Testimony of Randi Weingarten, President of the United Federation of Teachers before the City Council Commission on the Implementation of the CFE

Nov 18, 2004 3:52 PM

Recruitment and RetentionAlthough your topic today is recruitment and retention, my testimony will focus on retention, the more serious and more complex problem. The recruitment problem has been less of an issue in the last two years because the 2002 contract raised the entry salaries by about 20 percent. As a result we have had a sufficient pool of qualified candidates for most positions.However, I must raise a red flag here. That last contract narrowed the gap between city and suburban salaries, at least at the entry level, as those salaries were in the 2001-2 school year. It’s now two and a half years later. Suburban salaries are not standing still. At most points on the salary schedule our teachers are still $10,000 to $15,000 behind. By all economic principles, our teachers should be paid more, not less, than suburban teachers to compensate for the larger classes and more difficult conditions. A study of teacher turnover by Eric Hanushek, no friend of teachers’ unions, found that the average urban teacher would need to be paid 25 percent more to stay on the job. If the city doesn’t act soon, next September will see a reprise of the same teacher shortages we’ve had in the past.But retention, as opposed to recruitment, is harder to get your arms around. Still, we must. It is clear that a teacher workforce that constantly churns and has mostly inexperienced new teachers, no matter how smart and dedicated, is not going to be a high quality work force that gets high quality results with kids. If we don’t pay attention to the retention problem we are experiencing and the turnover we have, that’s what will happen here.I have distributed our latest analysis of attrition and retention data, and, as you can see, 52 percent of recruits leave within their first six years. Those are the years they are growing as teachers and the years the city invests the most in them — only to see half its investment fly out the window just as the teachers are hitting their peak years of effectiveness. As our earlier generations retire, the average experience level of our teaching force is declining. Last year, 34,000 teachers (43%) had zero to five years experience.We can’t do much about retirements, but we can do something about other kinds of attrition. Three out of five certified teachers who left last year simply resigned. (The other two were terminated, retired, died or became disabled.) That means that three out of five who left could have been retained if they’d been treated better financially and professionally, if they had better conditions and more support.Here’s what I’ve learned from my 20 years of visiting schools and talking to UFT members: Experienced teachers want to have a voice in their professional lives; they want to be treated and valued as professionals; and they want to spend their time doing the professional, caring work they were trained to do.Let me read you an e-mail I received recently from an elementary school teacher in Queens, probably in her second or third year.'I was so excited last year to get my own classroom… [But] I didn’t feel like a teacher, but more like a robot programmed with what to teach and how to teach it. [This year] things have gotten worse. … I feel I can’t possibly stay if things don’t change. I’m working from 6:30 am until 10 pm, and still I can’t keep up with all the new standards that have to be implemented and displayed in the classroom. It’s November and I’m still not done hanging up things that are required. I even came in over the summer to get a head start. Of course, my classroom is overcrowded with students and I’m still required to have defined centers that take up half the space. I also forgot to mention the mice and cockroaches that are all over the place… The city has taken the joy out of teaching.'

