The Study
In this report by the Education Policy Center at Michigan State University, Professor David Plank and doctoral student Debbi Harris examine the similarities and differences between Michigan’s charter and traditional school teachers.

Findings
The authors point out that the advent of charter schools in Michigan has raised many questions around the state, including whether charter schools employ higher or lower quality teachers than traditional public schools. Plank and Harris use data from the National Center for Education Statistics from the 1999-2000 school year. Regular full-time teachers, regular part-time teachers, itinerant teachers (who teach at two or more schools), and long-term substitutes are all included in the analysis. What the researchers found is that charter school teachers are much less likely to have appropriate certification than their counterparts in traditional public schools. For example, there are few traditional public school teachers in Michigan who are not certified in their main teaching assignment (4.9 percent). By contrast, over one-quarter of teachers in charter school are not certified in their main teaching assignment. Secondary level teachers in charter schools are particularly likely to be teaching outside of their certificated field(s). More than one-third of secondary level teachers in charter schools are teaching “out of field,” compared to only 4.9 percent of traditional public school teachers. In addition, the NCES data show that charter school teachers have significantly less experience in the classroom than their traditional school colleagues. Indeed, more than half of all charter school teachers are in their first three years of teaching, while only one in seven traditional school teachers has that short amount of teaching experience. The authors also found that charter school teachers are paid less than their traditional public school colleagues, even when their experience levels are taken into consideration. “We do not know why this is so,” Harris and Plank conclude. “Highly qualified teacher applicants may be in short supply and charter school operators may have to make do with less qualified candidates. On the other hand, charter schools may be reluctant to pay competitive salaries, which makes it harder for them to hire high quality applicants. In either case, the results are the same. Student in charter schools are generally taught by less qualified teachers than students in traditional public schools.”

What It Means To You
The effectiveness of any school rests in large measure on the quality of the faculty. Teachers and an effective teaching counts. To what extent do the differences observed in this study reflect the situation in your district?

For More Information
Harris, D. & Plank, D.N. (2003). “Who’s teaching in Michigan’s Traditional and Charter Public Schools.” Policy Report No. 17. You can access the full report on the Education Policy Center’s Web site at www.epc.msu.edu .
 

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