Testimony of Randi Weingarten before the City Council Education Committee Oversight Hearing on Teacher Recruitment and Retention February 6, 2008

Feb 6, 2008 12:32 PM

Thank you, Chairman Jackson.

While there is lots of talk about governance and structure of our school system, if we’ve learned anything in the last few years, it’s that instruction trumps structure. When it comes to educating our city’s kids, what matters most is still what happens in the classroom.

So I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk today about the critical issues of teacher recruitment and retention.

For years, as you know, teacher salaries in New York City lagged far behind those of suburban teachers and by far the single most significant impediment to attracting and retaining good teachers was financial.

I am proud that over the past six years the union and the city have arrived at salary scales that now begin to match those of the higher-paying suburbs. Teacher salaries have increased by 43 percent since Mayor Bloomberg took office, and he deserves a great deal of credit for that.

But much more needs to be done to keep teachers in our schools. Look at the numbers. Just under half of new city public school teachers leave within their first seven years on the job. More than 45 percent leave in their first five years, and an astonishing one in three leave in their first three years.

Overall, the figures for all teachers leaving the school system are grim. From the 2002-2003 school year -- the year city schools were put under a city agency -- until the 2005-2006 school year, the number of regular teachers quitting… not retiring or fired or deceased, but quitting… shot up from 2,574 to 4,303. Our most recent figures show a slight dip for the 2006-2007 school year, to 4,220 in the number voluntarily leaving. But even that small difference—83 fewer teachers leaving last year than the previous year—may be a statistical anomaly. Nothing the DOE has done could indicate a permanent decrease in the quit rate.

Why are they leaving? After all, teachers enter the system with plenty of enthusiasm. While I won’t minimize the continued need to aggressively recruit the best and the brightest to our schools, it’s this retention issue that’s the crippler. Turning off so many excellent, motivated educators, whom University of Pennsylvania sociologist Richard Ingersoll says “have an unusual degree of public service orientation and commitment and a relatively high ‘giving-to-getting’ ratio, compared to those in other fields” is quite a trick.

But it’s exactly what happens when teachers don’t feel they get the support they need to help kids learn.

Want to retain excellent, dedicated, inspired teachers? Offer them small classes, safe schools, decent facilities, adequate and appropriate instructional material and supplies, and a solid and meaningful mentoring program.

And good teachers need administrators who encourage their efforts and committed to working collaboratively with them.

The school system needs to give teachers the professional latitude and conditions to work their magic in order for students to achieve, because… day in and day out…the key to school improvement lies in the interchange between teachers and students. As a report from the College Board noted, “The most successful school innovations rest on the time, talent and skill of teachers. These are the people who make everything else possible.”

Unfortunately, it is still difficult for teachers to find a work environment that treats them as professionals with unique expertise that can help children learn and achieve. Teachers need a voice in school-based decisions. Many principals recognize this. Unfortunately, too many do not.

Indeed, more than a third of the nearly 32,000 educators who responded last year to the Department of Education’s extensive Learning Environment Survey said that their principals do not encourage open and honest communication of important school issues.

And with principals having more authority than even before under the latest DOE re-organization, Tweed should do all it can to make sure principals appreciate the need for teachers to have a greater voice in deciding how schools are run.

First and foremost, this is about student achievement – which I deeply believe creates teacher job satisfaction.

Findings from recent studies show the connection between collaboration in schools and student achievement, especially during large-scale change. The most successful reforms occur where teachers share in curriculum re-design and plans to improve instruction and in “high consensus” schools where teachers share views and values and have a sense of shared community.

Why else are teachers leaving? Let me be blunt. The present system of excessive testing and teaching to the test doesn’t work. It’s oppressive to teachers and harmful to children.

Let’s be clear. Teachers have always measured student progress; they are NOT anti-test. But they ARE against a system where all they do is prepare for testing and where all they teach is how to do well on the English and math standardized tests. Rep. Anthony Weiner told our Executive Board just Monday evening that his mother, a veteran teacher, said she left in large part because the focus on testing had “taken all the creativity out of teaching.”

As Senator Clinton so well characterized it to the UFT Delegate Assembly last month, they hate a system that “treats children like little test takers and teachers like they’re test givers.”

What else drives teachers away?

It’s the uneven implementation of school safety and disciplinary codes, which undermines not just their ability to teach but their credibility as classroom leaders.

It’s crowded school hallways and cafeterias.

It’s fear of retribution for reporting an abuse or problem at school.

It’s—and this needs repeating— the spectre of budget cuts, just a year after winning the 14-year CFE fight. Now, every good thing promised, from small class sizes to adequate resources, is threatened by city and state budget cuts.

The dismantling of the citywide mentoring program hasn’t helped, either. Currently, principals are supposed to create their own mentoring plan. Too few have true plans, with many using coaches or no mentoring at all. New teachers are left to flounder on their own, which clearly undermines a new teacher’s staying power.

Even professional advancement is foreclosed. Under the current system, people who come in committed to teaching and career advancement have only administration as a goal to which to aspire. The UFT has long advocated a career continuum that would entail not just support at the beginning of one’s career to retain "the best and the brightest," but a position of instructional leadership in the future to retain excellent veteran educators.

In this context, the chancellor’s cutting funds for lead teachers by charging schools directly rather than creating a dedicated funding stream harms the chancellor’s own expressed wishes to keep experienced teacher from leaving the profession or transferring to another school system. Instead of cutting funds, the chancellor should be advocating precisely that extensive career ladder program, where educators from the start of their careers to the end have an opportunity to get support, experience, higher titles, greater responsibilities and commensurate raises.

The union is also concerned with—and is doing something about—teachers who are floundering. The answer can’t just be discipline, harassment and rubber rooms, where teachers vegetate until charges and grievances are resolved. Something more proactive is required. Working with the DOE, we’ve established programs such as the Peer Intervention Program and Peer Intervention Program Plus, which work with teachers facing U-ratings or 3020-a charges to help them become the professionals that children need in the classroom, or to help them leave the profession. It surely beats languishing in a rubber room.

There is also, as I noted earlier, that overarching lack of respect and voice. That extends even to trivializing of the school leadership team’s job.

All this contributes to the exhaustion and disillusionment, driving teachers away.

As a union, we’ve stepped up, with workshops for new teachers… by fostering professional development through our Teachers Center… with peer mentoring… and helping to create a true sense of collaboration between senior teachers and new teachers in order to cut down on the isolation many new teachers feel.

We’ve developed a strong and proactive union safety department.

But we need an administration equally committed to all of these goals.

The problem isn’t as much the class size agreement or the discipline standards; it’s the city inability or refusal to implement them at the school level. That’s the point about respect and voice. That’s why the City Council passed a whistleblower protection bill—one that protects dedicated staff who speak out about abuses in their schools

We know it’s counterproductive to hire thousands of well-qualified people every year, invest millions of dollars in incentives, orientation and what professional development is offered — only to see one of every four leave within a year and more than one of every three by the end of the third year. Worse, it’s bad for kids. Teachers don’t expect lavish offices and perks. They do what they do to make a difference in the lives of children. But they do expect to have the working conditions, autonomy and latitude of professionals.

Noted author, scholar and Columbia University educator Jacques Barzun put it well: “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.” As our national union, the American Federation of Teachers said many years ago: Teachers need the Three R’s, too. Our three “Rs” are retention, respect and resources. That’s the way to keep engaged, committed and accountable teachers in the classroom.

Thank you.