Teacher Alma Ponce, working with young students at the ASI Children's Center.
If you think the key to retaining qualified teachers in California’s public schools is offering greater financial compensation, you’d be wrong, says a report on statewide teacher retention that will be unveiled at 11 a.m. on Thursday, April 26, hosted by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell. A public briefing of the report will be held from 1:30-3 p.m. in the Secretary of State Building on 1500 11th Street, in the first floor auditorium. The in-depth briefing will have a panel of experts, a summary of key findings and recommendations, and a question and answer session for audience members.
Authored by Ken Futernick, professor of education at Sacramento State, this report calls for a change in how educators and policymakers address the problems in California schools.
“Although better compensation matters to teachers,” said Futernick, “if the classroom and school environment are not conducive to good teaching, higher salaries are not a prominent factor in increasing teacher retention rates.”
The study, entitled “A Possible Dream: Retaining California Teachers So All Students Learn,” examines data collected from a survey of 2,000 current and former California public school teachers about the professional and personal reasons for leaving or remaining in the classroom. Classified as “leavers” or “stayers,” these teachers provided a wealth of information to Futernick as to the reasons for high turnover.
Teachers who stay or remain in the profession cited a high level of collegial support, a sense of teamwork in the schools, and support from families and the communities. Teachers who leave the classroom cited too much unnecessary paperwork, too many meetings, classroom interruptions, and a lack of decision-making authority as reasons for leaving both challenging school systems and the profession as a whole.
According to Futernick, the study began as a response to California’s continuing public education woes. With a teacher shortage that began to worsen in 1998, when class-size reductions were initiated, the state has not produced enough qualified new teachers to keep pace with the number of experienced teachers who are retiring or leaving the field before retirement. Add to that the problem of keeping teachers in schools with a high number of poor and minority students, and the numbers worsen.
But these statistics don’t tell the whole story. “Some schools with a high ratio of poor students were not hard to staff.” Futernick wanted to know why. “If you could answer this important question then you could create similar conditions in other, lower performing schools,” he says.
The study also examines the differing needs of elementary and high school teachers. Elementary school teachers believed that they were given inadequate time for planning and lesson preparation while high school teachers were more concerned about lowering class size, a condition already addressed in most elementary schools. Another important aspect of the study addresses specific challenges in retaining special education teachers. These teachers reported difficulties in relating to their general education colleagues. They also felt that they were not treated as part of a team by school administrators and, as a result, many have left their field to go into general education.
The report concludes with six recommendations that state policymakers and educators could enact to stem the flow of qualified teachers out of the profession. These recommendations would both reduce the attrition rate among experienced teachers and even add to the number of teachers reentering the field.
One of the most encouraging findings in the survey is that much of what teachers are calling for can be provided by their districts and the state without much cost, “certainly,” says Futernick, “not as much as recruiting and training large numbers of new teachers.”
