Students lose out on learning when substitutes fill in, reports AP.
Schools’ use of substitutes to plug full-time vacancies — the teachers that kids are supposed to have all year — is up dramatically.
Duke University economist Charles Clotfelter, among a handful of researchers who have closely studied the issue, says the image of spitballs flying past a daily substitute often reflects reality. “Many times substitutes don’t have the plan in front of them,” Clotfelter said. “They don’t have all the behavioral expectations that the regular teachers have established, so it’s basically a holding pattern.”
Schools with low-income and minority students have higher rates of teacher absenteeism and more long-term vacancies filled by a sub. No Child Left Behind’s requirement that all teachers be “highly qualified” doesn’t apply to substitutes.
It merely requires that, after four weeks, parents be notified that their children are being taught by a teacher without the “highly qualified” label. Some schools rotate substitutes through a classroom in under four weeks to avoid having to send those letters, said Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and advocacy group.
More instability! That should help.
I am in an urban school district. If there were a requirement for subs to be “highly qualified,” we would be thrown into utter chaos.
There are some subs who are very good. They are snatched up quickly. For the most part, the most you can hope for is someone who will give the students the work you left and maintain order. If you expect “teaching,” you’re in for a rude awakening.
Long term substitutes hold their positions because regular teachers cannot be found. Last year it took the district Math Department several months to fill a math vacancy in my building. One candidate was offered a tenure track position. After one day of substituting in the classes he would have been teaching, he turned it down.
This year it took the English Department several months to fill a position in my building that had already been vacated by two successive teachers.
Our district can’t fill the full-time positions it has. To expect someone with a Master’s Degree to work for $90 a day under these conditions is ludicrous.
When I lived in Pennsylvania (ten years ago) you had to be a certified teacher in order to sub. You want to talk about competitive? Everyone making sixty dollars a day and scratching and clawing for the ear of the administration for the occasional full-time job that would come up!
If they only want to pay low “day labor” rates then they can’t expect a Jaime Escalante super star.
Like everything in life: “You get get what you pay for”
Low pay and hard working conditions keep people who might consider subbing out of the classroom. However, I also think that teachers do not always look at substitutes in a positive light. Some teachers do very little in preparing their students on how to behave when they are not there. This is something that I work on a lot with my own students. They know that there is a severe consequence when they do not treat the substitute like they want to be treated.
In California, school districts are supposed to comply with the William’s Act in regards to having a highly qualified teacher in the classroom. My son’s school was out of compliance for much of the first quarter because he had a sub for much of that time in his History class. (As a teacher, I have to question how a student can be held accountable for work when there has been nothing but a rotation of subs for weeks on end.) We have something in place to hold schools accountable, but the reality of it is, some people will not teach in certain schools for a variety of reasons.
“As a teacher, I have to question how a student can be held accountable for work when there has been nothing but a rotation of subs for weeks on end”
In a local school, two math teachers were called to serve in Iraq. The kids had subs all year long; most of them flunked their math classes. Then they weren’t allowed to take summer school.
I could have saved them whatever they spent on the study. Like anybody doesn’t already know this?
At my school, 4 teachers are out for 4 months each plus 1 for the entire year due to pregnancy. They would be out longer but benefits and/or sick time runs out.
Four months of pregnancy leave? Schools are sexist.
Back in the days when my wife occasionally subbed, at least a couple of districts in the south San Francisco Bay Area played the cute “use a sub” game for financial reasons. At the time (and I think it probably is still true) a sub could work in the same classroom for only a limited period of time, which equated to some percentage of the school year. The sub got about $50/day in those days, but no benefits whatsoever. So from the district’s perspective, it was far cheaper to use three subs in the course of a school year than to hire one full-time teacher.
The losers, of course, ultimately were the kids in the full-time sub’s classroom.
I guess that explains Scarsdale.
My friend there tells me that the schools don’t bother hiring substitutes to cover for absent teachers.
Apparently they just have the kids sit in the auditorium for the missing class hour (or some such).
I don’t know whether this is true in all of the schools or just in the middle school, which is the school my friends’ children attend.
Two of my middle school son’s teachers are going on pregnancy leave shortly.
This happens every year because we hire only at the bottom of the pay scale. All of the baby boom teachers are retiring and more than 50% of our new hires are first-year teachers; many or most of the rest have fewer than 5 years’ experience.
Nearly all are female, of course.
Middle school students never get through a year without a teacher going out on pregnancy leave. I don’t know whether it’s the same story at the high school.
In a local school, two math teachers were called to serve in Iraq. The kids had subs all year long; most of them flunked their math classes. Then they weren’t allowed to take summer school.
Why does this not surprise me?
My son’s math teacher last year took nearly two weeks off at the end of the year for elective foot surgery, leaving pretty much nothing behind for the kids to do. The principal OKd it without bothering to mention the situation to higher ups who could have hired a “leave replacement” — that is, a math teacher as opposed to a regular sub.
When the teacher came back she punished the kids for misbehaving with the sub by giving them extra-hard worksheets to sit and do in class.
She punished them with math.
As I understand it, this situation violates the spirit of the union contract. Sick days aren’t to be accumulated and “spent” on elective surgery. Sick days are in the contract for employees who are actually sick.
A teacher who schedules elective foot surgery for the last two weeks of June, while school is in session, could have scheduled the same surgery for the first two weeks of July, when it isn’t.
As a teacher, I have to question how a student can be held accountable for work when there has been nothing but a rotation of subs for weeks on end
Hi, Ms. Teacher!
Speaking as a parent, I feel the same way.
“My friend there tells me that the schools don’t bother hiring substitutes to cover for absent teachers.”
At the private (Jesuit run) high school I attended, we rarely had substitutes. If a teacher was absent, class was usually just canceled and we were expected to behave ourselves (we did not have to stay in the classroom).
Of course, this is easier to manage in an all-male Jesuit high school, since (I’m going from memory here) the dean of students could turn you over to the Spanish Inquisition for as long as he wanted if you misbehaved. I think that’s how it ran.
In any event, I think the idea was that subs usually don’t accomplish much beyond keeping order the school didn’t need to hire them for 1-day absences.
We *did* have a sub once when a teacher was going to be out for a few weeks. It went a lot more smoothly than one might expect … of course the dean of students introduced her to each class and let us know that the entire class would be given detention if there were any problems. Amazingly, we were well behaved
-Mark Roulo