Study finds big gap in teachers' salaries: CA education funds unequally distributed Among Poor & Minorities

• Education Trust-West found that 42 of the state's 50 largest school districts spend significantly more on teachers in schools serving the fewest black and Latino students.
• Teacher salaries are significantly higher in California's affluent schools compared to institutions with more low-income students.
  

Schools with more affluent students have more highly paid, experienced teachers than schools across town serving poorer students -- even when the schools are part of the same district, a new study has found.  The finding, released Tuesday by the Education Trust-West, outlines a systemic salary gap within districts from one end of the state to the other. At the core of the gap is a natural tendency for more experienced -- and thus higher paid -- teachers to gravitate to schools with less-challenging student populations and more parent involvement.  The problem is often compounded by rigid union contracts and district budgeting formulas that make it difficult for poorer schools to offer higher salaries and other incentives, according to the report and education experts.  The issue often goes unnoticed because districts generally report teacher salaries as an average, masking the disparities among individual schools, said Russlyn Ali, executive director of the Education Trust-West.  "The lion's share of the education monies looks like it's spent equally to the public even though we are not even close to equality," she said. "It's as if in most districts in California, we have two pots of water -- one ice cold and the other boiling hot -- and we conclude the average water temperature is warm." Of the 50 largest school districts in the state, 40 spend an average of $2,396 a year less per teacher in schools serving mostly low-income students. But the gap is even wider -- $3,014 per teacher -- at schools with large populations of African American and Latino students. Veteran teachers aren't always the best ones, Ali said, but generally speaking, experience does equate with effectiveness in the classroom. [more]

• Download the Report, "California's Hidden Teacher Spending Gap: How State and District Budgeting Practices Shortchange Poor and Minority Students and Their Schools" [here]