New York City Schools Not Retaining Veteran Teachers
Posted on: Monday, 8 August 2005, 18:00 CDT
Aug. 8--Come next month, fewer veteran teachers will be standing at the front of classrooms in city public schools.
Roughly 2,500 teachers have retired so far this year, about 500 less than the same period last year, when 3,000 had handed in their walking papers by Aug. 1, according to the Teachers Retirement System, a city pension agency.
The city Education Department put a positive spin on the numbers, with spokesman Keith Kalb saying, "We are pleased that teachers are remaining in the system and will anticipate that the trend will continue."
But in the past four years, more than 10,000 city teachers have retired, leaving a smaller pool of instructors eligible to walk away. The city expects to hire 7,000 new teachers by next month.
"At this point, very few schools have experienced teachers," said United Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten. "The administration has been sending a sign that experience is not valued."
But the retirement trend is not isolated to the city.
"The teacher workforce is getting younger nationally," said Michael Podgursky, an economist at the University of Missouri. "We are over this graying teacher hump."
There is no evidence that senior teachers are more effective than teachers with at least three years of experience, he said.
Many teachers leave the profession before getting anywhere near retirement, Podgursky said.
Nearly 3,500 certified teachers quit the city school system this year -- the highest number ever, Weingarten said.
The turnover tends to be high because teaching is a female-dominated job and many young instructors leave to raise children.
Others simply find teaching a bad fit, Podgursky said.
"That's the way the market works," he said. "People try jobs and decide if they want to keep doing it."
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Source: Daily News
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