CHARLESTON — The state schools superintendent and the leaders of the two teacher unions all want to see education improve, but differ on how to move it forward.
Superintendent Steve Paine, West Virginia Education Association President Dale Lee and American Federation of Teacher-West Virginia President Fred Albert shared their thoughts during a West Virginia Press Association Legislative Lookahead session on Friday.
Lee offered praise for the Legislature’s willingness to approve the governor’s proposed 5 percent pay raise for teachers and state employees — the second in two years. “We have to continue with the investment in education that came last year,” he said.
He hopes that the two new education chairs — Sen. Patricia Rucker and Delegate Danny Hamrick, who were invited but were unable to attend – will listen to the experts when they consider education reforms. Those experts are the teachers and service workers in the schools. “If you want to make change for the best, that’s where you go.”
The state has a teacher shortage in several areas — math, science, social studies, elementary education, and physical education chief among them.
Paine said he wants to focus first on the math shortage, where 25 percent of the math teachers aren’t certified to teach math. Last spring, WVU’s education program produced only three math teachers. “The pipeline of math teachers is just not there.”
He proposes an initiative to offer an incentive for teachers who want to be math certified. They would be eligible for a one-time stipend or salary bump if they go through a program to get trained and pass a test to become certified in math.
Lee and Albert both oppose differential pay.
“That’s a band aid approach to a hemorrhaging problem,” Lee said. Math isn’t the only shortage. It might be better to offer tuition incentives for college students to go into shortage area, with a requirement they give service back to the state.
Albert said offering incentives just for math teachers might create more shortages in other areas. He suggested student loan forgiveness with conditions for those who go into shortage areas.
Paine talked about attendance issues in the schools, for students and teachers.
For students, state code contains reasons for excused absences, and that list has grown over the years, far beyond what federal regulations allow. As a result, half of the state’s schools have chronic attendance problems, defined as 20 percent of the student population missing 18 days or more.
For teachers, he said, the problem appears to stem from a 2010 change in the law that prohibits teachers from banking 15 leave allowable leave days per year for retirement. New teachers perceive those 15 days as theirs, use it or lose it, so they use it. He wants to see that stricken provision restored in the code.
None of the three offered specific ideas for education reform legislation.
In a separate session, Senate President Mitch Carmichael talked briefly about continuing to move toward more local control of the schools, and all three agreed with that idea.
Albert asked, “Why don’t we just let teachers do their job?” Give them more flexibility, stop micromanaging, stop prescribing lesson plans. “Reform for the sake of reform is not always the best prescription.”
Paine observed that none of the long string of federal education reform programs ever changes the way kids learn. Local control needs to be extended out to the school level. But that requires strong school principals and those are in too-short supply, with too few in the pipeline. The school system needs to build capacity for strong, experienced principals.
Albert and Lee both oppose pursuing charter school legislation. Albert said charter schools advantage some over others and the state needs to support what it already has.
Lee said that the state Constitution mandates a free and thorough public education for all children, not charter schools. Charter school performance is a mixed bag across the nation, and in West Virginia
Charter schools could only make the achievement gap greater.
Twitter David Beard @dbeardtdp
