Teacher Attrition: An American Educational Crisis
...ollowing section, we will discuss six of those forces in greater detail. Salaries Teachers leave for higher paying jobs in other professions. Although teachers' salaries have improved in recent years, they remain low compared to those of other similarly-educated workers. Median annual earnings of kindergarten, elementary, middle, and secondary school teachers ranged from $39,810 to $44,340 in 2002; the lowest 10 percent earned $24,960 to $29,850; the top 10 percent earned $62,890 to $68,530. Median earnings for preschool teachers were $19,270 . According to the American Federation of Teachers, beginning teachers with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $30,719 in the 2001–02 school year. The estimated average salary of all public elementary and secondary school teachers in the 2001–02 school year was $44,367. Private school teachers generally earn less than public school teachers. Overall, US teachers earn much less than other workers with the same amount of education and experience such as computer programmers, engineers, and health professionals. The economy may influence these trends. During the boom economy of the ’90s, the number of attractive employment alternatives offering better pay and conditions enticed some teachers away from their schools. More recently, during the 2002-03 school year, this trend appears to have slowed in the wake of a downturn in the economy. For that school year, many districts where reporting more success in recruiting qualified teachers, and in some states turnover appears to be leveling off as fewer teachers choose to move or leave for other jobs or retirement. This is likely to be a short-term windfall for the nation’s schools. What some schools are learning is that during a slow economy, they can successfully recruit teachers. The real test will be whether they can keep them when the economy rebounds. Differences in teacher salary across districts and states can also account for teacher leaving. There are large inequalities across districts and states in teachers' salaries and teaching conditions. The starting teacher salary in South Dakota is $24,507. This pales in comparison with other Northern States which have a pay scale average of over $34,000. Typically, teachers in affluent suburban districts earn more than those in central cities or more rural communities within the same area. As a consequence, teacher attrition is more common-especially in inner-cities and other low-wealth districts where salaries and working conditions are not competitive. These variations contribute to a surplus of qualified teachers in some locations and a need in others. These variations also influence teacher retention, especially new teachers. Those who are better paid tend to stay in teaching longer than those with lower salaries. Isolated and Lacking support New teachers feel isolated and unsupported in their classrooms. Education students are largely trained in a collaborative environment where teamwork, group activities and brainstorming are emphasized. In real life, however, teachers are usually the only adult in a room of children during a regular day. The differences between these two environments, cause feelings of isolation and desertion. Emotional isolation is intensified when new teachers are assigned to physically isolated classrooms. Research suggests that few experienced teachers proactively voluntarily offer help to beginning teachers, viewing the first year as a "if I could do it, you can do it" rite of passage. Other veteran teachers, who may want to help, feel their efforts would be viewed as interference. Many beginning teachers consider seeking help but feel it would display their incompetence. Overwhelming Expectations New teachers feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job. Teaching is a difficult job even for experienced educators. Teachers must meet the needs of all students in increasingly diverse school settings. They must be efficient in handling excessive paperwork, become experts in time management, and establish positive connections between home and school. Meanwhile, many parents voice concerns about dealing with new teachers, fearing that they are largely unorganized, inexperienced, and unable to control student behavior. Teachers are forced to be educators, parents, and also counselors. Beginning teachers’ own expectations don't match the actual job. Novice teachers are optimists, certain that they can change the world and the children in their classrooms. Many embark on their first teaching assignments with highly idealized perceptions of teaching: they tend to envision themselves spending the entire day fostering their students' academic growth. But once they enter the classroom, many are disheartened to find an abundance of nonacademic duties and paperwork awaiting them. They become discouraged by lack of time, challenging work, needy children and high expectations - saddened that the reality is so different from what they envisioned. Discipline, difficulties with parents, and lack of sufficient or appropriate teaching materials are among the problems experienced by beginning teachers. The profession has been slow to develop a systematic way to induct beginners gradually into the complexities of a job that demands hundreds of management decisions every day. Terms like intern and trainee are used in other professions to identify a beginner who has received training in the profession and who earns a stipend by participation in limited