`HELP WANTED' AT SCHOOLS

Severe shortage of trained math and science teachers strains state
educational resources

Linda Handy's son at Skyline High in Oakland spent almost all of the first
month of school in an algebra class without a math teacher.

``It was one substitute after another, and most had no expertise in math.
The students didn't learn any algebra,'' said Handy, whose 10th-grade son is
in one of the city's best public high schools in the Oakland hills. ``How
are these kids supposed to get into college?''

``The politicians grandstand about how they are going to lower class size
for high school algebra and all this other baloney,'' she said. ``Where are
the teachers?''

That is a question on the minds of school district recruiters across
California as they struggle with a nationwide shortage of math and science
teachers. In Texas, some districts have even started offering bonuses to
hard-to-find instructors in math.

School districts have trouble competing with private industry salaries where
the same math and science skills attract as much as double the salary of a
beginning teacher.

Educators say the lack of trained teachers in math and science threatens to
undermine many of California's education reform attempts. Cities such as
Oakland and San Francisco have passed tougher high school graduation
requirements that include more advanced math and science courses when there
are not enough people to staff the courses. The state also has proposed
smaller high school class sizes in math and science.

``I don't think we can overstate the severity of the problem,'' said
Assemblyman Ted Lempert, D-San Carlos, who recently sponsored successful
legislation designed to increase the state's ranks of math and science
teachers.

One part of the legislation expands the state's student loan forgiveness
program for teachers by increasing the number of awards from 400 to 4,500.
Almost half of those, 2,000, are designated for people who commit to teach
math or science for a specified amount of time.

Other programs, including one in the Lempert legislation, will focus on
teachers already in math classrooms who may be teaching out of their subject
area or without credentials. It provides grants for them to go back to
school to take the courses they need to become certified math teachers.

``The problem is everywhere,'' said Lempert, whose district stretches from
Foster City to Los Altos and includes Silicon Valley. ``It's not just in the
cities.''

For example, the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District in the
heart of Silicon Valley has found the high price of housing in the area
hurts attempts to find teachers, whose salaries are much lower than what can
be earned in industry. Some districts, like Baltimore, have started offering
housing subsidies to new teachers.

``I think we may start seeing that kind of thing in the Bay Area,'' said
Steve Hope, assistant superintendent of personnel and technology for
Mountain View-Los Altos. ``Chemistry and physics teachers are very hard to
come by.''

The shortage means more teachers without adequate training already are in
math and science classrooms. The number of emergency credentials issued in
math and science has increased by more than a third in two years, to about
3,500 teachers.

The math and science crunch comes in the midst of a huge statewide increase
in the number of teachers in the classroom with minimal training as
districts participated in a hiring frenzy in the rush to reduce class size.
About 30,000 teachers, one-tenth of the state's teachers, are on emergency
credentials. But the problem is especially severe in math and science, state
officials said.

The state would need at least 4,000 math teachers for middle school and high
school students if all the teachers already in the classroom met existing
teacher preparation requirements, according to one state estimate.
Meanwhile, the state's increasing student enrollment creates a demand for
another 1,000 math teachers.

``It's alarming,'' said Bethany Brunsman of the California Commission on
Teacher Credentialing, who has studied the dearth. ``There are shortages in
both math and science, but I think math is the worst.''

In science, at least a fifth of the state's science teachers are not
minimally qualified to teach the subject.

The lack of fully trained teachers has had a devastating effect on the
quality of education provided for California's students, who rank near the
bottom in international and national tests that measure math and science
proficiency among older students.

Handy's son said of his algebra class staffed with a succession of
substitutes: ``Nobody was learning anything.''

He transferred to another algebra class at Skyline with a permanent teacher
after his mother lobbied for the move.

``Some of the subs in the first class tried to teach and give homework,'' he
said. ``But no one saw the point of doing it because it never got checked or
graded because there was a different person in the next day.

``It became just a fun period,'' he said.

A substitute in the Oakland schools said a math class at Fremont High last
year never got a permanent teacher.

``It's criminal what is happening to these kids,'' said the substitute
teacher, who was one of a succession sent to the Fremont math classroom.

Once, a student threw a book at the substitute.

``I could not even be mad at the kids,'' the substitute with no math
background said. ``They were angry at the situation.''

One of the challenges of the shortage is that it is not distributed evenly.
Poorer districts and districts with more minority students, which tend to be
California's largest districts in urban areas, are hit much harder,
according to the National Commission on Teaching & America's Future and
other research.

The elimination of affirmative action in college admissions policies in the
state means that these poor and minority students must compete on the same
level as other students. Yet, it is much more likely that they were taught
by math and science teachers without proper training in their fields,
according to the research.

``It's not an even playing field,'' said Jeannie Oakes, a professor at the
University of California at Los Angeles who is considered a national expert
on the issue.

Help in easing the shortage is expected to come from recent legislation that
will radically change how teachers are trained in California. Until now,
California has been one of the few states in the nation to prohibit colleges
and universities from offering an undergraduate degree in education.

That means people who want to be teachers must get a bachelor's degree in a
subject, such as physics. Then they must pay for a fifth year of university
for a credential.

That discourages people with limited finances from going into teaching,
especially math or science majors who can go into high- paying jobs in
high-tech industries after only four years of college.

The new law encourages universities to offer teacher preparation in the
undergraduate years, which could cut the time it takes to get a credential.

Educators say school districts also have to speed the hiring process if they
are going to remain competitive. For example, Oakland often loses qualified
candidates because of its slow-moving bureaucracy.

In contrast, one Bay Area school district, New Haven Unified in Union City,
is garnering national praise for its creative use of technology to hire
qualified teachers, including those in the highly competitive fields of math
and science. Out-of-state candidates are often interviewed through a
videoconference.

``We can recruit worldwide without traveling out of state,'' said Jim
O'Laughlin, associate superintendent for personnel in New Haven, which has
saved thousands of dollars in travel.

One person hired using technology is experienced science teacher Lisa
Bertram, who moved from Seattle and is teaching at Barnard White Middle
School in Union City.

``I first talked to the district on Tuesday morning, and I was hired by
Thursday night,'' said Bertram, who was interviewed by video from a Kinko's
in Washington state.

She already had e-mailed her application to the district. The day after she
took the Union City job, other Bay Area districts were only beginning to
respond to her inquiries, such as mailing her hard-copy application forms.

``But if everybody was doing what we're doing, we'd have a problem finding
enough teachers, too,'' said O'Laughlin. ``There definitely is a shortage.''
CLASSROOM CHRONICLES

Classroom Chronicles is a weekly series exploring the world of education.
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SUPERINTENDENT CANDIDATES TO DEBATE

The two candidates for state Superintendent of Public Instruction, Delaine
Eastin and Gloria Matta Tuchman, will debate each other from 5 to 6 tonight
in San Francisco at the PG&E Auditorium at 77 Beale Street.

Sponsored by the Commonwealth Club, the debate is part of the Voice of the
Voter Project of The Chronicle, KRON-TV and KQED-FM. The contenders for the
state's top elected school job will answer questions from four journalists
and the public.

Eastin, the incumbent, became state Superintendent in 1994 after serving
several years in the state Assembly.

Tuchman, a first-grade teacher from Santa Ana, is co-author of Proposition
227, the ballot measure that outlawed bilingual education.

The debate is open to the public for a fee of $7. It will air live on BayTV
(Channel 35) at 5 p.m., with a replay at 10 p.m, and at noon on Sunday.

1998 San Francisco Chronicle

Checked-by: Don Beck