Hers is not an isolated story. Anecdotes about the things that drive teachers away come my way every day. Mostly, they either have to do with the lack of resources (supplies, appropriate materials, facilities) or they focus on the unprofessional and counterproductive ways teachers are treated: micro-management, excessive paperwork, constant testing and irrelevant professional development that borders on pure busy work.In many middle schools teachers are not allowed to teach novels. High school teachers, even those without regular classrooms, must have “Word Walls.” One teacher reportedly wears his on a bill-board hung from his neck as he travels from classroom to classroom around the school. The micro-management has become so intrusive that we had to ask in bargaining for teachers to have the discretion to determine the arrangement of their classroom furniture.And the paperwork! Between the principal, the region and the needs of parents, elementary school teachers are often ordered to hand write and make three copies, again by hand, of individual portfolios or binders for every student, describing every accomplishment, every shortcoming, every incident and every test score of every student. This is lunacy!DOE - required assessments, such as E-CLAS, are endless, and often must be done one-on-one, with no coverage teacher to move the rest of the class along. In response to reports that administering these assessments severely interrupted teaching and learning, the department, instead of spending the money to do them the right way, gave the teachers an extra month to complete them. But that only undermines their purpose, which is an initial diagnosis of the child’s learning needs to guide his or her instruction. By the time they assessments are done, half the year has gone by, and it’s almost time for the end-term assessment.We know many of these requirements are well intended. But they demonstrate no sense of what it’s like to be in the classroom, no faith that the teacher may know what’s best for his or her students, and no understanding of the impact of all the new requirements on teacher time and morale. (For example, ending social promotion meant hundreds more hours of paperwork for teachers without any help, support or time.) Ironically, between the assessments, the paperwork, the classroom set-ups and the professional development, there is little time left for teaching, and that shortchanges kids!Let me tell you about the professional development. Even though we negotiated an additional 100 minutes twice a month for that purpose, teachers are constantly getting pulled from class for professional development, again depriving children of learning time. One of the biggest providers, Teachers College, will not use the after-school time. Instead teachers must leave their classes and travel to Columbia at their own expense during school time. In some schools 8 to 12 teachers can be gone on the same day, their classes broken up and distributed around the school, disrupting other classes. Is this any way to put children first?A survey by Councilman Gioia earlier this year showed an alarming potential brain drain from our schools, with 26 percent of mid-career teachers and 29 percent of newer teachers saying it was unlikely they would be teaching in New York City in three years.What would keep them here? Aside from better salaries and benefits, teachers said they’d consider staying if there were better safety and discipline, smaller classes and more classroom resources. Not so much to ask, is it, to keep our schools from being revolving doors for staff and to make sure our children have experienced, highly-qualified instructors?There are different strategies for keeping mid-career teachers than for attracting new teachers. Providing opportunities, incentives and differentiated compensation for teachers to grow professionally, to assume additional responsibilities, to become lead teachers helping others or to take on tougher assignments in hard-to-staff schools are among the ways to do that. We have put such career ladder proposals before the department, we even negotiated one in District 9 along with parents, and we hope to see more like it once it’s been tested and fine-tuned.What it comes down to is treating teachers like the professionals they are. Low pay compared to other recognized professions, scripted teaching with no room for professional latitude, and 60-page “Gotcha!” manuals like the one the department distributed to principals as a how-to on firing teachers — those things send the message loud and clear that we do not trust you and we do not value what you do. No one wants to stick with a career that makes them feel like that.Let me give you one final example. In a school I visited recently, an early childhood teacher told me that every teacher on a grade must be teaching the same lesson at the same time, and the supervisor often “dropped in” to make sure they were all literally on the same page. One day early last winter, a few snowflakes began to drift by the window. Alerted by the children’s distracted gazes, her instinct was to seize that teachable moment, take a short detour from the planned lesson, and spend a couple of minutes on how snowflakes are formed. But she stopped herself just in time. What if she were caught taking such a radical departure? She said she resisted the temptation, and then she was angry with herself all day for being such a coward!It’s hard enough to teach in our schools today. It takes resourcefulness and skill and commitment, even a little bit of magic. But does it have to take courage too?Let’s show enough respect for our experienced teachers, our capable teachers, so they can feel free when the moment is right to inspire their students with the thrill of learning. That is what good teachers thrive on.
(Handout)
TEACHER ATTRITION AND EXPERIENCE, 2004Oct/Nov HRS data show these trends in the 2003-4 school year::Teachers with 1-6 Years Experience* The outflow of teachers with four to six years experience continues unabated. More than half (52%) of city teachers leave the system by the end of their sixth year here.
* Teacher attrition rates for teachers with four and five years in the system have not improved: about 45-46% of teachers do not return after their fifth year. Our schools are doing no better now than in previous years at retaining these more experienced teachers, who have greater ability to move to the suburbs.
* Attrition of first and second year teachers slowed somewhat. Only 13% of last year’s hires did not return this fall. That compares to 18% of first-year teachers last year and 22% the year before that. Second year cumulative attrition declined from a high of 36% last year to 27% this year.
* This can be attributed to several factors: far fewer new uncertified teachers, whose attrition rate was always the highest; better starting salaries; the continuing recession; almost 2500 new Teaching Fellows, who make a two-year commitment; and the union’s New Teacher Support Program.
* 40% of new teachers are gone by the completion of the third year, a slightly lower rate than the 43% in ’03. However, their attrition rates are still much higher than the national three-year average of 33%.All Teachers* About 4,000 teachers resigned in 03/04 including a record 3,631 certified regular teachers, about 1,000 more than the year before. More than half were newer teachers (1-3 yrs), but almost a quarter had six or more years experience.
* Despite their smaller numbers, larger proportions of those eligible are retiring. In the 2000 school year, when more than 19,000 TRS members were eligible to retire, only about 2,500 (13%) actually did so. In 03/04, with 15,600 eligible, 5,500 (36%) retired.
* However, overall attrition is declining as the numbers of eligible retirees and uncertified subs shrink. 7,500 pedagogues left in 03/04, down from 9-10,000 in recent years.Changing Experience Mix* Teachers with 0-5 years experience (34,250) are the largest cohort of members, 43 percent of last year’s total, slightly down from the previous two years. (Salary step is used to define experience, not time in the NYC school system.)
* The largest increase is in teachers with 6-9 years experience, climbing from 10,600 (13%) of the teaching force in November 2000 to 15,700 (20%) now.
* The number of teachers with 20 or more years has declined precipitously from 17,000 (21%) of the teaching force in November 2000 to 11,000 (14%) now.
* As a result, the overall experience level of the teaching force has declined. Today, about 50,000 (63%) have less than 10 years experience; in 2000 that number was 43,600 (55%).If early attrition, retirements, and new hiring are all decreasing, the challenge now is retention of people already in the system.