SYRACUSE -- A new report released Wednesday finds the Syracuse City School District should focus on providing incentives and rewards to attract and retain quality teachers.
"There are no processes in place to protect significant numbers of young teachers who may be high performing or to remove ineffective, experienced teachers from the system," the report states.
The findings, published by the non-profit Education Resources Strategies (ERS), detail six recommendations to help the district ensure highly effective teaching, more targeted individual attention for students and strategic use of in-school time.
The report recommends:
1. Restructure the teaching job to attract and retain the highest contributors and support effective teams.
2. Focus more on the quality of instruction than on the number of instructors.
3. Move away from one-size-fits-all class sizes to target individual attention based on student and subject needs.
4. Extend and strategically organize student time.
5. Redesign special education to shift resources to early and ongoing intervention in general education settings.
6. Unbundle the provision of instructional and other services to take advantage of high-quality, lower-cost options.
The report acknowledges this will require the district to work with the union to renegotiate its contract.
"In the long term, the district needs to make additional efforts to identify and reward the high-performing teachers and to ease out those teachers who are consistently ineffective," the report says.
The report also suggests making improvements in the recruiting, selecting and hiring process, removing ineffective teachers and taking a hard look at whether teaching assistants are necessary.
"Research on teaching assistants suggests that their use does not often improve student performance and can, in fact, drain money away from more effective initiatives for improving the quality of instruction," the report says.
There's even discussion about whether to increase class sizes.
The report credits the district for its Say Yes to Education program to help students achieve. The program provides free tuition at Syracuse University and other colleges across the country.
"Nearly every school district in America is facing substantial budgets cuts this year, and nowhere is the challenge more severe than in urban centers," said Douglas Biklen, Dean of Syracuse University's School of Education. "The Syracuse City School District has engaged in a process of self examination and bench marking with comparable districts, with an eye on transformation. This report reconfirms how vital it is that we continue to tackle some of the most difficult structural challenges to improve student performance.
To view the full report, click here.
