DPS leads other districts in placing teachers

Teachers are placed into schools they didn’t choose – and whose principals didn’t choose them – at a much higher rate in Denver Public Schools than in the state’s other large districts.

An analysis by Education News Colorado of direct-placement rates from the state’s six largest districts shows DPS placed 377 teachers over three years while Douglas County, the district with the next-highest rate, placed 97.

Jefferson County, the state’s largest school district, placed 63 teachers over three years while Adams Five-Star placed 42, Aurora Public Schools placed 22 and the Cherry Creek School District placed seven.

Direct placement, also called forced placement or involuntary transfer, occurs when veteran teachers lose their jobs and their school district must find them new positions.

That’s because Colorado law guarantees a job to any teacher with non-probationary status or more than three years of experience.

DPS Superintendent Tom Boasberg put a spotlight on the issue when he announced limits on direct-placing teachers in the city’s highest-poverty and lowest-performing schools.

Boasberg pointed out the number of direct-placed teachers in DPS has gone down in recent years but said he was not surprised that the district’s numbers are higher than those elsewhere.

Other districts consider years of experience in deciding who stays at a school and who goes, he said, which is no longer the case in Denver.

“We believe strongly that to judge a person solely by seniority doesn’t make sense,” Boasberg said. “It ignores the critical factors of what is the need in that school, what is the fit in that school, what is the teacher’s role on the broader team?”

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Others blame poor DPS management for the disparity in direct-placement numbers.

“It seems to me they have a bias toward new teachers,” said Henry Roman, president of the Denver Classroom Teachers Association, which opposes Boasberg’s announced limits.

“There is a great deal of talk about how potentially, potentially direct-placements could be a problem at a school, how they are potentially something negative,” he said. “But the same could be true about new teachers to DPS, period, because the mentoring programs we have in place really are not good.”

Teachers land on the direct-placement list in most large districts because their school enrollment drops or there’s a change in academic program.

Policies in DPS and other districts prohibit the transfer of teachers who are on remediation for performance concerns.

In Cherry Creek, which had the lowest number of direct-placements, “the expectation is the principal will work with a teacher to help them meet expectations,” said spokeswoman Tustin Amole.

Denver, engaged in a reform plan that includes school closings and other dramatic program changes, likely has more movement between its buildings than many other districts.

But DPS also has a history of allegations that teachers are moved for other reasons.

In 2005, the district settled a lawsuit brought by five North High School staff members who claimed they were abruptly transferred because they voiced concerns about a new principal.

And teachers’ union leaders have long suspected some principals find it easier to move unskilled teachers along than to work with them to improve.

“I don’t think principals will acknowledge that,” Roman said. “I think that happens.”

Once a teacher has been direct-placed, he said, the label carries a stigma – justified or not – that can make it difficult to hold onto a job.

The numbers bear that out. Of the 377 teachers direct-placed in DPS over the past three years, the district had to secure a job for 49 of them at least twice after their own attempts were unsuccessful.

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Five teachers have been direct-placed every year for the past three years.

That handful of teachers is experienced, having taught in DPS an average of 18 years each, according to data supplied to Ed News under the state’s open records law. Their average salary is $67,861.

They include a counselor, a high school English teacher, two middle school science teachers and a former high school social studies teacher who is now an intervention teacher at a K-8 school.

Of the five, only two agreed to be interviewed and Ed News is honoring their request not to use their names.

Both had been teaching at North High School for more than five years when it was picked for redesign because of poor performance, resulting in a new principal with the ability to choose her staff.

Neither was selected and they began to bounce from school to school.

One teacher was placed at a school an hour from her Littleton home and she volunteered to move after a year there that featured three different principals. She was then sent to a middle school that DPS officials then voted to phase out for poor performance.

She’s now at West High School, which carries the district’s lowest school rating of “on probation” and which received three direct-placed teachers this year. She said she hopes to stay.

“It was humiliating,” she said, questioning decisions to place her so far from home and in a middle school when she prefers high school. “If we were a real team … they would want desperately to match us where we’re best suited.”

Her placement at struggling schools is common in Denver.

Of the five teachers direct-placed for three consecutive years, all are now at Title 1 schools – those schools with more than 60 percent poverty rates.

In 2009-10, the Ed News analysis found, 79 percent of the 107 direct-placed teachers were sent to Title 1 schools, which make up about 65 percent of DPS schools.

And 20 percent of direct-placed teachers this year were placed in “red” schools, those listed as “on probation” for failing to meet standards on the district’s School Performance Framework.

Martin Luther King Jr. Early College in far northeast Denver has received the most direct-placed teachers in the past three years – 11 – while nearby Montbello High School has received 10.

Eleven teachers were sent to DPS headquarters at 900 Grant St., where they were assigned to the substitute teacher pool or placed in programs, such as those for gifted and talented students, requiring travel from school to school.

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Boasberg has repeatedly said his desire to limit direct-placed teachers at high-poverty and low-performing schools isn’t about whether they’re “good” or “bad” teachers.

Instead, he said, it’s the idea that “buy-in and passion for the mission of the school are critical” so both teacher and principal should approve the fit.

“Are there instances where the principals need to do better?” Boasberg asked of evaluating teachers. “Yes. But it’s also important to state the system as a system does not work.”

He cited a number of recent reports such as an Ed News analysis that found nearly 100 percent of teachers in the state’s largest districts have received satisfactory evaluations in the past three years.

“It is overly simplistic to say this is the fault of individual principals,” he said. “That would imply that virtually every single principal in the Denver metro area is not doing their job properly and I don’t believe that is the case.”

Other superintendents have asked for help with direct-placed teachers.

In late October, members of the Denver Area School Superintendents Council, sent a letter to state officials requesting changes in state law, including the job guarantee for teachers.

“Districts should have no obligation to force-place those teachers in other schools,” they wrote. “Rather, teachers should be given some fair time period, perhaps up to a full year including one full hiring season, to find a position in another school.”

If a teacher still can’t find a job, they say, “the district should have no further obligation to continue employing that teacher.”

The letter drew an angry response from the Colorado Education Association and, on Monday, CEA spokeswoman Deborah Fallin said the Ed News numbers show direct-placement is a Denver problem.

“It is not a statewide problem, it does not need a statewide solution,” she said. “It needs a Denver solution.”

State Sen. Mike Johnston, D-Denver, has publicly discussed, though not yet filed, a bill that would pay experienced teachers for 18 months while they search for a job. After that time, the pay would end.

“It’s going to really make us hustle so that’s good,” said a DPS teacher who has been direct-placed for three consecutive years. “The downside is there are those of us teachers who don’t interview well.”

He said he didn’t do interviews one year that he was direct-placed because he was busy with school and being his building union representative.  He now wishes he would have tried harder.

He’s feeling more at home at Martin Luther King Jr. Early College and, after 23 years of teaching, he’s working with a coach who last week videotaped him in the classroom.

“I just hope I don’t have to go through it again,” he said of the direct-place rounds.

Nancy Mitchell can be reached at nmitchell@ednewscolorado.org or 303-478-4573.