General News

UFT: Teacher retention ‘the real crippler’

by Michael Hirsch

Feb 28, 2008 2:37 PM

“Exhaustion, disillusionment and lack of support and safety in schools, and a lack of affordable housing are the big reasons why teachers quit,” UFT President Randi Weingarten told a City Council panel in early February, explaining why quit rates are so high and recruitment often difficult in New York City public schools.

While the 43 percent increase in salaries since 2002 that the UFT negotiated is a considerable recruitment and retention tool, many teachers who enthusiastically enter the school system leave discouraged, Weingarten said. She called retention “the real crippler.”

Testifying at a Feb. 6 hearing of the Education Committee, Weingarten noted that just under half of city public school teachers leave within their first seven years, more than 45 percent leave in their first five years, and “an astonishing one in three leave in their first three years.”

She said the number of teachers voluntarily quitting (as opposed to retiring or in the dismissal process) shot up from 2,574 in the 2002-03 school year to 4,220 in the 2006-07 school year.

They quit because they “don’t feel they get the support they need to help kids learn,” Weingarten said. “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. Many principals recognize this. Unfortunately, too many do not.”

To retain more teachers, Weingarten said, the system needs to provide small classes, safe schools, decent facilities, adequate and appropriate instructional material and supplies, and “a solid and meaningful” mentoring program.

She also noted that “we need to do much more about housing and child care.”

But for school-related factors, she said, among the most important considerations is a school atmosphere that is cooperative and collaborative. That includes administrators who encourage the efforts of the new teachers and who give staff members a voice in school-based decisions.

She added bluntly that “the present system of excessive testing and teaching to the test doesn’t work. It’s oppressive to teachers and harmful to children.”

Other reasons for the teacher exodus, she told the Council, include:

• unevenly implemented school safety and disciplinary codes;
• dangerously overcrowded school hallways and cafeterias;
• fear of retribution for reporting abuses or school problems;
• the DOE’s dismantlement of the citywide mentoring program and its failure to ensure principals develop their own, thereby leaving new teachers to flounder; and
• career ladders going nowhere except into administration.

“Teachers never expect lavish offices and perks,” Weingarten said. “They do what they do to make a difference in the lives of children. But they need the working conditions, autonomy and latitude of professionals.”

Weingarten’s testimony followed Education Committee Chairman Robert Jackson and Queens Councilman John Liu’s sharp rebuke of Department of Education representatives for offering retention data and quit numbers that were at variance with the state’s authoritative figures.

After neither Lawrence Becker, the department CEO, nor Vicki Bernstein, its executive director for teacher quality, could explain why the DOE’s teacher retention figures were not in line with State Education Department numbers, the councilmen slammed the two for coming to the hearing unprepared.

That brought a stiff rebuke from Deputy Chancellor Chris Cerf, who rushed from his office to explain that the state’s figures also included private and parochial schools, while the city’s do not. Cerf also said, “I object to my staff being interrogated on data they do not have.”

That got a quick reply from Jackson: “[Then] you shouldn’t send people here unprepared. Something is wrong here and it’s not the oversight of the Council … The people of New York City just want to know where we stand compared to everyone else [in the state]. That’s not asking too much.”

The complete text of Weingarten’s testimony is available on the UFT’s Web site, www.uft.org, under News and Issues.