Shortchanging Poor Schools

The Examiner ran an intresting aritle, Study: Pay lower at poorer schools about a report, "Shortchanging Poor Schools" relased by Ed Trust West.

Teachers at some San Francisco public schools with low-income, heavily African-American and Latino student populations earn thousands of dollars a year less than their counterparts at schools serving more affluent white and Asian students, a report has found.

[...]According to the report, the San Francisco Unified School District spends an estimated $5,116 less per teacher in elementary schools serving mostly Latino and African-American students than in schools serving mostly white and Asian kids. The report shows a disparity of $7,264 in middle schools and $8,355 in high schools.

You can find the full report here. The same report was featured in a Chron article Report explains why teacher pay is unfair which touches on the way that site budgetting exascerbates the problem:

Mission Principal Kevin Truitt said the problem stems mainly from the way the central office funds schools: each school gets its own budget and can choose which programs and supplies it wants to fund.

But first, teacher salaries are taken out of each school's pot -- and each school is charged for the number of its teachers times the salary of the average teacher in the district, which is about $55,000, he said. His teachers, though, make far less than $55,000, meaning he is overcharged for teacher salaries, leaving less money in his pot for supplies and programs. A school like Washington, conversely, is undercharged because its teachers generally earn more than the average.

"It's like rubbing salt in the wound," Truitt said.

The article points out that this is a state wide problem. SFUSD is not an outlier. Experienced teachers shun more challenging assignments in troubled high-poverty schools. There is no controversy about the nature of this problem. But there is plenty of disagreement over how to fix it. "Combat pay" for teachers in troubled schools? Budgetting reforms that would base school budgets on actual techer salaries instead of averaged salaries? Granting administrators more control over teacher assignments? The report does not take sides on how to fix the problem. It merely documents that it is real, and it impacts SF schools as much as any other urban schools.