Just like a football team is only sustainable if it can recruit and keep top quality talent, a city’s education system is only as its ability to recruit keep top quality educators.  Memphis is no exception.  As such, it’s absolutely vital to develop the educators we already have.  But its vital that we also start recruiting the best and brightest educators to come and start their careers here in Memphis and Shelby County.

The best argument for focusing on recruitment is human nature. Our default is to stick with the status quo.  If we can establish Memphis as a high quality status quo, our best and brightest are more likely to stay once they start their careers here.  But the first step is to get them here as early as possible.  For that, it’s vital that we as a city focus on recruiting from institutions that consistently produce high quality educators.

However, all education training programs are not created equal.  Fortunately, Tennessee is at the forefront of evaluating the effectiveness of teacher training programs thanks to the TVAAS system.  While it is not perfect, it does help us detect differences in which programs are most successful in impacting core subject academic outcomes.

Shelby County should make every effort to target programs that have a track record of producing successful educators with our recruitment efforts.  A quick look at this table, taken from the Tennessee Report Card on the Effectiveness of Teacher Training Programs from 2013, allows us to see which programs are and are not producing effective educators (the whole report can be accessed here):

This report makes it clear that we know which programs are effective and which are not at recruiting effective teachers from the use of data.  And it’s a reasonable assumption that programs that produce effective teachers are more likely than others to recruit those teachers classified as irreplaceable.  Therefore we would be remiss if we did not use this report to target these programs for recruitment efforts.

As we stated at the beginning of this series, these policies all work together to retain and attract top talent.  Therefore, this policy rests heavily on improving school culture and leadership in high needs schools.  If we don’t fix that area, all the recruitment in the world won’t matter if we continue to drop high quality educators into extremely challenging environments.  But when coupled with the right policies such as improved leadership and bonuses for teaching in high-need schools have the potential to make a noticeable impact on the number of irreplaceables we can attract to our highest need schools.

Mark’s choice illustrates the role that money does play in determining where educators chose to teach.  When forced to choose between schools, salary makes a difference. And even assuming that salaries are identical across all schools, work environment factors also come into play.  If no financial incentive exists to push teachers towards high-need schools, educators have every incentive to gravitate towards higher performing schools with fewer challenges rather than those that are more in need of irreplaceable teachers.

When we identify irreplaceable educators, our goal shouldn’t just be to retain them where they are at.  We should also make the effort to induce them to teach in the schools where they are needed the most.  One mechanism to achieve this is a differentiated salary schedule that offers bonuses for teachers that choose to work in high-need schools.

Let me first offer the caveat that bonuses to retain and attract irreplaceables is not a fix.  However, evidence suggests that bonuses to teach in high-need schools need to be enacted in the context of a comprehensive reform package designed to incorporate multiple strategies to induce teachers to change their behavior. To be considered an effective retention policy, the bonuses must be high enough to induce teachers to remain in the status quo. Evidence from Alabama and South Carolina found that significantly higher bonuses were required to entice teachers to move to a high-needs school.  The minimum in these two cases was $5,000.   Research in Denver and North Carolina suggests that bonuses close to $2,000 are sufficient to encourage retention of educators in high-need schools.

As already stated, these bonuses will not be enough on their own to change the behavior of our best and brightest educators.  But we do know that educators include their salary as one important factor in their decision making process of where to teach.  Given the evidence presented here, Memphis would do well to consider adopting bonuses to teach in high need schools as a component of any teacher compensation package.

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FOCUS ON THE TEACHER

As we shift to this “systems of schools” approach, we would be remiss if we did not focus on ensuring that we attract and retain quality educators in these schools. Study after study has shown that the teacher is the most important in school factor in a child’s education.  Teachers form the backbone of school culture, run extracurricular activities and are directly responsible for the delivery of content.  Therefore, as we redesign our system here in Memphis, it’s vital that we design it to encourage quality teachers to come and stay in these new systems to sustain our student’s success over time.

My concern is that nationwide data suggests that teacher turnover in charter schools is significantly higher than traditional schools.  Research suggests that charters on average lose between 20 and 25 percent of their teachers each year, a rate which is 1.5 times higher than traditional schools.  This is concerning given that charters make up the bulk of the alternative options in Memphis (41 out of 66).  However, according to my own research, little research has been done to dig into why we see these outcomes in charters.

