Impact Of Teacher Turnover And Student Achievement

Research revealed a link between student success and the retention of effective high school teachers. These studies also showed that hard-to-staff

females (Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, 2011). The second reason is that the less experienced teachers are commonly placed in the most difficult schools teaching the most difficult students (Douglas, Lewis, Scott, & Garrison-Wade, 2008). Poor teacher quality is a huge factor in the achievement gap (Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, 2011).

Over the passed fifteen years, the Bush and Obama Administration have cut spending in the education department dramatically. This translates into decreased pay for teachers, limited expenditures for each student, and limited expenditures within the classroom. This decrease in pay roll for teachers has even gone as far as laying off hard working teachers. With the contraction of spending allotted by the government, the absence of quality teachers has emerged resulting in the decline of student’s standard of education. The federal governments limiting budget has added to the universal achievement gap and should be attended to as soon as possible.

The state of California should analyze the enormous complexity of this issue, including the impact of teacher quality on student achievement, the evidence that teachers regularly migrate out of low-performing schools, and the potential solution that lies in offering incentives to well-qualified teachers who commit to work in struggling schools (ca.gov).

Professor Friedman says, “If you leave a low value-added teacher in your school for 10 years, rather than replacing him with an average teacher, you are hypothetically talking about $2.5 million in lost income.” Schools need good teachers, but firing unqualified teachers has proved to be a difficult task.

Fifty percent of new teachers quit with in the first five years of teaching (NEA, 2015), with this number being so alarmingly high it begs the questions: Why do so many teachers leave after going through years of college for this profession? Were teachers not prepared for the job, through college training, what should colleges teach in order to better prepare teachers?

Overall, high rates of teacher turnover have direct monetary costs and alter the distribution of teacher experience and skill across districts. Dr. Maxwell, the Superintendent of PGCPS formed a Transition Team from which four subcommittees were formed one being the Teaching and Learning Committee (TL). The TL examined research on professional literature to answer the question and determined that in order for students to receive the high-quality education that prepares them to succeed in post-secondary opportunities, staff members must have instructional resources and professional learning opportunities to build their capacities

Teachers today face a number of challenges that contribute to a lack of job satisfaction, leaving schools for other professions that are more lucrative, low comparative compensation, and poor working conditions:

Like leadership turnover in other professions, turnover rates at more challenging schools are on the higher end of that spectrum (Beteille, Kalogrides and Loeb 2011, Boyd, et al. 2008, Clark, Martorell and Rockoff 2009). For instance, large, urban districts have similar turnover rates: Miami-Dade County Public Schools (MDCPS) is 22%, Milwaukee is 20%, San Francisco 26%, and New York City is 24% (Beteille, Kalogrides and Loeb 2011, Boyd, et al. 2008, Clark, Martorell and Rockoff 2009). However, within MDCPS, the turnover rate is higher for the district’s highest-poverty schools (28%), versus lowest-poverty schools (18%) (Beteille, Kalogrides and Loeb 2011). New York City school findings were similar (Clark, Martorell and Rockoff 2009). Low-performing, low-SES schools that lose an effective principal, often struggle due to having a replacement that is less-experienced and less-effective (Beteille, Kalogrides and Loeb 2011, Branch, Hanushek and Rivkin 2012).

Did you know that only one of a thousand teachers is fired for performance-related reasons? Teachers with bad performance are not being fired in America, which is caused the fact that teachers are backed up by tenure, but it can be fixed through changing the criteria a teacher should be fired on. Today, I will go over in detail what the problem, causes, and solution is to the issue of having bad teachers keep their job in America. So, first and foremost, I will discuss the problem about bad teachers not being fired.

The issue of teacher shortage today is continuing to grow. The effects of the achievement gap are reaching the teachers, not just the students: “...good administrators and teachers, who are doing their best under difficult circumstances, will be driven out of the profession…,” (Boyd-Zaharias 41). The achievement gap is part of the reason teachers feel they are underpaid, which happens to be one of the leading cause in teacher shortage considering, “Teachers were paid two percent less [than comparable workers] in 1994, but by 2015 the wage penalty rose to 17 percent,” (Long). Being a teacher requires passion in order to stay in the field, especially if the money in teaching is decreasing. Money is an important aspect for people when it comes to their careers, therefore, fewer people want to become teachers. This lack of teachers and the lack of college students studying to become a teacher leads to unqualified teachers and larger classroom sizes (Ostroff). Both of these causes are eventually affecting students’ learning environments. I chose this issue in education for my project because I have personally felt these effects, and I know others who have as well. As a future educator, I want to see better wages and better benefits, but this can only happen with qualified, passionate teachers. I plan on being one of them, and I plan on sparking a change. I am a future educator fighting to end teacher shortage.

There is a consensus among the concerned stakeholders that the quality of teachers is the leading factor in determination of student performance. In the case of United States, the student performance can only be given an impetus by the efforts which the state can make, under all costs, to develop and retain high quality teachers. The measures undertaken determine the level of turnover of the school teachers. Lazear (2009) similarly argues the length of employment is a critical factor in averse risks of employment a trend contrary to teachers treatment. The turnover of public school teachers will refer to the rate at which the state, which is the teacher’s

For instance, researchers have found when teachers leave a school, the district will often refill their position with a teacher, “who is not fully qualified to teach. 90% of open teaching positions are created by teachers who leave the profession” (Learning Policy Institute: Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It), making the teacher retention rate across the country pitifully low, right along with the budget. Filling these vacancies with unqualified teachers not only increase the school’s liability, but it also increases the chance of student failure in the classroom setting. Budget cuts are making school districts desperate to find qualified teachers. School districts are frantically searching for qualified individuals, as fewer people are going into the field of teaching. If the budget begins to increase, so will teacher retention rates, ultimately creating the best possible scenario for students, setting them up for success both inside and outside of the classroom setting and

Teaching is a very rewarding career if you learn and understand how to work with the diversity of the classrooms we teach in. As teachers, we need to be more vigilant of where are students come from. Before we can teach we need to know who we are teaching and what background, knowledge, and customs they bring with them to the classroom. We must also be aware of the factors that are relevant to the academic achievement of the students we currently teach. There are many of these factors, but I want to focus on two; teacher quality and low teacher expectations.

Calabrese and Fisher (1988) argue that teaching experience had a significant effect upon levels of alienation through the use of the Dean Alienation scale on 178 American subjects. This suggests that methods of self-efficac, Teacher’s self-efficacy as how performing specific teaching tasks in a current educational setting, which involves in how well they are capable of affecting student performance (Dellinger 2001). This is an extension of Rotter’s (1966) on how it was stated that the