
25 you mentioned math and science. Is this teacher prep,
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1 math and science?
2 MS. MAZZUCA: No. We discussed teacher prep,
3 and again when Alex started out talking, I think he made
4 the statement that we feel that the basic ingredient,
5 No. 1 ingredient, most important ingredient, you have a
6 competent qualified teacher in each and every classroom,
7 and that is not just math and science, obviously reading
8 and other subjects of education is important. It's just
9 right now nationally there is a tremendous shortage of
10 math and science teachers.
11 If we follow the No Child Left Behind, one of
12 the biggest areas that President Bush is focusing on is
13 in the area of reading, and so far in the two groups
14 that have spoken, we really haven't discussed the area
15 of reading, which is probably maybe we all can agree on,
16 reading being the fundamental skill and predictor and
17 component on academic success that gets you to college
18 and higher education and a good job, et cetera.
19 I don't know if maybe, you know, we should
20 consider looking at reading as a focus in our subgroups.
21 No. 1.
22 And, No. 2, you talked about looking at
23 research in teacher prep and going through sort of
24 filtering types of statistics, and maybe what you might
25 be interested in looking at is the National Reading
151
1 Panel. They do quite a significant amount of work on
2 looking at evidence based scientific research in teacher
3 prep, and teacher preparation in reading, and you will
4 find what they use, the methodology, evidence-based
5 research. And that's also in the No Child Left Behind.
6 I would just like to see if maybe we could,
7 you know, look at being consistent from group to group
8 on similar definitions of research, what do we mean by
9 research.
10 And also if you look at the National Reading
11 Report there was very, very little scientific research
12 on teacher prep to begin with. So one of the
13 recommendations and one of the contributions this
14 commission can make is on asking that more research be
15 done in teacher prep.
16 MR. HANNA: Does anyone want to comment on
17 that?
18 MS. MAZZUCA: I would just reiterate that
19 literacy is absolutely critical and should be foremost
20 in our minds with every kid and teachers.
21 MR. HANNA: Grace.
22 MS. RAMOS: I think I got two comments here,
23 and one is I sat on an educational panel many years ago
24 and it said that it's not that students aren't prepared
25 for schools, it's the schools aren't prepared for the
152
1 students. I think that's what we're hearing here.
2 And one of those things, what I would like to
3 know, how are -- are we sensitizing or how are the
4 educators going to be sensitized to the needs of
5 bicultural bilingual children?
6 Are they using their monies to develop
7 programs to be able to address that problem? How can we
8 sort of measure that as to what needs are being met at
9 that level? That's one thing.
10 The second one, something interesting that he
11 said, that we're losing the teachers, so we don't have
12 role models. We don't have bicultural bilingual
13 teachers that understand the children, understand what
14 happens in their lives, different nuances or traditions
15 to their families, and I think one of these things is
16 simply economics.
17 When you say you can't raise a family on
18 $30,000. Well, if you can't raise them on $30,000, they
19 can either give up or get out.
20 It seems today as we heard that, the
21 coordinating board, we don't have teachers in the higher
22 capacities as principals, superintendents, and again
23 that's going to impact because you are going to lose
24 those teachers to other sources if they need that
25 income.
153
1 Are we looking at that in the educating
2 field? I see very few principals, very few
3 superintendents. They would understand, too, the need
4 of the bilingual, the bicultural.
5 I guess that's a two-pointed comment,
6 question, for anybody who would like to address it, but
7 I certainly think we need to look at that in the
8 educator field.
9 MR. GONZALEZ: One of the things we're
10 looking at exactly as a subgroup is teacher preparation
11 programs for that type of population that you're talking
12 about.
13 It's not -- you could look at teacher
14 preparations generally. What we want to do is focus on
15 those people who are doing the job with that specific
16 type of population that you're talking about.
17 And I know my colleague, Jim Meiss, they turn
18 out the most -- the greatest number of teachers who are
19 from underrepresented groups in the country. They
20 specialize people who are Hispanic or Asian, but who
21 become teachers. California State Northridge also in
22 L.A. actually has a program that turns out the most
23 teachers of anywhere in the country.
24 And these are programs where you get -- in
25 California you get a certain education in bilingual. In
154
1 order for them to get certified by the state, they'll
2 get certified in that area. So there are already
3 programs out there.
4 One of the issues that was brought up to our
5 committee -- or our subcommittee, rather, was that the
6 places -- I think they used the example of Nebraska --
7 it's happening all over the country -- where 20 years
8 ago, ten years ago, there really wasn't the need.
9 Within the last ten or five years or three years, all of
10 a sudden you have very traditional types of educational
11 programs with very traditional teachers who have no idea
12 how to reach teachers.
13 Charlottesville, North Carolina, a week ago,
14 two weeks ago, largest minority population, Hispanic.
15 Santa Ana, 98 percent of the people in that city speak
16 Spanish. So what you have is a real need and you don't
17 have teachers that really meet that.
18 MS. RAMOS: I read something that in Texas,
19 at the University of Austin or maybe there's a Austin
20 university, their school of nursing is requiring their
21 nurses to take I think like three hours or something in
22 Spanish, and that is a requirement, and, of course, it's
23 going to end up in the Supreme Court.
