The city can’t get rid of teachers?

With all the mayor’s talk about firing “ineffective” teachers, it seems there must be a big supply of replacements just waiting in the wings, busily perfecting their lesson plans and brushing up on testing metrics.

One can only hope so. Because 6,000 teachers and support staff left on their own last year, even more than the year before. Resignations of “regulars” — fully certified and licensed teachers and staff with satisfactory work records — increased. Retirements surged to their highest level since 2003-04. And while attrition of new teachers is down from its pre-recession peak, the city still loses close to 40 percent of all the teachers it hires within five years of their start dates.

These are the findings of the UFT’s latest attrition report, an annual review of hiring and terminations. What it shows is despite tabloid hysteria about “bad” teachers, the real challenge is retention. 

Principals, even with heavy pressure from the Department of Education, don’t issue all that many U-ratings. Terminations of probationary teachers and teachers who hadn’t met state licensing requirements went down. So there just aren’t a lot of unqualified teachers clogging the schools. Instead, there’s a distressing exodus of good ones.

Churning of new teachers

In the 2010-11 school year, amid budget cuts, a hiring freeze on most titles, more than 1,000 available teachers in excess and threats of layoffs, the city actually had to hire 3,198 teachers. This school year it has already hired another 3,162 just through December.

Why? Because they leave so fast. More than 9 percent (290) of last year’s rookies have already left. That includes 41 of the 270 science teachers hired during the 2010-11 school year, 29 of the 247 English teachers and 25 of the 221 English as a Second Language teachers [Table 1]

And while some attrition is healthy — teaching isn’t for everyone — the exodus gets worse. Of teachers hired five years ago, more than half the science and ESL teachers are now gone. So are half the English teachers, 45 percent of the math teachers and 35 percent of common branch and special education teachers [Table 2].

Where they go we don’t know. But the city has lost the training time, the expertise these teachers developed and the stability they might have brought to their schools.

Losing pedagogues

It is not just new teachers that leave. For all non-administrative pedagogues — teachers plus guidance counselors, social workers, school psychologists, lab specialists and school secretaries — at all levels of seniority, attrition increased in 2010-11 to 5,924, from 5,362 the year before [Table 3]. (It remained lower than it was a few years back when there were more pedagogues in the system.)

Departing pedagogues have not all been replaced. As of October, there were 5,600 fewer teachers and 950 fewer other pedagogues in the city schools than there were in October 2008, from a total of 89,220 to 82,670.  At the same time, there has been an increase  in enrollment, by about 8,500 students. Classes are larger and pedagogical support staff is stretched thin.

Would merit pay help?

The mayor says merit pay will solve the problems by attracting and keeping good teachers, but the evidence does not support him.

A new report from the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado is the latest to find that teacher pay for performance does not increase teacher retention or boost student test scores. It hasn’t worked in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Colorado or New York City.

No, what matters most to teachers are working conditions. Studies by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania, Susan Moore Johnson at Harvard University and Anthony Bryk at the University of Chicago, and by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards have all shown that working conditions are more important than merit pay in attracting and retaining good teachers, especially at high-needs schools.

According to their research, what  really keeps teachers in school systems like New York City are smaller class sizes; extra prep time for teaching high-needs students; training to help teachers lead change efforts; a principal who helps them improve and embraces teacher leadership; opportunities to adapt curriculum and not having to teach scripted lessons; and the opportunity to work with other teachers who are as skilled and dedicated as themselves. 

The evidence suggests the city has the teaching force it needs. It just needs to start supporting it.