EXPERIENCE WANTED: Teachers with few years on the job, wrong credentials are the norm at many poor NYC schools

BARRY WILLIAMS FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Banana Kelly High School has a 42.5% graduation rate and 69% of the teachers there have fewer than three years experience in the classroom.

Most of the students in Banana Kelly High School's class of 2015 have been at the school longer than the majority of its teachers have been on the job.

Students at the Bronx school — which has a dismal graduation rate of 42.3% — say it shows.

"More experienced teachers are going to know more and different things," said senior Prince Tetteh, 19. "We deserve better teachers and a good education. All the schools in different neighborhoods should be treated the same."

A Daily News analysis shows that is not the case: The city public schools with the highest number of new teachers or instructors teaching without proper licensing are typically filled with black and Hispanic students, and often fare poorly when it comes to academics.

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"Because we're a poor school, they've chosen to give us inexperienced teachers," says Benjamin Agyard, 19, also a senior at Banana Kelly High School. "It sucks for us, but what are you going to do? That's how it works."

The South Bronx school, named for a curve on its Kelly St. home in a once-burned out section of the borough, is home to a staff where 69% of the teachers have fewer than three years of classroom experience and boasts a graduation rate below the city average.

Another Bronx school emerged with the highest number of teachers working without proper certification: Two out of every three classes at the Arturo A. Schomberg Satellite Academy were taught by teachers teaching outside their area of expertise. The graduation rate for the 2012-13 school year was 33.2%, about half the city average.

The News identified 21 city schools where 50% or more of the teaching staff had under three years' experience. Banana Kelly was ranked second, behind Maspeth High School in Queens - where a staggering 88% were on the job for under three years. Banana Kelly was joined by 10 other Bronx schools on the list.

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In the 25 schools with the highest percentage of classes taught by teachers outside of their credentialed subject areas, almost all of the 8,000 students affected were black and Hispanic, and all of the schools were found in the Bronx, Brooklyn or Manhattan. The instructors taught at least 35% of the classes at those schools.

City officials said this often means that teachers may be doubling up in similar subjects, such as biology and earth science.

On the flip side, 12 of the 25 city schools with the highest concentration of teachers with masters' degrees were in Staten Island, where less than one-tenth of all city students reside. But Staten Island kids do better than the city average on math and reading tests.

Public School 32 on Staten Island boasts a faculty where 91% earned a master's degree plus an extra 30 credit hours or a doctorate — the highest figure in the city. That school has a 39% pass rate on state reading tests, far above the city average of 30%.

"I think it's important," said dad Tim Browning, who has two boys attending the school. "Mostly, (the teachers) are pretty diligent. They're good with the kids. We've never really had any problems with the kids."

The difficulty in attracting highly qualified teachers to challenging classrooms is widely acknowledged.

"This is a problem that's baked into the system," said Joe Williams, executive director of Democrats for Education Reform. "We need to find creative ways to address it."

City school officials said it’s a priority.

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BARRY WILLIAMS FOR NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Banana Kelly High School senior Benjamin Agyare, 19, says having inexperience ‘sucks for us but what are you going to do?’

"Recruiting and training high-quality teachers across every zip code is critical to our mission, and in 2014 the Department of Education recruited 16,000 certified applicants," said spokeswoman Devora Kaye. "The DOE also uses incentivizing grants for 350 harder-to-staff schools in the Bronx, central Brooklyn and the Rockaways to keep strong teachers."

School officials point to high-performing schools with less-experienced teachers, along with lower-performing schools with teaching veterans, to demonstrate the problem is more complicated. Kaye said educators who can't make the grade are moved out quickly.

"We are holding teachers accountable and using all methods at our fingertips to show teachers the door when they aren't delivering for our students," she said.

But inexperienced teachers are not always a sign of troubled classrooms.

At Metropolitan Soundview High School in the Bronx, Principal Michael Lanaghan said the large number of newer teachers (65% under three years of experience) was more help than hindrance. The school, opened in 2010, had 80% of its 10th-grade students set to graduate on time in June - well above the borough average of 72%.

"We are looking for new teachers who are willing to learn and take feedback to benefit students," said the principal, who recruited seven teachers from Manhattanville College for the 2012-13 school year.

With Terence Cullen, Kerry Burke

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/wrong-experience-common-nyc-schools-article-1.2152634