If you want to retain great teachers, remove the bad ones
I attended an advisory panel meeting today for a study looking at how to retain talented Gen Y teachers in the classroom. I was rather skeptical from the beginning, as I doubt that it’s possible to keep talented young people in any job for more than a few years. The nature of most young high-achievers is that they want a variety of challenges and experiences.
Still, two profound insights surfaced today, both of which were new to me. First, one participant (a former teacher turned district official) argued that one of the most powerful levers for keeping great people in the classroom is to let go of ineffective teachers. Survey data from Education Sector’s recent report on teachers, Waiting to be Won Over , backs this up. Great teachers are endlessly frustrated by watching colleagues who are burned out, putting in minimal hours, and doing harm to children. And if they don’t see leaders address these underperformers, the high performers are going to go someplace else. (I think that’s true in any workplace, by the way.)
So that leads us to a conversation about tenure reform, right? No, not necessarily. The other big insight, from another former teacher-turned-district-official, is that our current pension system is the real stumbling block. Here’s why: Lots of burned out, ineffective teachers would gladly go find another job, were it not for the million-dollar pensions they’d be foregoing. Many would even leave voluntarily. But trying to terminate a teacher who is five or ten years from his or her retirement payday becomes World War III, because there’s so much at stake. (My colleague better be careful with that kind of talk, lest Leo Casey likens him to Father Coughlin.)
Imagine if we were able to transition to a 401(k) style system for new teachers. (Which is easier said than done, since the current defined-benefits pension system only works if young teachers pay into it.) Picture a world 10 or 15 years from now, when mid-career teachers start to burn out. Even if they have tenure, they probably could be pushed out the door if they get to take their 401(k) with them, and don’t have a huge incentive to stay put and wait for retirement.
So bottom line: if we want to get serious about high quality teachers, we gotta get serious about low quality ones, too. And that means tackling the true third rail of education policy: teacher pensions.
Photograph of gym teacher, 1960, from Library of Virginia
Related posts:
- One great Gadfly, just for you
- Shared sacrifices are for losers
- “Front-loading” compensation for new teachers
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November 13th, 2008 at 8:18 am
Well no. The relative indifference of the public education system to teacher competence is a function of the limited choices, and information, parents have.
As charters are proving, when parents have a choice they tend to pick good schools over lousy schools. Since parents, to a great extent, can’t make that choice within the confines of a school district, that decision being reserved to the administration, good schools and bad schools survive without regard to their educational merit.
If it doesn’t matter whether a school’s any good why should it matter whether the teachers are any good?
November 13th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Generally, you are right.
Small wrinkle: I suspect good elementary school teachers are a bit more tolerant of crappy teachers, in that they can isolate themselves with the same 20 kids all day.
In high school and middle school, the effect of crappy teaching is that kids are conditioned to behave badly and exert little effort. If you teach a good math class in between a so-so science class and a chaotic English class, your job is tougher.
November 13th, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Very interesting post. The wrinkle is that enabling mid-career teachers to leave with a 401k type nest egg isn’t likely to be taken up only by mediocre teachers. I could see a situation where a very talented teacher decides to jump ship to a more lucrative profession because his/her children are nearing college age.
I saw a similar situation fairly frequently when I was an Army wife- talented officers who enjoyed their jobs but who decided to retire after 20 years so they could make more money in the civilian world & pay for their kids’ college tuition.
November 13th, 2008 at 5:47 pm
As charters are proving, when parents have a choice they tend to pick good schools over lousy schools.
Absolutely.
Parents’ track record in choosing curricula, teachers, and schools for their kids is better than the record of ed schools. No question.
This is why ed schools invented edu-speak. The goal is to prevent parents from understanding what educators are actually doing inside the classroom — because if we knew, we’d object. (I sat in on a Curriculum Committee meeting here in my district recently & heard our Assistant Superintendent of Curriculum and Technology speak openly of “marketing to parents.”)
Here’s Bonnie Grossen on parents & Direct Instruction:
“One of the most interesting aspects of FT that is rarely discussed in the technical reports is the way schools selected the models they would implement. The model a school adopted was not selected by teachers, administrators, or central office educrats. Parents selected the model. Large assemblies were held where the sponsors of the various models pitched their model to groups of parents comprising a Parent Advisory Committee (PAC) for the school. Administrators were usually present at these meetings and tried to influence parents’ decisions. Using this selection process, the Direct Instruction model was the most popular model among schools; DI was implemented in more sites during FT than any other model. Yet among educrats, DI was the darkhorse. Most educrats’ bets would undoubtedly have been placed on any of the models but the Direct Instruction model. The model developed by the Illinois preschool teacher who didn’t even have a teaching credential, much less a Ph.D. in education, was not expected by many educrats to amount to much, especially since it seemed largely to contradict most of the current thinking.”
These parents were poor and not well educated themselves.
They were right and the educrats were wrong.
November 16th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
Parents’ track record in choosing curricula, teachers, and schools for their kids is better than the record of ed schools.
That’s a case of damning by faint praise ed schools having no obvious interest in promoting curricula, teachers and schools that produce educated kids.
November 20th, 2008 at 6:14 pm
I love this idea. Rhee might take it up. Good luck to us all.