Check out the rest of our irreplaceable series here:

Part 1: the need

Part 2: develop successful school leaders

Part 3: incentivize the best to teach in high need schools

Part 4: recruit only the best

Part 5: targeted professional development

Part 6: enhancing teacher career options

Part 7: summing it all up (below):

I have a confession; until 8th grade, I hated math (full disclosure: I am a high school math teacher).  Up until then, it seemed like my teachers did everything they could to obfuscate this confusing and complex language.  And then I took algebra from Mr. Kent.  He was a teacher who made math simple and made math fun.  He didn’t just teach us about probability by doing multiple choice problems.  He had us pick lottery numbers with the potential of winning $100 and then calculate our actual odds of winning!  He had us play fantasy football to practice using our algebra.

In many ways, Mr. Kent transformed my view of what math could do for me and changed it from a challenging conundrum to a subject with vast applications to my every day life.  Without him, I wouldn’t be where I am today.

Closing the persistent K-12 achievement gap in the American education system represents a difficult challenge to say the least.  Many remedies have been suggested, but I truly believe that if we are to close this gap, we must focus first and foremost on those we put in front of our children each and every day.  We must work to ensure that high-performing, irreplaceable teachers like Mr. Kent are recruited and retained not only in wealth suburban schools, but also in our highest-need schools. 

To do achieve this result in Shelby County, it is imperative that we both retain our existing crop of irreplaceable educators and attract and grow as many new ones as we can. Over the past few weeks, I’ve outlined a policy framework that could be adopted by the Shelby County school board and Superintendent Hopson as a package to help accomplish this. 

As designed, this framework creates policies that act together to take advantage of and overcome the status quo bias that creates inequitable irreplaceable distribution.  Developing high quality school leaders to create strong and supportive school cultures will attract teachers to high-need schools and keep them there.  Recruiting from effective teacher training programs, incentivizing recruitment to high-need schools and effectively training teachers to operate in challenging environments will help maintain a high status quo and nudge teachers into high-need schools.  Lastly, instituting a tiered career ladder will ensure retention of irreplaceables in the classroom in the long run while still meeting their desires to take on new roles and challenges as educators.

Again, these policies would not achieve their full potential as stand alone policies. In theory, they could be implemented that way.  However, to do so would greatly decrease their effectiveness.  For example, developing high quality leaders without the accompanying incentives to attract irreplaceables to those schools would likely do little to overcome the status quo for existing irreplaceables teaching in other classrooms, leaving the potential of the policy package unfulfilled.

We have a rare moment in Shelby County.  The policy environment is still in a somewhat fluid state because of the merger and the uncertainty surrounding the fate of municipal school districts.  We also have a tremendous opportunity in our seven member school board for collaboration and agreement among a small body to ensure we enact the policies we need to get the outcomes we desire.  But this window won’t be here forever.  Eventually it will close and we will likely be stuck with the system we’ve created. Time is short and the stakes are high, so let’s make it count.

By Jon Alfuth

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