Driscoll to seek $150m for teachers

Education Commissioner David P. Driscoll will urge the state today to spend $150 million over several years to boost teacher training, licensing, and support as the system is losing teachers at high rates.

Driscoll, who is retiring in August, said the bulk of the money should fund training and mentoring programs that would be modeled on some of the best in the state. He also would streamline the licensing process so that school systems could take a greater role in deciding which classes teachers need to take to earn teaching licenses and renew them every five years.

Teacher mentoring and training has been haphazard in Massachusetts, with little state oversight and support to ensure that teachers are getting the help they need. For example, the state has allotted $125 per student to school systems to use for teacher training, with little follow-up of how the money was spent. The state's teacher licensing system has also been criticized for being bogged down by unnecessary requirements.

"This is a big deal," said Driscoll, who will speak at the state Board of Education meeting today in Ipswich. "Everybody says the number one predictor of student achievement is the quality of the teacher in the classroom."

Driscoll said his push is part of a broader statewide effort to improve the teaching corps in Massachusetts.

The Act to Ensure Educator Excellence, a bill pending in the Legislature and backed by more than 100 lawmakers and the state's teachers unions, is even more specific than Driscoll's plan. The bill would force the state and school systems to take a comprehensive approach to training teachers and administrators. The bill would establish a master teacher corps to reward veteran teachers, an institute to train new teachers, and a system that would make it easier to dismiss failing teachers after they are given help to improve.

"This is the missing variable in school improvement," said Susan Freedman, president of Teachers 21, a Wellesley-based nonprofit pushing for teacher excellence nationwide.

Driscoll said school systems should take a leading role in preparing and training teachers and developing their own workforce, as Boston does with the Boston Teacher Residency program. The program allows college graduates to earn a teacher's license while they shadow a teacher in a high-achieving city school for one year. Teacher residents earn $11,100.

Driscoll said he would urge the state Board of Education to improve the teacher licensing system by giving school systems more flexibility to decide what classes teachers need to take to earn and renew their licenses. The state would set broad standards and ensure that they are met.

Now, for instance, an engineer is forced to take extra math classes. Under the new system, engineers could take other classes instead to help them be better teachers.

Dana Mohler-Faria, education adviser to Governor Deval Patrick, welcomed improvements to teacher licensing, but said yesterday that the governor does not have a position on the bill or Driscoll's proposal. Instead, the governor has assigned task forces to study education and will review their recommendations soon. The governor is expected to submit an education package to the Legislature in coming weeks.

"It's an issue of resources," said Mohler-Faria, who is also president of Bridgewater State College, a leading producer of teachers in Massachusetts. "I think we need to look at all of this in its totality. . . . That's what we're doing now."

Advocates of revamping teacher training say the state should move quickly, because losing teachers costs the state and school systems money.

More than 3,000 of the state's 70,000 teachers are retiring each year, compared to fewer than 2,000 a year in the late 1990s, according to the Massachusetts Teachers' Retirement System. School systems are experiencing shortages in special education, math, and other key areas. A 2004-2005 study in Boston, however, showed that 57 percent of new teachers left after three years. It cost the district $3.3 million to replace 190 teachers that year.

Driscoll and Freedman said the state, if it agrees on a teacher training initiative, could pilot it in as many as 15 school districts before taking it statewide. Freedman estimated that a pilot of that scale would cost $5 million.