April 13, 1999April 13, 1999 Curriculum Resource Teachers for Literacy Support Approved
The Board of Education has approved a proposal to hire a cadre of highly skilled curriculum resource teachers to help principals and teachers improve student reading scores at 115 district schools.
Up to 85 teaching professionals, designated as Curriculum Resource Teachers for Literacy Support, will be selected by school sites and trained to begin work this fall at the district's middle level and high schools, the 20 "PAR" schools needing additional resources, and those elementary schools with the highest percentage of students below the 50th percentile in standardized reading tests.
Superintendent of Public Education Alan Bersin said "these specially trained resource teachers will use their skills and training in ways that will significantly impact the progress of students in our district who desperately need additional resources to read at grade level. They can dramatically improve teaching and learning in the classroom and help us begin to close the achievement gap between Latino, African American and Indochinese students on one hand and Asian and Caucasian students on the other."
That achievement gap was identified in a 1977court decision that found 23 district schools to be racially isolated. Since then, the district has implemented several initiatives and programs to address the racial isolation issue; however, the achievement gap still persists. Some 15 of the 23 racially isolated schools remain among the 25 percent lowest-performing schools in the district.
Resource teachers have been used in a variety of ways over the years to support classroom teachers, principals, and central office administrators in improving curriculum and the delivery of instruction.
The use of curriculum resource teachers to focus on helping low-performing students differs from Bersin's original plan to hire staff developers to work with principals and teachers. Several months of negotiations with the San Diego Education Association to add a staff developer position to the teachers' union contract have reached a stalemate. The resource teacher position is presently covered in the contract and not subject to additional bargaining.
The two positions differ in that the proposed staff developer would work for general reading improvement of students at all reading levels while curriculum resource teachers will concentrate solely on helping principals and teachers work with students whose reading scores are below the 50th percentile.
"We have an educational emergency in our schools," Bersin said. "There is no excuse for waiting to take action when we know what needs to be done to improve student literacy. These students need the resources now to give them the best opportunities to learn. It requires that we take immediate action."
Bersin said the district is willing to continue exploring ways to resolve the staff developer issue with the union "but not at the expense of helping these students learn to read." At issue are the qualifications a staff developer would need in order to be eligible for selection by school sites. The district insists that staff developers must have in-depth knowledge of the district's literacy initiative, including language arts grade-level standards, and assessment tools as well as experience in literacy-centered professional development programs and communications and leadership skills . The union proposes that staff developer candidates be selected primarily on the basis of seniority as a classroom teacher.
"There is more to being an effective staff developer than being a good teacher," Bersin said. "Not every outstanding teacher would make a good staff developer any more than every outstanding baseball hitter would make a good batting coach."
Under the union contract, knowledge, experience, and skills can be factors in selecting curriculum resource teachers. Candidates for the position will be selected through an initial paper screening, followed by performance-based interviews scheduled for mid-June.
Those passing the interview process will become eligible to be interviewed and selected by participating schools. Once chosen by their sites, the resource teachers will undergo approximately two weeks of intensive training in August before school starts Sept. 7.
The new resource teachers will work at school sites four days a week with the fifth day set aside for continued training at the district's Institute for Learning. Not every school site will have equal access to resource teachers. Schools having greater percentages of students scoring in the bottom two quartiles in standardized reading tests will receive more resource teacher time than other sites.
The $4.48 million curriculum resource teacher program will be funded by the recent streamlining of the district's central office organization which will redirect $8.3 million to 174 district schools beginning in the 1999-00 school year.
"The fate of thousands of kids in our district schools who need additional help learning to read at grade level depends on what we do today to invest new teaching resources into the schools where those students are," Bersin said.
