Thoughts on Teacher Retention: Let Learning Happen

Just before leaving Seattle for New Orleans, I heard the principal of the high school I taught at changed. This was unfortunate; she was one of the only Black principal in the district and had been named principal of the year a few years ago. The pandemic probably changed a lot of how schooling is being done, and stable leadership from the “before times” churns as many received promotions or retired. Or like me, started a doctoral program. I remember when I told one of my seniors I was going to graduate school, he responded, “We had three principals in four years. You need to get out of here with the rest of us.”

Every year before classes start, I get a call asking either if I was interested in science positions in the district, or if I would be willing to be a substitute teacher. I, of course, decline, but I re-weigh the possibility each year. No, it has never come close to me considering stopping graduate school. I do, however, like watching school board meetings on YouTube as they figure out incentives to recruit and retain teachers for the district.

 

Building Community in a Rules-heavy Environment

Keeping track of the numbers and who is doing what exactly can be tough for school communities. The principal who just left had the title of “acting principal” in her first year, just like her successor. That job title doesn’t convey confidence to parents, teachers, staff, or even students. However, I do appreciate her gestures to recognize and build community.  The “acting” part of the title changed the following year.

At one pep rally, she awkwardly danced around the four different sections of bleachers. Nobody joined her because I think students were confused and afraid they’d get yelled at for leaving their seats. There was also a group of parents and media watching with the principal being the only person dancing on the basketball court.

Close to the end of the school year, there was a “senior prank”: toilet papering the main courtyard. It was just straight vandalism. I had an environmental science class in my first period, and we cleaned it up; to make it related to the curriculum, we weighed it all and realized so much destruction can happen from just one pack. The principal had left campus to pick up donuts for my students, yet many said “We’re good. We cleaned it up because it looked so bad.” They weren’t impressed by the graduating class, but they were appreciative of the donuts they passed on. I remember this one vignette because I think it reframed how that class went for the rest of the year. They reasoned that it was awful to clean up after other people, and that we should just prevent environmental disaster beforehand; the BP oil spill was a case-study they became interested in. That and Harambe and the role of zoos in wildlife conservation were really great discussions.

These shoes weren't against dress code,
unless you stretched what was "disruptive."

I found that disruptions to the learning environment were manageable, but it was always "death by a thousand cuts" rather than major incidents. However, I found selective enforcement of rules hurt student learning outcomes the most. It also watered down more serious issues when there was a backlog of dress code violations. I found my principal to be supportive, but certain assistant principals seemed more concerned about the volume of discipline records instead of academic outcomes.

Would I have stayed?

I know I’m being nostalgic, but what kept me around was probably the robotics team. It’s similar logic to a lot of sports coaches where the teaching gig is the side gig; I think I was there for the full set of students rather than just student athletes (but students who were athletes were great!). However, I feel the dual enrollment opportunities my school pursued were excellent alternatives to Advanced Placement (AP) classes. I think I would stay, and possibly be attracted to administration, but I wouldn’t want to go to central office. If pay was my main motivator, I would be doing something in neuroscience or medicine. I’m in the field of education to help students and families.

 

Retention: The Numbers

At the last high school I taught at since starting my doctoral program, about 24 of the 80 teachers (about 30%) are from “my time.” That means retention of that cohort year-over-year was around 75%. Put another way, about 1 in 4 of those teachers left the school each year, for all reasons including retirement or moving to a different school. Teachers were rarely dismissed due to their evaluations, even though some found them stressful. Considering that we don’t typically loop teachers, or keep students matched with teachers across subjects, students have a good chance of having classes scheduled with teachers who are completely new to the school.

 

Note: This is based off of the cohort from the 2018-19 and 2023-24 school years.
Actual retention year-over-year is higher.

With all this said, both my successors for high school science and summer robotics stuck with it for the past five or six years, respectively. My science department kept 7 of 9 teachers from my time, or 8 if you count my replacement. I also want to note that, a lot of the retention is for upper-level weighted courses including honors, dual enrollment, advanced placement, and gifted. Science can be hard-to-staff, but I think that was more of a recruitment problem rather than a retention issue.

For comparison, at the summer program I taught at in the Greater New Orleans area, only 6 of 40 instructors remain, yet 3 of the 4 administrators stayed on board. That’s a 15% retention rate over the six-year period, or a drop of 30% change for teachers. Two of the six instructors were teaching assistants, but notably they were college students back in the summers of 2016 and 2017. It's a different kind of instructor; most were professional artists rather than formal classroom educators. The admin are more focused on the business and management aspects; I recall the former director sending messages to not talk about compensation since it would cause "unnecessary conflict." Still, to be frank, it paid well for a month-long commitment.

Note: This is based off Summer 2018 to Summer 2023.
I didn't teach there the summer before grad school.

To the two instructors at the summer program who were assistants when I was there, I don’t think it’s a surprise they were the ones who stayed. They were students at selective high schools in the New Orleans area, and they went to good colleges.  They were considerably talented in their own right, mature leaders among the others their age. I didn't work too closely with them aside from morning meetings and lunch duty, but they were memorable for being caring and kind. On the last days of class, they promoted what the kids had made and learned, and they genuinely hyped up what we were all doing.

Discussion

The pandemic's effects on Louisiana teachers is difficult to discern.

Here are my frustrations with some administration and counselors as a teacher. Usually, these revolved around class size; I routinely had around 34 in some classes, especially my dual enrollment classes, but far fewer in my physics classes. These weren’t specific to science, but were avoidable issues related to how schools are organized.

• I legit never had a common planning period with the colleagues in my hall, or with teachers in different subjects who taught most of my students.
• Disciplinary consequences weren’t consistent. Yes, out of class time for students has detrimental academic effects but imagine the effects when a student is constantly disruptive and knows they can get away with it because it works across classes. Students typically didn’t do anything big, but they would do a lot of little things.
• Some students’ placements were based on behavior, not academic ability. I’m all for having a heterogeneous classroom, but with the assumption that baseline skills are there. For ninth graders, this was especially a problem since it shaped whole classes. We tried our best to mitigate RNG, but the gaps were challenging to close.
• Feeder schools varied in quality. It was well known who was getting passed through in eighth grade. It wasn’t fair to focus on remediation, but some students needed it.
• My classes were unbalanced. My sixth period physics class, out of seven, often had fewer than five students since many seniors opted for a short day, since they’d have enough credit hours to graduate. We had an overemphasis on class rank and the Top 10, and the students knew that if they weren’t competitive for it, they could take a reduced course load and go home early.

Overall, I don’t think I needed more incentives to stay. For the most part, the community aspects of school were great. I can see a lot of the administrative aspects were what drew me to higher education. I think that would be similar to a lot of young people who become teachers; systemic changes to teacher pay and working conditions happen when we can get out of our own way.