Novice teachers in the Des Moines district are more likely to teach at schools with high percentages of students from low-income families, a Des Moines Register analysis shows.

    Most research in recent years has shown that students whose teachers have at least three years of experience do better academically than those taught by novices, and that poor students need more help to make up for shortfalls in educational opportunities at home.

    Inexperienced teachers are typically stationed at schools with the neediest students, according to numerous U.S. studies. In Des Moines, most job openings are at schools with the largest percentages of students from low-income families, Superintendent Nancy Sebring said. The percentage of students who qualify for free or reduced-price meals - the indicator school officials use to measure poverty - increased to 64 percent this year, up from 50 percent in 2001. The district has 30,783 students.

    "No matter where you teach, you're going to have the challenge of children living in poverty," Sebring said.

    Nearly one in three teachers at Des Moines schools with the highest percentages of students from low-income families has three or fewer years of experience, the Register analysis shows. At schools with the lowest percentages of students from low-income families, one in six teachers has three or fewer years of experience.

    The exception is the Downtown School, where 40 percent of teachers have less than three years experience and 14 percent of students qualify for the lunch program.

    The Register's analysis, which examined classroom experience for almost 2,800 teachers who work in the district this school year, found:

• The average years of teaching experience at Edmunds Elementary School, where 99 percent of students qualify for the lunch program, was 7.2 years, the lowest of all the district's schools.

• The average years of teaching experience at Jefferson Traditional School, where 11 percent of students qualify for the lunch program - the lowest in the district - was 19.7 years.

    Disparity in teacher experience also occurs at the district's middle schools: About 7 percent of the teachers at Merrill Middle School have three or fewer years of experience, while 36 percent do at Weeks Middle School. Thirty-five percent of Merrill students qualify for the lunch program; the figure is 75 percent at Weeks.

    The experience level was more equal at the district's five high schools and the alternative schools.

    Districtwide, 20 percent of teachers this school year have three or fewer years of experience. Teachers average 13.4 years of total experience at all schools.

    Some teachers don't want to teach at high-poverty schools, some of which face sanctions for failure to meet standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind law, said Alan Young, president of the Des Moines Education Association, the local teachers union. Those schools have strict rules that require more emphasis on teaching reading and math, and make teachers feel constrained in their classroom, he said.

    "It's absolutely a deterrent to want to go to one of those schools if you're not going to be allowed to teach," Young said. "We have a lot of people who want to work in schools like that. Before this push for standardization, we had a very different mix" of experience levels.

    The Education Trust, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit group that works to improve education with an emphasis on poor and minority students, found students in high-poverty schools were twice as likely to be assigned a novice teacher, according to a 2006 report. The study also found that poor and minority students more often are taught by teachers with less education and less skills.

    Sandi Jacobs, vice president for policy for the National Council on Teacher Quality, said rookie teachers can struggle as they learn how to manage their own classroom, master the curriculum and deal with district bureaucracy.

    "An inexperienced teacher is inexperienced in whatever environment she is in," she said. "It's probably magnified in a building with more challenges. We know that poor kids need teachers of even higher quality to make up some of the educational deficiencies they may have."

    New teachers said student teaching, mentors and life experiences help them in the classroom.

    Erica Eganhouse, a first-grade teacher, was hired in 2007 at Howe Elementary School, where 35 percent of the teachers have fewer than three years of experience. She said she wanted to work with a diverse group of students. A student-teaching experience in Denver prepared her for work in Des Moines, and a teacher-mentor helped her through the first-year bumps, Eganhouse said.

    Cheri Reynolds, a new second-grade teacher at Howe, said rookie teachers bring fresh ideas and strategies to the classroom.

    "I really connect with those kids because I understand what they've gone through," she said. "They come from lower economic status, and when I was growing up, we weren't the richest kids that went to school."

    Des Moines parent Robert Forbes said he has seen many new, young teachers at Howe, where his child is a fifth-grader, but has no concerns about their experience level. "They wouldn't be in place if they didn't have the skills they needed to do the job," he said.

    Jack Cavanagh, the principal at Edmunds, said he is upfront with people he interviews for teaching positions that the school has a high percentage of students from low-income families. Some people have turned down job offers.

    "I look at this group of teachers I have here, and even though they don't have the number of years under their belt, they have the desire and the ability to work with these kids," he said.

    District officials in Tennessee considered paying hiring bonuses to teach at high-poverty schools after a 2007 statewide study found public schools with more poor and minority students had inexperienced teachers. Experienced teachers in those schools were likely to transfer.

    The superintendent of the Charleston County, S.C., school district last year ditched the idea of using money to encourage teachers to transfer when such efforts made no difference in student performance at one of the district's middle schools. The administrator instead made an emotional plea to the district's experienced teachers to voluntarily transfer to high-need schools. The district had 100 vacancies at its low-performing schools this year.

    Some methods can backfire. Veteran teachers left high-poverty schools at some districts in Indiana, when administrators tied student performance to teacher pay, according to a study by the Indiana University Center for Evaluation and Education.

    About 6.2 percent of Des Moines' teachers leave each year; that does not include retirees. School officials hire between 200 and 300 teachers each year to fill all vacancies, said Twyla Woods, Des Moines schools' director of human resources.

    District officials, under former Superintendent Eric Witherspoon, had considered assigning teachers to schools to even out experience levels, but the idea has not since been discussed, Woods said.

    Young, with the teachers' union, said the district would have to find a fair way to assign teachers for the union to agree to the idea.