With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers

This from the New York Times: Photo by Bruce R. Feeley:

GREENSBORO, N.C. — The retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by the stress of working in low-performing schools is fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing school districts substantial amounts of money as they scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.

Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say the challenge of putting a qualified teacher in every classroom is heightened in subjects like math and science and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools, where the turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in such schools have opened with substitute teachers in recent years.

Here in Guilford County, N.C., turnover had become so severe in some high-poverty schools that principals were hiring new teachers for nearly every class, every term. To staff its neediest schools before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters have been advertising nationwide, organizing teacher fairs and offering one of the nation’s largest recruitment bonuses, $10,000 to instructors who sign up to teach Algebra I.

“We had schools where we didn’t have a single certified math teacher,” said Terry Grier, the schools superintendent. “We needed an incentive, because we couldn’t convince teachers to go to these schools without one.”

Guilford County, which has 116 schools, is far from the only district to take this route as school systems compete to fill their ranks. Kate Walsh, president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a nonprofit policy group that seeks to encourage better teaching, said hundreds of districts were offering recruitment incentives this summer.

Officials in New York, which has the nation’s largest school system, said they had recruited about 5,000 new teachers by mid-August, attracting those certified in math, science and special education with a housing incentive that can include $5,000 for a down payment.

New York also offers subsidies through its teaching fellows program, which recruits midcareer professionals from fields like health care, law and finance. The money helps defer the cost of study for a master’s degree. The city expects to hire at least 1,300 additional teachers before school begins on Sept. 4, said Vicki Bernstein, director of teacher recruitment.

Los Angeles has offered teachers signing with low-performing schools a $5,000 bonus. The district, the second-largest in the country, had hired only about 500 of the 2,500 teachers it needed by Aug. 15 but hoped to begin classes fully staffed, said Deborah Ignagni, chief of teacher recruitment.

In Kansas, Alexa Posny, the state’s education commissioner, said the schools had been working to fill “the largest number of vacancies” the state had ever faced. This is partly because of baby boomer retirements and partly because districts in Texas and elsewhere were offering recruitment bonuses and housing allowances, luring Kansas teachers away.

“This is an acute problem that is becoming a crisis,” Ms. Posny said.

In June, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, a nonprofit group that seeks to increase the retention of quality teachers, estimated from a survey of several districts that teacher turnover was costing the nation’s districts some $7 billion annually for recruiting, hiring and training.

Demographers agree that education is one of the fields hardest hit by the departure of hundreds of thousands of baby boomers from the work force, particularly because a slowdown in hiring in the 1980s and 1990s raised the average age of the teaching profession. Still, they debate how serious the attrition will turn out to be....

This from the New York Times.

Teachers Tell Researchers They Like Their Jobs

Ninety-three percent of teachers reported satisfaction with their jobs 10 years after entering the field, according to a new survey that also found attrition rates for teachers were actually lower than for other professionals.

The report, released this week by the National Center for Education Statistics, surveyed 9,000 graduates who received their bachelor’s degrees in various disciplines in the 1992-93 school year. Nearly 20 percent of those graduates entered the teaching profession.

The findings from the survey debunk several long-held views on teacher pay, turnover, and job satisfaction. For instance, it found that only 18 percent of those who entered teaching changed occupations within four years of getting a degree. Given that other professions experienced attrition rates between 17 percent and 75 percent during that period, the number of career-switchers from teaching was on the low end of the scale, according to the data. More than half those who became teachers were still teaching 10 years later.

Teacher advocates and unions have long claimed that turnover among new teachers ranges from 30 percent to 50 percent within the first five years.

“The take for a long time was that there is this incredibly high attrition among teachers from schools,” said Mark Schneider, the commissioner of NCES, an arm of the U.S. Department of Education. The report, he said, shows that teacher-turnover rates are actually lower than those in other professions.

“I understand why schools and school districts are upset about losing teachers, but it is part of the normal sorting process” in a dynamic job market, Mr. Schneider added.

The survey also stands on their head some commonly held beliefs about teacher salaries. Teachers’ unions have often cited low pay as a major reason for teacher dissatisfaction. But only 13 percent of those who left teaching by 2003 gave it as the reason for leaving. Forty-eight percent of those who remained in the profession said they were satisfied with their salaries.
Kate Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, a research and advocacy group in Washington, called the findings “explosive.”

“What was surprising is how cheery the [teachers’] responses were,” she said. Education groups, including the unions, she contended, often cite teachers’ unhappiness in order to pressure districts and states for concessions.

Spokesmen for the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers said they were unable to comment on the report before the story was posted.

Racial Differences

The report’s findings are based on the NCES’ survey of baccalaureate-degree recipients conducted between 1993 and 2003. Participants answered questions via phone and the Internet and during in-person interviews. The report was prepared by MPR Associates in Berkeley, Calif.

