It's Hard To Stick Around

The nation has a teacher retention crisis and the data prove it. One way out: a real voice on the job.

Photo: Pam Benham

Twin Falls (Idaho) kindergarten teacher Debbie Soran has always loved her job. But when school's out in May, this 16-year veteran is leaving Sawtooth Elementary School—and teaching—for good, without the promise of a retirement check. Soran says she's simply lost both "joy" and her professional voice in teaching.

Unfortunately, Soran will join hundreds of thousands of teachers who University of Pennsylvania professor Richard Ingersoll says are increasingly saying good-bye to teaching—not because of the low pay that sends so many others packing, but because they believe nobody's listening to them.

Ingersoll, an associate professor of education and sociology and author of Who Controls Teachers' Work?: Power and Accountability in America's Schools, says  "lack of faculty influence" over issues such as curriculum and discipline ranks high among factors driving ever more teachers to quit the profession before retirement age.

Soran had never been outspoken, she says. But in January, she experienced a double shock. After being run through a rapid succession of reading and report card tests, Soran's five-year-olds were hit with another reading test that Soran thought was "redundant."

The teacher told administrators that she had enough data, thank you, and wanted to teach, not be replaced by a substitute while she administered 20-minute tests, morning and afternoon, to 45 kids.

Soran's refusal earned her a two-week suspension and the threat of a termination hearing. But thanks to overwhelming parent support—they "hound-ed" the school board, Soran says—and support from the Idaho Education Association, she returned to the classroom.

But then Soran encountered Open Court, a scripted reading curriculum Twin Falls requires teachers to use—and one of many increasingly required by districts across the country to meet the demands of  the so-called No Child Left Behind law (NCLB).

That directive was, for Soran, the final straw.

When she had a voice in reading instruction, Soran says, she could "submerge" students in letters, introducing a new letter every week and a half.  "But with Open Court we're not on any one letter for very long," she says. "I love kids; it's sad to lose a seasoned teacher over a reading plan!"

"A scripted curriculum removes teacher creativity," notes Ingersoll. "There's no flexibility involved; every kid gets the same. The catch is, of course, that kids are different and need different things, and the teacher—like any other professional—needs the discretion to decide what works."

Developers of scripted programs argue that teachers do have some discretion, but Soran and many others counter that it's just not enough, and say because of it, their roles as experts are undermined. 

That debate continues to rage (see the February NEA Today cover story). But the fallout—educators throwing in the grade book—can't be taken lightly, warns Ingersoll and others who have documented the nation's teacher retention crisis.

In his research, Ingersoll analyzed data from the federal Schools and Staffing Survey, covering 55,000 teachers in 12,000 public schools, and noted a swift-moving "revolving door" that won't be slowed by recruitment schemes alone.

Ingersoll found that U.S. schools lose 40 to 50 percent of their new-teacher cadre in the first five years—a rate reduced greatly in schools with induction programs—and that more than 1 million teachers, almost one-third of the profession, are in "job transition" each year. 

Top-down No Child Left Behind mandates might well be deepening the hole in some states, he says. "If we're going to meet NCLB's mandate for 'highly qualified' teachers," Ingersoll stresses, "we're going to have to fix school working conditions so the revolving door doesn't revolve so fast."

Educators must push harder, he says, for more administrative support, input in student behavioral issues, a "say in key decisions" and, of course, better pay.

—DAVE WINANS

For more on Ingersoll's work, go to NEA Today Extra.