Recruiting Teachers Try m-o-n-e-y

PAMELA FERDINAND

How can you get good teachers in the public schools? Over the past few months. Massachusetts has been wondering. Across the country, demand for new teachers is expected to reach 2m over the next decade, and states are in fierce competition to get the best of the crop. So first Massachusetts has tried tests, and now it is trying bribes. It is not clear that either will work; but in a state that prides itself on a long history of quality education, the debate is raging red-hot.

The trouble began in April, when following the lead of 43 other states who already require such exams, Massachusetts held its first statewide test for nearly 1,800 candidates aspiring to teach in the public pools. To its astonishment, almost 60% of the candidates failed. Around 30% failed a basic reading and writing test, with questions along the lines of "What is a preposition?" and "Define the word 'abolish'." Some 63% failed the maths paper. In one section of the reading and writing test, a paragraph from "The Federalist Papers" was read aloud three times as dictation. Among the interesting words thereby introduced to the lexicon were "improbally", "integraty", "bodyes" and "relif".

Confronted with such results, the state Board of Education did what any other self-preserving body would do: it voted to lower the pass-mark. Roughly 260 more of the candidates thereby slid through. Then the board reinstated the original, higher, pass-mark, prompting the interim education commissioner to blame the switch on "political forces", and immediately resign.

After the test debacle, state officials had a better idea. After all, Massachusetts has a $1 billion budget surplus waiting to be spent: and what better cause could there be than education? A number of school systems in other states have already turned to such incentives to attract qualified candidates. Baltimore offers housing bonuses of $5,000 to new teachers, with a bigger bonus if they are willing to work in rough areas. Detroit offers bonuses of $3,000, and Los Angeles provides a $5,000 salary differential to teachers who are bilingual. New York city is recruiting (with the lure of generous starting salaries) from as far away as Austria, which has a surplus of teachers.

Now Massachusetts may cap the lot by offering teachers the biggest bonus in the country: $20,000 merely for signing the contract. If the law passes, 250 aspiring teachers could receive such a bonus. To put the sum in context, it is not faroff the average starting salary for a teacher in the Massachusetts public schools ($26,540) and $5,000 more than the median signing bonus received by all graduates from Harvard Business School who accepted job offers last year.

This idea is the brainchild of Thomas Birmingham, the president of the state Senate, who unashamedly describes it as "elitist". There are several more around. Scott Harshbarger, the state attorney-general and the leading Democratic contender for the governor's seat, has proposed $5,000 bonuses for 200 teachers who accept jobs in the state's worst schools. Paul Cellucci, the acting governor and the leading Republican contender, would rather use the surplus for tax cuts, but he has also suggested full college scholarships for top high-school students willing to teach for four years in Massachusetts public schools. He has also suggested that all current teachers take the famous test.

Although international studies have shown no connection between education spending and achievement, the states like to think that extra money is at least the key to teacher satisfaction. One national study, by Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, has shown that low salaries often deter public school teachers from staying longer than a year in the profession, while others show that up to half America's teachers leave before their fifth year of service. Bonuses could either be awarded in one lump sum, or spread out over several years to ensure that new teachers stay in their jobs. They could also be targeted and varied to attract teachers with particularly valued expertise--in maths, say, or foreign languages. According to John Silber, the chancellor of Boston University and chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education, bonuses "certainly can't hurt, and I suspect they can help a great deal."

Others, however, believe a more systematic attempt is needed to improve teacher salaries, working conditions and retirement policies. "Attracting teachers is certainly important," says Kathy Kelley, president of the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers, one of the state's two main teachers' unions. "Retaining them is even more important." To all those familiar with the intransigence of unionised teachers, those remarks would seem to spell trouble.