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The salient points:
1. Teachers stay put more than we think. Teachers have relatively low attrition rates and are actually leaving the profession at lower rates than their peers in other professions. So caution the characterization of teachers as a bunch of fickle ship-jumpers. Or at least no more so than the rest of us.
2. When they leave, it's mostly for family reasons or to go into an entirely different field. Not surprisingly, it's the ladies who leave for family and the men who leave for business and engineering, often for pay reasons. See #s 4 & 5.
Of course, given the bang-up job the NCES did on the charter school report last year, I'm not sure I trust them any more than I do the Times, but still.
Any time I see a news article citing scare figures without comparison data -- how many people quit other jobs? -- I figure I probably don't know any more now, having read the story, than I did before.
9 comments:
i say again -- because now
that posting in KTM is back
to its usual overwhelming rate,
i have reason to believe that
the first time might have been
overlooked by most readers --
jd2718 has some valuable remarks
about teacher retention here.
as for the NCES ... of course
they're lying. USDOE ... d'oh!
As far as I'm concerned, we have a HUGE teacher turnover issue in my district, which is baby-boom teachers retiring with no efforts made by the district to retain them.
"Math Dad" just retired from his job & took a job at a Jewish day school nearby.
Our district could have hired him, but we're not paying anyone more than a 5th year teacher's salary.
$22,000 per pupil spending and we're hiring no veteran teachers while giving our veteran teachers no incentive to stay.
The department told Math Dad that he would have to take a pay cut back to a 5th year teacher salary in order to work here.
The districts discussed are doing massive recruiting. But efforts at retention are much more limited.
yup
we are hiring, hiring, hiring
no efforts, no interest, barely any mention of the fact that we're losing talent in droves
the utter off-topicness of conversation here really is extraordinary
I think I'm right in saying that parents universally see the heart of the school as its teachers, and we have NO discussion of teacher quality, teacher pay, teacher experience, or teacher turnover
it's just SmartBoards, fields, bomb threats, and character ed
these are the things we can discuss
although....we're not really supposed to discuss SmartBoards
we're just supposed to pay for them
(sorry - I realize this repeats my complaints on the other thread...)
I just realized....I should add that one of the best teachers C ever had was a novice ---- I'm not opposed to hiring promising new teachers.
I am opposed to hiring ONLY new teachers, doing nothing to retain expert teachers, and establishing this policy without calling it a policy or even acknowledging publicly that it's happening.
So there.
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