November 12, 1999
Web posted at: 2:18 p.m. EST (1918 GMT)

In this story: 'How do we entice someone?' Just filling positions isn't enough Reasons for teacher shortage Extra money creates new problems RELATED STORIES, SITES

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Agreeing to hire 100,000 new teachers may have been the easy part.

MESSAGE BOARD Changes in education   ALSO White House and GOP negotiators agree on plan for 100,000 new teachers, search for extra funds

Now that Congress and the White House have come to terms on a class-size reduction plan, the issue turns from quantity to quality. Where will schools find skilled applicants?

Related, and so far unanswered, issues include:

• Where are the extra classrooms going to come from?

• Will teachers be willing to work in urban or remote locations?

• What can help a district too small to hire even a single teacher under the population-based formula that's been agreed upon?

The questions puzzle educators, even though they welcome the president's bid for 100,000 extra teachers in the next five years.

Despite this week's budget deal offering an additional $1.3 billion and greater leeway in how it's spent, hiring quality educators is far from a simple proposition once it gets to the local level.

"A teacher is just a teacher to most of the world," said Richard Spacek, superintendent of a 145-student district in the Ozark town of Raymondville, Missouri. "But there are a lot of different issues out there. The big one for us is how do we entice someone to come into our community. It's not a very high pay base."

For the second year in a row, President Clinton has successfully argued that more schoolchildren, an aging teaching force and the demands for a well-read, technologically savvy work force all cry out for making smaller classes a national priority.

The first round of money -- $1.2 billion approved after a partisan budget debate last year -- was doled out in July to most of the nation's 16,000 school districts.

Bettye Jean Calender came out of retirement to return to teaching when the class-size reduction initiative went into effect

Based on calculations of the number of poor children in a given area, the awards varied widely. Big, urban districts got tens of millions. The smallest or the wealthiest only got a few hundred dollars.

The Raymondville district received $7,000 in new-teacher funds: "We had to make up the difference and we're on a really tight budget," Spacek said.

In Washington, Bettye Jean Calender was part of the first wave of teachers hired under the class-size reduction initiative. She came out of retirement to resume teaching at Turner Elementary School.

With more teachers to go around, "we are able to reach out and help children or redirect them," Calender told CNN.

But just filling positions isn't enough, argue critics of the Clinton plan. Amy Wilkins of the Education Trust, a group that works on the local level to promote high academic achievement for students, says schools have to make sure the teachers they hire are qualified.

"The difference between a well-prepared teacher and an under-prepared teacher can be a whole grade level's worth of achievement in a single school year," Wilkins told CNN. "For kids, that can mean the difference between a remedial track and the college prep track."

The problem is, there simply are not enough fully qualified teachers to go around. Things will get worse as teachers retire, student enrollment grows and college graduates choose higher paying careers outside of education.

Maryland, for example needs "between 6,000 and 6,500 new teachers each year and our colleges and universities are able to prepare around 2,500 to 2,700," according to Dennis Hinkle, Dean of the College of Education at Towson University.

Within two years, Maryland predicts it will need 11,000 new teachers a year.

"Part of the problem that we have with the profession today is that teachers don't have the opportunity to make the kind of money that other professionals do," says Towson senior Brian Dawson, an education major.

Student enrollment growth contributes to the thinning of qualified teacher ranks

Even with their awareness of the financial drawback, some teachers still don't last long because of the occupation's low prestige and high pressure. "About one-third of all teachers who start out leave within the first three or four years of teaching," says Cynthia Hartzler-Miller, a professor of education at Towson.

The shortage of quality teachers has meant bidding wars, and signing bonuses and stipends -- putting financially strained urban school districts at a disadvantage with affluent suburbs.

Ironically, schools that receive extra federal funding for teachers may find themselves with no classrooms to put them. Spacek says that could happen in Raymondville. The Missouri superintendent also worries about having enough classroom space to accommodate computers.

"Facilities are almost impossible for a small district to build," he said. "The only way to do it is with a bond issue.''

Even in districts with enough room and skilled hires to reduce average class sizes, administrators still face the uncertainty of a lasting commitment. The new deal reached this week by Clinton and Republican lawmakers only funds Clinton's five-year proposal for just one more year.

With its first share of the federal initiative, the 1,150 student district in East Helena, Montana, hired two more teachers -- paying them about $16,000 each.

"We have tremendous fear about whether this is going to be funded on an annual basis," said superintendent Thomas Lockyer. "But we've learned if you don't take advantage of whatever is available at the time, somebody else gets those dollars."

Correspondent Jeanne Meserve and The Associated Press contributed to this report, written by Jim Morris

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