experiences under expert supervision. In the teaching profession, these terms are often used differently. Interns and trainees have full teaching responsibilities, without prior professional training; they must also attend classes in their spare time and often have limited expert supervision. If we want to retain new teachers, particularly those teaching in inner-city schools, we must introduce them to the profession humanely, in ways that engender self-esteem, competence, collegiality, and professional stature. Marital status Marital status may be related more strongly to attrition from teaching than is any other variable on which data are available. Ninety percent of the unmarried teachers, but only 45.8% of the married teachers, were still in the profession. It was not mentioned whether the husband's occupation had any association with the percentage of married teachers still working. This finding is somewhat surprising, but one possibility is that women married to men, teach temporarily to provide a supplemental income until they can find more suitable jobs which require the skills gained from their education, or plan to quit working altogether Beginning teachers First year teachers are 3 times more likely to leave the profession than their more experienced counterparts. An additional 15% of beginning teachers will leave after their second year and still another 10% will leave after the third year. The turnover rate of new teachers does not settle at the overall rate of 6% until the fifth or sixth year. Of all beginning teachers who enter the profession, 40-50% will leave during the first seven years of their career, and in excess of two-thirds of those will do so in the first four years of teaching. Another possible factor involved in the higher attrition rate for beginning teachers is the initial level of commitment to the teaching profession. Some prospective teachers enter the profession with a positive attraction for teaching and plan to make it a long-term career. Others enter the profession with the intent of staying only a few years and plan to quit working altogether, or to use the skills gained from their education to pursue interests in other fields. From the Water into the Fire: From the “Learning Classroom” to “Your Classroom” Many new teachers find that they are unprepared for the reality of the classroom. Once they leave the university setting, novice teachers often receive little or no support and find that their teacher education programs ill-prepared them for the realities of teaching. As a profession, it has been slow to develop a systematic way to induct beginners gradually into the complexities of a job that demands hundreds of management decisions every day. Terms like intern and trainee are used in other professions to identify a beginner who has received training in the profession and who earns a stipend by participation in limited experiences under expert supervision. In the teaching profession, these terms are often used differently. Interns and trainees have full teaching responsibilities, without prior professional training. Although have professional training opportunities, they must attend these classes in their spare time and often have limited expert supervision If we want to retain new teachers, particularly those teaching in public schools, we must gradually introduce them to the profession, in ways that boost self-esteem, increase their competence, collegiality, and professional stature. Recommendations Improved recruitment of teachers In order to recruit highly talented individuals into a career in teaching, many states have begun offering incentive programs to individuals with strong academic backgrounds to draw them into the profession. The most popular method found of enticement is the awarding of scholarships to individuals to pay for completing teacher preparation programs. Other program incentives include tax breaks, homeownership opportunities and signing bonuses. Most of these programs contain eligibility requirements including strong performance standards to ensure high quality teacher candidates. In most cases, participants are obligated to teach for a certain period of time after receiving the incentives. Entry into the profession and retention are basic to placing good teachers in America's classrooms. Nationally, nearly 1,300 institutions of higher education and a number of alternative programs commit substantial resources to the preparation of teachers. Today nearly 40% of the resources devoted to teacher preparation are used on individuals who never enter teaching and an additional 30% are used on individuals who teach fewer than five years. If these scarce resources were applied to the preparation of good candidates who enter the profession and remain in teaching more than a few years, we could expect a significant improvement in the quality of teacher preparation. Maintain Certification Standards State policymakers should maintain historical certification standards. We believe that hiring better-qualified and educated teachers is crucial to raising teacher standards and thus the level of education in the country. While alternative routes to teacher certification may be desirable, this is only true when professional standards remain unaltered and free from tampering by policymakers. Many States offer alternative licensure programs for teachers who have bachelor’s degrees in the subject they will teach, but who lack the necessary education courses required for a regular license. Alternative licensure programs originally were...