Teacher Attrition – A Cause for Concern

Teacher Attrition – A Cause for Concern

 

I received an email from a young woman who I taught in a teacher preparation program and who is now in her first year of teaching. She said she felt like she was being sucked out in an undertow. She had been placed in a first-grade classroom with 21 children who she says she loves and are wonderful. However, she is having so much trouble keeping up with the pacing guide. She feels like she is rushing through every topic and it’s unfair to the children. The administrators are on the teachers constantly. Many parents are skeptical about her because she is new and so young. She puts in long hours of preparation and teaching and feels like she is failing. She finished her email indicating that she just needed guidance and a direction to go in to organize her thoughts and herself as an educator. Several months later I received another email from her. Due to teacher allocations, she had been transferred to a different building. She had to pack up all her things and start over. She concluded her email saying that she feels trapped and wants to get out of the district. I can’t help but wonder if her next move will be to leave the teaching profession all together. Unfortunately, stories like this young woman’s are not uncommon.

Teacher Attrition is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. In August of 2017, The Learning Policy Institute published a report titled Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It. i I briefly summarize the major points of this report in order to begin a conversation in our blog.

It is important to understand why teachers leave their schools and how often they do so. In their 2017 report, Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond indicate that about one-third of today’s teachers will retire in the next five years. Among those two-thirds not of retirement age, a general dissatisfaction with the working conditions of their job is the most common reason for leaving the profession. Among those surveyed, teachers attribute a high percentage of their dissatisfaction with testing and accountability pressures. Teachers also cited the lack of supportive leadership, collaboration, technology resources, career advancement opportunities and sporadic professional development as key factors in their decisions to leave. Financial reasons also contribute to a teacher’s decision to take another kind of job or retire.

In their report, Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond specify the key variables that drive turnover are the kind of teacher preparation that a person has received and the level of administrative support a teacher receives while on the job. To reverse these high teacher attrition rates, they recommend improving several key areas such as compensation, teacher preparation and support and school leadership. Their recommendations in the report are not generic and take in to account a wide variety of contexts.

In the article, Taking on Teacher Attrition, Hilary Scharton offers similar recommendations as she responds to the question “What can we do to improve retention and make sure every classroom has an effective, highly-qualified teacher?” She indicates four ways districts are addressing top teacher concerns. These are:

  1. Address compensation including salary and other options that are not monetarily based.
  2. Build strong school leadership.
  3. Start a teacher-mentorship program.
  4. Improve professional development.

What was it like to adjust to your first experience as a classroom teacher? What helped you to make the adjustment?
As a preservice teacher, what are your concerns about entering the profession as a classroom teacher?
As a school administrator, what was it like to adjust to your first experience in supervising teachers? What helped you to make that adjustment?
As a school administrator or an experienced teacher, what types of support do you offer new teachers? What have been the results of your efforts?
Thoughts, ideas, comments?