Of those surveyed who were still teaching 10 years after earning their degrees, 90 percent said they would choose the same career again, and 67 percent said they would remain in teaching for the rest of their working lives.

The rate among African-American teachers, however, was significantly lower, with 37 percent saying they would choose to remain in the profession, compared with 70 percent of white teachers.

Nearly 20 percent of black teachers said they would leave if something better came along, compared with fewer than 10 percent of white teachers.

Ms. Walsh said the higher rates of dissatisfaction among black teachers could be due to the fact that more black teachers teach in high-poverty schools.

The study reaffirmed that attrition rates were higher among male teachers. While women (29 percent) were more likely to leave for family-related reasons, men (32 percent) usually left for a job outside the field of education.

A candidate’s age when he or she attended college also appeared to play a role in attrition rates: Those 30 or older when they obtained their degrees were more likely than younger graduates to remain in teaching...

This from Education Week (subscription).

From Coast to Coast: Teachers dropping out

A study blames working conditions.

As a mid-career professional with a doctorate in chemistry, Maurice Stephenson appeared made to order for the Los Angeles Unified School District, especially because he was eager to teach at a high-poverty campus in a system woefully short of qualified science teachers.

But the honeymoon ended abruptly after less than two years. Fed up with student insolence and administrative impotence, he stalked out of Manual Arts High School on March 12 and never went back.

Few teachers quit so dramatically, but leave they do. In California, teachers are departing the profession in alarming numbers — 22% in four years or fewer — but simply offering them more money won't solve the problem, according to a report released Thursday.

The real issue is working conditions, which are the flip side of a student's learning conditions, said Ken Futernick, who directs K-12 studies at the Center for Teacher Quality at Cal State Sacramento.

The central findings were:

81% of teachers who participated in our survey said they entered the profession because they wanted to make a difference for children and society. This overwhelming number indicates that teachers want above all to be effective teachers.

Many teachers leave schools long before retirement because of inadequate system supports such as too little time for planning, too few textbooks, and unreliable assistance from the district office.

Bureaucratic impediments (e.g., excessive paperwork, too many unnecessary meetings) were cited frequently by leavers. The data also showed that teachers were not asking to be left alone but instead wanted efficient and responsive bureaucracy that supported their teaching.

Better compensation matters to teachers, but unless their classroom and school environment is conducive to good teaching, better compensation is not likely to improve teacher retention rates.

Teachers willingly stay because of strong collegial supports and because they have an important say in the operation of the school; they also seek strong input in what and how they are allowed to teach.

Special education teachers are most likely to leave special education because of inadequate system supports as well as an all-too-often hostile teaching environment created by parents and student advocates. In addition, they leave because of too little time for the complex and constantly changing IEPs (Individualized Education Programs) they are required to write.
Many leave because of dysfunctional professional relationships with their colleagues in general education.

Many teachers (28%) who have left teaching before retirement would come back if improvements were made to teaching and learning conditions. Monetary incentives alone would be less effective in luring them back.

And from Teacher Magazine:

Why Teachers Quit
By Kimberly Palmer
Palmer, K. (2007 May/June). Why teachers quit. Teacher Magazine, pp. 45

It wasn’t her teenage students who drove Meghan Sharp out of teaching—it was the crippling inflexibility of her administrators.

All the innovative curriculum ideas and field trips she proposed to engage her 10th grade biology students were promptly shot down, and she left the profession after just two years.

“I still enjoyed teaching, but it was a constant battle with the administration,” says Sharp, who worked in an urban district in northern New Jersey.

According to a recent report on teacher attrition by the federal National Center for Education Statistics, her predicament—and her departure—are common in the profession. Among former teachers who took noneducation jobs, 64 percent said they have more professional autonomy now than when they taught. Only 11 percent said they’d had more influence over policies at school than in their current jobs.

The survey, based on interviews with more than 7,000 current and former teachers, also found widespread problems with workloads and general working conditions, and it notes that the percentage of teachers abandoning the classroom continues to grow. Among public school teachers, that proportion reached 8 percent in the 2004-05 school year—up from 6 percent in 1988-89.

The problem, experts say, is that teaching has gotten harder.

“As states have increased their reform orientation and their standards and accountability, a good chunk of that falls on the shoulders of teachers,” says Margaret Plecki, an associate professor in educational leadership and policy studies at the University of Washington in Seattle. Those changes, she notes, add up to increased pressure to perform.

In such a climate, teaching may not feel as rewarding, says Barry Farber, professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College. “My sense is that these numbers reflect the fact that many teachers are still struggling to feel consequential—to feel that their efforts are making a difference.”

The NCES study also showed that less-experienced teachers were particularly at risk of fleeing: 20 percent of public school teachers with no prior full-time teaching experience left during 2004-05—more than double the overall rate.

65% Proportion of former public school teachers who say they're better able to balance work and life now that they're working outside the education field.

SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education; National Center for Education Statistics Teacher Follow-up Survey.