Districts Piece Together Teacher Retention Puzzle

All this recruiting raises a potentially troubling question: Why is so much recruiting necessary in the first place?

Texas’ growing population is partially responsible. Since the year 2000, more than 3 million people have moved to Texas and the influx of newcomers shows no sign of stopping. More people equates to more children to educate, which in turn means districts need more teachers.

But a growing population isn’t the only explanation. The less palatable truth is that teachers leave the profession in large numbers, especially those who’ve taught for less than five years. It’s a problem for school districts everywhere, but Texas’ voracious need for teachers makes attrition an even more pressing issue.

Tracking the cost

The Alliance for Excellent Education released an issue brief in February dealing with teacher retention. What Keeps Good Teachers in the Classroom? Understanding and Reducing Teacher Turnover states that an estimated 12 percent of teachers move from one school to another in pursuit of better working conditions or leave the profession entirely. That doesn’t include teachers who retire.

Make no mistake: the cost of teacher turnover is significant for school districts and individual schools that together bear the expense of recruiting, hiring, and training replacement teachers. The National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) estimates that individual urban schools spend $70,000 a year on costs associated with teacher transfers. Nonurban schools spend an estimated $33,000 each. And the costs certainly don’t stop at the school level. NCTAF estimates that an urban district’s central office pays $8,750 for each teacher that leaves the district. Nonurban districts spend $6,250 per leaver.

There’s also a cost that can’t be calculated: the price that students pay when an effective teacher is lost and replaced with a novice. New teachers typically aren’t as effective as veterans in their first few years of teaching. The situation is even more critical when you consider the fact that low-performing, minority students benefit the most from high-quality teachers and are the most likely to be taught by novices.

“Improving our ability to keep teachers is even more important now than recruiting new ones,” said Cindy Clegg, director of TASB HR Services. “It costs more to lose one than to get one. When you add up all the replacement costs including recruiting, induction, compensation, plus the loss in productive instructional time, the stakes are just too high. Retaining teachers should be a measured improvement goal for more districts.”

Learning why they leave

As baby boomers near retirement age, it’s tempting to assume that retirement plays a major role in teacher turnover. So far that isn’t the case. Retirement accounts for close to a third of the teacher attrition in public schools.

Working conditions are most often the culprit. Teachers move due to job dissatisfaction or to pursue another job. A survey of public school teachers who transferred from one district to another indicated that teachers moved to get better assignments 38.1 percent of the time. Other important reasons to move were dissatisfaction with workplace conditions (32.7 percent) and dissatisfaction with support received from administrators (37.2 percent). Teachers are also more likely to say they plan to leave if their relationships with parents, the principal, and their students are not strong.

Knowing who leaves

In general terms, we know that beginning teachers—those with one to five years’ experience—are the most likely to leave. They often get tough teaching assignments for which they can’t help but be unprepared. To top it off, they may get sporadic support (if any at all) in terms of mentoring. It comes as no surprise that by year five, NCTAF studies show that close to half of new teachers have left the profession.

The issue brief’s findings on which teachers seek other jobs is disconcerting, to say the least. The teachers with the highest academic credentials are the most likely to leave the profession entirely. Teachers with a strong academic background are also highly likely to leave schools where the students don’t perform well academically. In contrast, teachers who scored in the lowest quartile on the General Knowledge portion of their certification exam actually showed increased retention.

If you’re concerned about retaining critical shortage area teachers, your fears are not unfounded. Science, math, and engineering majors are the most likely to leave for jobs outside of education (44.5 percent).

Teachers who have invested in credentials specific to teaching are most likely to stay. For example, women who earned National Board certification are 90 percent less likely to leave the school system and 18 percent less likely to transfer within the district.

Other research has examined teacher turnover in another way. The studies have focused on the degree of change in student performance a particular teacher can create in the year a student spends in the classroom. They indicate that the teachers who are the most successful at increasing their students’ academic performance stay in teaching the longest. These teachers are also not inclined to flee low-performing schools. However, they will move away from schools with the most difficult teaching conditions, typically low-performing schools with the highest concentrations of poverty.

Conversely, the teachers who rank near the bottom in terms of raising their students’ performance have higher turnover than any other group.

Helping teachers grow

NCTAF says the best way to retain teachers is to invest in comprehensive induction programs that combine high-quality mentoring and release time to allow novices and their mentors to work together; targeted, ongoing, professional development; common planning time with other teachers; and time for novices to network with other new teachers outside of school. Districts that invest in comprehensive induction experience as much as 50 percent less teacher turnover.

Induction programs help teach novices effective instructional practices, shortening the time it takes for them to perform at the level of an experienced teacher. Inducted teacher productivity rivals that of their third- and fourth-year peers, according to The New Teacher Center, a national resource center on teacher induction.

In addition to building better teaching skills early on, induction programs help new teachers effectively handle other responsibilities that most of them find stressful: administrative duties, classroom management, testing responsibilities, and relationship building with parents. And new teachers and students aren’t the only ones who benefit. Veteran teachers who serve as mentors or evaluators say their teaching practice gets better when they observe and coach beginners.

Finally, induction programs cost more than typical mentor programs but they help districts save more, too. Researchers at the New Teacher Center say that districts that pay for induction get an estimated $1.66 return for each dollar invested by lowering teacher turnover rates.

Promoting teaching success

The bottom line is simple: when teachers experience success in raising the academic performance of their students, they tend to stay in their jobs. For that reason, the onus is on districts to provide teachers with the kind of support early in their careers that gives them the chance to have success with their students. Comprehensive induction programs provide one means of doing just that.

(Editor’s note: This is the first story in a series about teacher retention issues. In June, HR Exchange will profile how some districts use incentives to retain teachers.)