out with the old

The old in this case being teachers in their 50s:

My school is a good school. Attracting quality teachers should not be a problem. But, in a system that does not value senior teachers this does not happen. Seniority transfers are no longer available. Administrators want the newbies who take a much lower salary than the experienced teacher and jump to follow all their directives. Experienced teachers in the schools already are being harassed and told to transfer (as if some other school would take them.) Only the young are valued.

When I started teaching there were many experienced teachers around. I needed to learn and they were around to help. Sadly, this is no longer true. Sadly, even the older teachers still around are so overwhelmed with work that there is no time to help the new ones. Soon the only teachers left will be the ones who don't know the material and can't teach. These teachers will embrace the horse shoe seating arrangement and they will embrace group work so my guess is they will be embraced by the administration.

Limitless Inability

This is what we see here, although the high school did recently hire a science teacher with 10 years' experience.

Primarily, though, we hire novice teachers. In math. I know of one instance in which the district refused even to interview a superb, experienced teacher qualified to teach h.s. math and physics. In another case my district told an experienced teacher that if he were to take a job here he would have to take a 5th-year teacher's pay.

He's teaching in a private school now.