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Teacher Retention
Gene Fellner, Claire Fontaine, Noah Golden, and Judy TouzinColloquium IIU Ed 70002Professor PiccianoApril 24, 2008
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Teacher Retention: An Introduction
In the landmark publication of 
 A Nation at Risk 
by the National Commission onExcellence in Education, the findings section warns of “severe shortages of certain kinds of teachers” (National Commission on Excellence in Education [NCEE], 1983). More recentresearch indicates that the phrase “certain kinds” refers to highly qualified teachers in our nation’s urban schools, especially those that serve working-class and poor communities. Thecrisis is not, as is often believed, primarily due to higher rates of teacher retirement, nor is itattributable to increases in student enrollment or a failure to recruit teachers to work in thoseschools categorized as lowest performing. Recent studies suggest that it is our apparent inability
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to
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the most credentialed teachers in our lowest performing schools that has fueled thecrisis.Though 230,000 teachers enter the school system every year, about 290,000 leave thesystem entirely and an additional 250,000 “role change,” which is to say that they assume non-teaching positions or “migrate” between schools. In the latter case, the move is almost always
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from poorer schools to wealthier ones. According to a longitudinal study by Quartz et al. (2008)entitled “Careers in Motion” that follows 823 graduates of UCLA’s prestigious “Center X”teacher education program over a period of eight years, over 50 percent of these well-prepared beginning teachers initially placed in poor urban schools left full-time classroom teaching over the course of the study: 15 percent left the profession entirely and 35 percent “role-changed” outof full-time teaching positions. The comparative significance of these teacher attrition statistics isTeacher Retention 2
 
somewhat ambiguous, the study indicates, considering that 15 percent of lawyers also cease practice within eight years. Nevertheless, teacher attrition is a serious problem that policymakersconcerned about ensuring quality education for all our students need to address.In California, for example, 20 percent of schools, almost all located in low-incomecommunities, have a teaching staff that is 20 percent non-credentialed. Furthermore, the teacher turnover rate in these high poverty schools is 50 percent higher than it is in low poverty schools(Futernick, 2007). This trend negatively impacts the quality of education we offer our mostunderserved communities and imposes great economic expense on poor schools and districts thatmust recruit and mentor new teachers all over again (Quartz et al., 2008). Given the preponderance of evidence that teacher quality is the most influential variable associated withstudent performance, the retention of highly credentialed teachers is a critical issue to theeducational policymaking community.The research of Quartz et al. (2008) and Darling-Hammond (2003) indicates that working
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conditions are the main cause of teacher attrition. One Center X graduate “described his profession as ‘stagnant’ concerning salary and status: ‘in the business world, you can always
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 become an associate-this and then you can become ‘vice-this’ and then ‘director.’ In teachingyou’re just a teacher’” (Quartz et al., 2008, p. 240). Decent salaries, manageable class sizes, andeffective mentoring in the early years are important aspects of teachers’ working conditions, butagency and professionalism in the field are even more critical. It is essential that we addressTeacher Retention 3
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