24 But they're telling them that in order to get
25 their nursing degree they have to have so many hours of
155
1 Spanish. And it was brought on because one of the
2 patients had gotten her pills and she didn't quite
3 understand what she was telling her and she was taking
4 her pills 11 times a day because it said (Speaking
5 Spanish). She was supposed to be taking them once a
6 day.
7 The health care has now addressed the program
8 to meet the needs in this situation. Our schools need
9 to look at the same thing, what program does it need to
10 develop to meet that need.
11 But I thought that was very interesting that
12 that school had taken that stance. I don't know if it
13 will hold up. There's challenges to it.
14 MS. SCHOFIELD: I wanted to share three
15 things. I'm glad you brought up the letter C. I didn't
16 share that when I was doing the report on our working
17 group, but we did talk about it and it was part of our
18 discussion, that that needs to be a key component.
19 Thank you.
20 Secondly, in looking at maintaining good
21 teachers and looking at teacher recruitment, there is a
22 -- the Milk and Family foundation has a program that I
23 believe is being piloted in Arizona, Florida and
24 California. So that may be something -- you know, I
25 don't know too much about it, but I keep saying I want
156
1 to look at it. These people in Florida are looking at
2 districts that are piloting the program.
3 The other thing in reviewing the staff
4 development to not lose focus of -- there are good
5 teachers that I see come and go, but I think those
6 excellent exceptional teachers are those that can really
7 assess the situation and really can do an excellent
8 needs assessment and then put an action plan together to
9 meet those needs.
10 So be careful when we look at the criteria of
11 what a good teacher is to make sure that there is a
12 needs assessment as to who their clientele is.
13 Our clientele are our Spanish speaking
14 students or Hispanic people. I didn't want the working
15 group to lose sight of that.
16 MR. HANNA: Francisco.
17 MR. PARET: On another potential source of
18 exploration or investigation, so to speak, I don't know
19 if you have heard of the Education Trust. I don't know
20 much about their background. They're actually
21 northern-California based, I believe, and started by
22 Cathy Hancock, and they put out a lot of research out
23 there and many papers precisely on this topic.
24 Their focus is primarily the underserved
25 population in the educational system, the minorities,
157
1 and one of core tests is that teacher matters and they
2 have written several reports on the subject.
3 Just throwing that out for your
4 consideration.
5 I haven't done any background. They're
6 independent and not for profit, and I think they've been
7 -- some of their work has been commended and used by
8 Democrats and Republicans alike, but, you know, having
9 said that.
10 MR. HANNA: Leslie.
11 MS. SANCHEZ: We use them probably more than
12 we want to admit. A couple things I want to draw your
13 attention to. In your packet is the facts about good
14 teachers under No Child Left Behind.
15 The solution -- under No Child Left Behind
16 they want a well-prepared teacher in every classroom by
17 the 2005. They allocate additional monies for that.
18 They talk about what some of the problems are,
19 alternative ways to become a teacher, Teacher America,
20 merit pay authorization for the first time like you do
21 corporate America, authorizing states to give bonuses in
22 high subject needs, physics, if they come from NASA.
23 And the economy is the scale of what they're
24 used to making versus making different discipline areas.
25 But there is a tremendous amount of information here and
158
1 additional information No Child Left Behind we can
2 provide on teacher things.
3 Also, in the no more excuses, which the
4 chairman was kind of enough to draw our attention to,
5 are search traits of high priority, high Hispanic
6 schools basically or high minority schools that are very
7 similar to what you see.
8 My challenge to this commission, this working
9 group, there are very common themes, how do you
10 articulate that into something that's manageable in an
11 action plan for the final report, Spanish law on the
12 federal level, state level, local level, governors,
13 research that needs to be taken into consideration.
14 That's kind of my question for you.
15 Thank you.
16 MR. HANNA: Charlie.
17 MR. GARCIA: I think that one of the things
18 the work group needs to cover is that nationally only
19 four percent of teachers are Hispanic. In the state of
20 Florida it's about eight percent, yet in Florida almost
21 25 percent of the children are in Hispanic.
22 The consequences of that scientifically
23 proven are very harmful to the Hispanic children. If
24 we're going to close the gap, we bring more Hispanic
25 teachers into the profession.
159
1 When you have more Hispanic teachers, you get
2 more Hispanic children identified as gifted. You have
3 less problems with kids. You have more kids going to
4 college, all these things because there is culture
5 awareness. There is an identification of language.
6 So the effects of not having enough
7 Hispanic-speaking teachers over laid on top of that is
8 there's a national crisis in the nation on shortages of
9 teachers.
10 In Florida over the next ten years we're
11 projecting every year we're going to need 16,000 new
12 teachers. The state only produces 6,000. So there is a
13 gap of 10,000. We're having to go to Puerto Rico,
14 Phillipines to get teachers. It used to be easier, we
15 would just get them from other states, but now the other
16 states are having problems.
17 The state of Florida is identified as the No.
18 1 strategic priority (inaudible). We've been working
19 for six months analyzing what we're going to do. We
20 have that strategic. Specifically we have five
21 objectives and then we have strategies to achieve all
22 those objectives and some of those are very informative.
23 One of the things that we're going to do in
24 the state and perhaps nationally is a public awareness
25 campaign going out to the Hispanic community, making --
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