Education
Trust-West found that 42 of the state's 50 largest school districts
spend significantly more on teachers in schools serving the fewest
black and Latino students.
Teacher
salaries are significantly higher in California's affluent schools
compared to institutions with more low-income students.
Schools with more affluent students
have more highly paid, experienced teachers than schools across town
serving poorer students -- even when the schools are part of the same
district, a new study has found. The finding, released Tuesday by
the Education Trust-West, outlines a systemic salary gap within
districts from one end of the state to the other. At the core of the
gap is a natural tendency for more experienced -- and thus higher paid
-- teachers to gravitate to schools with less-challenging student
populations and more parent involvement. The problem is often
compounded by rigid union contracts and district budgeting formulas
that make it difficult for poorer schools to offer higher salaries and
other incentives, according to the report and education experts.
The issue often goes unnoticed because districts generally report
teacher salaries as an average, masking the disparities among
individual schools, said Russlyn Ali, executive director of the
Education Trust-West. "The lion's share of the education monies
looks like it's spent equally to the public even though we are not even
close to equality," she said. "It's as if in most districts in
California, we have two pots of water -- one ice cold and the other
boiling hot -- and we conclude the average water temperature is warm."
Of the 50 largest school districts in the state, 40 spend an average of
$2,396 a year less per teacher in schools serving mostly low-income
students. But the gap is even wider -- $3,014 per teacher -- at schools
with large populations of African American and Latino students. Veteran
teachers aren't always the best ones, Ali said, but generally speaking,
experience does equate with effectiveness in the classroom. [more]
Download the Report,
"California's Hidden Teacher Spending Gap: How State and District
Budgeting Practices Shortchange Poor and Minority Students and Their
Schools" [here]