Our focus should be on working to ensure that charter schools are seen as a long term career option for educators, both in Memphis and elsewhere.  The last thing we should strive for are schools that constantly burn out teachers after only a few years.

WHAT DO TEACHERS WANT?

With this in mind, I decided to do some qualitative research of my own with the aim to help policy makers and school leaders in Memphis and Shelby County.  I reached out to my colleagues teaching in charters across Memphis and asked them the following two questions.

1. What about your school makes you believe that this could be a long term career option for you and other teachers?
2. What is the top ting that your school would have to change for you or other teachers to see it as a long term career option?

Before I share specific trends and quotes, I want to emphasize that my purpose in conducting this survey is not to slam any schools or organizations.  My intent is only to collect and summarize feedback so that our leaders can work to ensure that we attract and retain quality educators to teach our children.

WHAT’S BEING DONE RIGHT

ACHIEVEMENT GAP IMPACT: Those indicating they can see their school as a long term career option shared their belief that working a charter allows them to make a much more substantial impact on the achievement gap than would a traditional school in specific ways:

“My largest class is 20 students which I believe should be maximum capacity.  There is only one teacher in the room, so beyond classroom management I need to be able to fully engage with each student daily to help them with the material or challenge them to think deeper.  My smallest class of 10 students is ideal,”

HIGH STANDARDS: Several other teachers spoke to the ability of charters to truly hold kids to a higher standard and implement real consequences if that standard is not met:

“Although it is unfortunate that [students who fail to meet the standard] have to leave, it is an example to the other students that there is a reason we expect the best out of them and if they can’t do their part to then this isn’t the place for them.”

WHAT NEEDS TO BE FIXED

HIGH STRESS: I received a much higher volume of responses to the second question, indicating that there are several areas that charters need to improve to truly make these schools long term career options for educators.  The number one reason that every educator cited for not seeing teaching in a charter as a long term career option was the unrealistic hours they are required to work to meet their goals:

 “The hours are too long and too intensive.”

“In charters, the long hours and high stress days set a pace that I imagine would be hard to maintain long-term.”

“Pay is not comparable to other fields requiring this much work.”

 “The reason [the school] is well run and feels good for students and faculty is due to teacher’s investment in the school. Many teachers work 60/70/80 hour weeks to create and implement the systems and procedures to make the school run, which is not sustainable or desirable in the long run.”

OVERWORKED: One respondent went more in detail with what they are required to do every day and its impact on her ability to teach:

“I spend almost 3 extra hours a day just trying to take care of medial tasks such as; attendance, [entering student behavior information], printing, copying, calling parents about missing homework, calling parents about missing paychecks and managing student behavior in the halls. On top of the extended school day and need to keep in close contact with parents my time is spread too thin to plan and stay on top of a great curriculum.”   

MINIMAL EARLY CAREER SUPPORT: Every young educator (under 3 years teaching) that sent me feedback cited lack of support for early career teachers as a reason they couldn’t see teaching in a charter as a long term career option.  While this was not uniform across schools, it came up enough that I thought it important to cite:

“I rarely get observed, receive feedback, or attend useful professional development. I am expected to turn in full lesson plans two weeks in advance, even though I receive no feedback.”

“I feel like the administration just didn’t care about the teachers.  They offered no support for first year teachers and very little behavior management help (this is from an educator who recently left the classroom).” 

Lastly, several teachers cited the deficit of long term career opportunities available to educators working in charters:

“As an ambitious person not interested in school leadership, I really feel that there is a lack of opportunities in the long-term.” 

“[working in a charter] Limits other opportunities for development (shortened summers stop you from doing grad school, fellowships, and teacher coaching opportunities).”

SUMMARY

Clearly we have some work to do in our new system of schools approach to ensure that educators see these new alternatives to traditional public schooling as true career opportunities.  I hope that our leaders can take feedback like this from educators to heart and work to change charter environments in Memphis to ensure that we can both attract and retain the best and the brightest to teach our children as we continue to expand options for school choice.