Kudos to the Gilroy Unified School District for making great
strides in increasing the number of credentialed teachers working
in Gilroy’s public school classrooms.
Kudos to the Gilroy Unified School District for making great strides in increasing the number of credentialed teachers working in Gilroy’s public school classrooms.
For the 2002-03 school year, a recently released study shows, 22.3 percent of GUSD teachers were underqualified, according to the Teacher Qualification Index, which measures both teacher credentials and years of experience to arrive at its ratings. GUSD officials say that 17 percent of its teachers were uncredentialed during the 2002-03 school year.
But the good news is that for this school year – 2003-04 – the district estimates that only 5 percent of its teachers lack proper or necessary credentials.
Ironically, this good news is at least partly the result of the bad economic spell the state and the nation have been enduring.
All 33 teachers laid off during budget cuts last year held emergency credentials, officials told reporter Lori Stuenkel, and all but 12 of the district’s 63 new hires for this year are fully credentialed by the state.
“Our average hire this year had more experience and more training than our average hire last year,” Assistant Superintendent for Human Resources Linda Piceno said. “We already halved our number of teachers who are not (holding) at least a preliminary credential.”
Piceno is confident that all GUSD teachers will be highly qualified within two years.
But there was one red flag in the Teacher Qualification Index report: El Portal, the district’s charter high school. Its staff in 2002-03 was made up completely of teachers the index rates as underqualified.
That’s more than disturbing, it’s frightening, especially in light of the dismal standardized test scores El Portal produces, and the at-risk population it serves.
While it’s true that GUSD administrators don’t run El Portal, or hire its teaching staff, the school board does grant its charter and is responsible for oversight of the troubled high school.
This report is another in a long series of reminders that El Portal needs to be closely supervised not only by its administrators and MACSA, but also by district staff and trustees. The students there – just like students throughout the Gilroy Unified School District – deserve to have the best education possible.
This district has established a lofty goal for itself – to have 90 percent of its students performing at grade level by next June. Ensuring that all GUSD teachers are fully credentialed and have the experience necessary to make them highly qualified is a big step toward making that goal a reality.
