Eduwonk Wrong on Teacher Turnover

In one of his blog postings today, Eduwonk badly underestimates the negative effect of teacher turnover in schools across the country.  Eduwonk writes, “in discussions about TFA and novice teachers in general, "churn" is considered an inherently bad thing in education, but is it? In many cases excessive churn surely disadvantages kids. But you do want some churn. People leaving a profession they decide, or someone else decides, they're ill-suited for is not necessarily a bad thing -- on the contrary.”

The comment might have a shred of truth to it, except that it fails to recognize the severity of teacher turnover problems facing urban and rural schools across the country.  Until teacher turnover is reduced to approach acceptable levels of “churn” experienced in other professions, any comment downplaying the significance of the problem does a severe disservice to schools.

According to 2004 NCTAF data, the annual teacher turnover rate is about 15.7 percent nationally versus about 11.9 percent for other professions.  But even this rate of teacher turnover would be much easier to deal with if it was spread out evenly across schools and districts.  In reality, we know that turnover rates in poor schools are about twice as high as rates in wealthier school districts (see data reference in this Alliance for Education Report)  The result is many school districts losing less than 10 percent of their teaching force, with high-poverty districts consistently losing more than 25 percent of teachers every year.  Keep in mind that all the reported data we see on teacher turnover is calculated at the district level and does not even account for teachers moving to schools within their current district.

The cost for this turnover is huge in terms of both financial loss and impact on student learning.  Considering the human resources dollars spent on hiring and placing new teachers, professional development investments made and induction costs incurred, even the most conservative estimates for teacher turnover come out at $4.9 billion dollars per year. 

The costs for student learning are even more troublesome than pure financial losses if we stop to consider the impact of losing one-quarter of the faculty every year.  What does the revolving door of having one-quarter of a teaching force leaving every year do the climate and culture in these high-poverty schools?  Maybe a bit of churn is expected and good for bringing new blood and ideas into a school and maybe it even helps remove some who are “ill-suited for the profession.”  But Eduwonk’s argument only holds water for schools across the country losing between 5 and 10 percent of their teachers annually. Otherwise, he is wrongly glazing over one of the most significant challenges to improving education.

And the second theme of the Eduwonk posting is that TFA is not contributing to this teacher turnover at higher rates than other pathways into teaching.  The argument here has nothing to do with the relative merits of TFA or the impact of program participants on student achievement, another argument for another day.  And it should be recognized that TFA has higher retention rates than many less effective alternative route programs in place across the country.  Sadly, teachers prepared at traditional schools of education are also not staying in the profession at rates needed to stem attrition either.  In North Carolina, more than half of all teachers prepared in the state are no longer in the classroom five years later.  This includes more than 60 percent of all lateral entry teachers that have left the profession within the first five years.  There has been a 250% increase in lateral entry in North Carolina over the past seven years.  And the state currently needs to hire more than 10,000 new teachers every year.  This is not solely because of lateral entry, but it can be credited largely to overall teacher turnover rates within the state (about 13 percent statewide).

Does TFA place talented young individuals in classrooms that might otherwise lack such an educator?  It absolutely does and we should recognize and appreciate it as such.  But does the program in anyway begin to address the chronic turnover problems plaguing low-income schools?  It absolutely does not.  Does it build the notion that teaching is a life-long career pursuit and more than a noble short-term public service effort?  It absolutely does not.  Observers will debate whether the TFA program, or others like it, have ever billed themselves as an answer to these problems.  But Eduwonk should not claim that TFA helps address these problems and solutions are still needed.    

The answers for addressing turnover include significant, comprehensive, and yes, costly investments to improve teacher preparation across the board in both traditional and alternative settings.  Massive improvements must also be made in compensating teachers based on truly accurate, and multiple, measures of how well they teach.  And most importantly, schools must commit to efforts for dramatically improving teacher working conditions.  Governor Easley has led North Carolina in an effort to better understand and respond to the working conditions that force teachers out of the classroom and many other states are now following suit in one of the most important trends for reducing teacher turnover.

Much more remains to be done to retain the teachers we need in the profession for the course of a career.  Yes it is a complex problem as Eduwonk recognizes, but any claim that teacher turnover currently stands at a necessary or acceptable level is simply wrong.

Posted by Scott Emerick