Where We Teach – Las Vegas

Playing The Odds

Stacy Dreyfus is one of thousands of new teachers who come to this booming city each year. But too many of them go bust.

By Mary Ellen Flannery

When the doors to Ollie Detwiler Elementary swing open again this fall, little Dominic won’t be there. He’ll be telling his new teachers at the creative arts magnet that he prefers to be called Zorro. And neither will Maya, who whipped her long braids and dished to all the other kindergartners about her mother’s cosmetic surgery. But John and Julissa will be back, as will Luis, Elijahjuan, Ashley, and Dulce, as sweet a girl as her name.

The bigger question is: Will Stacy Dreyfus?

After her first year on the kindergarten carpet, maybe she’d like to reclaim her name from the 5-year-olds’ Miss Dreyfus! Miss Dreyfus! Maybe she’d rather have a job that doesn’t require 13-hour days and sleepless nights. Maybe she’d prefer a profession that provides practical preparation, a professional work environment, and doesn’t assign its hardest cases to its most inexperienced practitioners. Maybe she’d rather rake in the cash selling high-rise condos to Las Vegas showgirls.

Sounds easier, anyway.

Every year, thousands of new teachers like Dreyfus leave their Midwest homes or southern campuses and follow the neon signs. And they’re not the only ones—Las Vegas is the 21st century boomtown. Each month, about 6,000 hopefuls move here. At the same time, as more of the Nevada desert disappears under artificial turf and private pools, real estate prices are exploding. Home prices, excluding condo conversions, soared from an average $161,893 in 2000 to $335,091 last year.

The region’s dying for nurses, police officers (a local department hangs recruiting billboards in the airport), casino workers, and, of course, for teachers. Clark County, the nation’s fifth- largest district, must hire about 3,000 new teachers each year. Part of the reason is growth: The district also will welcome 12,000 new students this month. But a big piece of the puzzle is turnover. These days, it seems every Clark County teacher has a colleague who is either: a) going home to Indiana, or b) getting a real estate license.

Despite doubling the number of recruiting trips to places as far-flung as the Philippines, the cry for new teachers has grown desperate. In June, district officials predicted they would start the year with more than 1,000 vacancies. The shortage may mean death to class-size cuts and new programs for at-risk students.

But the problem isn’t unique to Clark County. Even in places that haven’t seen housing booms since Reconstruction, a rapidly graying teaching force is approaching retirement and new teachers are leaving en masse. In Florida, one district has asked clergy to preach the virtues of teaching to congregants. Another in Virginia invited applicants to a dinner party, complete with disc jockey and gift bags.

Districts nationwide are going all out to recruit, and they’re often successful, but they haven’t quite mastered the other side of the coin—they still can’t keep their new teachers. And that’s the bigger problem, says Richard Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania associate professor known as the “dean of retention studies.”

This is a gambling town, and the odds on Dreyfus’ return, after a tumultuous but rewarding first year in the classroom, are so-so. If you’re a betting person, you might look at previous results and shake your head. About 20 percent of new teachers quit after their first year, and some 50 percent, in urban schools especially, will quit teaching within their first five. In Clark County, a recent survey showed that about a third planned to leave as soon as possible.

“I do love it. The kids are great,” Dreyfus says brightly. But, she pauses, “It’s all the other things that make it difficult.”

Playing the Odds
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