Helen Zelon of “City Limits” wonders why teacher turnover is so high in nyc charter schools.
She writes:
“According to data from the New York State Department of Education, charter schools in New York City lose far more teachers every year than their traditional school counterparts. In some schools, more than half of faculty “turn over” from one school year to the next, according to NYSED school report cards.
“Charter advocates at the New York City Charter School Center and at Success Academies, the city’s largest charter network, say that at least some of the turnover is due to movement within school networks—teachers moving up the leadership ladder, for example, or to seed the faculty of new schools, which have opened at a rapid clip in recent years.
“But even so, it’s hard to explain a churn of more than half the veteran faculty, which is the case at 15 percent of charter schools for which the state reports data….”
“The situation is not much better for veteran teachers, who are often the minority in charter schools: Of the 70 schools, 10 lost more than half of their veteran faculty in the ’11-’12 academic year; 24 schools saw more than 40 percent of experienced teachers exit.”
Zelon adds:
“Near the top of the turnover chart is the Success Academies system led by former Councilwoman Eva Moskowitz. With 22 schools and 10 new schools opening in August 2014, it is the city’s largest charter chain.
In Harlem Success Academies 1-4, the only schools for which the state posted turnover data, more than half of all teachers left the schools ahead of the 2013-14 school year. In one school, three out of four teachers departed.”
Spokespersons for HSA said the data were wrong.
Why is attrition so high? Long working hours; teacher burnout; TFA who made a two-year commitment and never intended to stay longer.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Spokespersons for HSA said the data were wrong. . . ”
Does a wild bear shit in the woods?
And to finish the statement “. . . without offering any shred of evidence to counter the data.”
Is this not by design? Doesn’t TFA provide revolving door temps to the charters? Aren’t TFA told they must accept the first offer, and oftentimes it is to a charter?
I worked in a charter school. It was the worst experience of my life. Plenty of turnover at that school. Admins don’t care because it is just “business”.
….what is the average teacher salary at a Moskowitz school? She certainly pays herself well…
From the article:
“Academics and teachers in the trenches agree that most teachers hit professional proficiency within three to five years of entering the profession,, , , ”
This teacher who has been in the trenches for over two decades now says that “teachers hit professional efficiency within 8-10 years of entering the profession.”
“Academics and all but one teacher in the trenches agree that . . . “
Nuttin like bein an outlier, eh!!
Make that “two teachers in the trenches.” Ten years sounds about right to me.
As to academics? Like “coaches” and “specialists” and all the other out-of-classrooms created since NCLB and RtTT were passed, take a large grain of salt whenever any of these people speak. They all left the classroom for one of 2 reasons in my experience: they couldn’t hack teaching anymore and all the extra work involved (which they gladly add to once they no longer have to do any themselves) or they are highly ambitious and want power over others, usually without having the necessary empathy, wisdom, experience, or knowledge to make that work out well.
There are a few I’ve encountered over the years that were actually good at helping teachers and who acted like an actual colleague who respected teacher experience and knowledge but most today are far more interested in kissing up to superiors and wielding their VAM tools as weapons of mass destruction as they micromanage that which they themselves never succeeded at doing.
I don’t know where the author, Velon, got that “three to five years” figure characterizing “professional proficiency,” but it’s contrary to expert-novice comparison research that I’m aware of in education, as well as in other fields, i.e., Remember “the 10 thousand hour rule” per Malcolm Gladwell (2013) in Outliers (Gladwell, 2011), aka “the 10 year rule”?
“…a reasonable answer to the question of how long it takes to acquire high levels of skill as a teacher might be 5 to 7 years, if one works hard at it” (Berliner, 2004, p. 201).
That’s not at the level of expert though. There are stages in the development of expertise and this would be at the level of proficiency, which is considered to be more advanced than competency. Competence is more like the level that Velon was talking about.
The five stage model of Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) has been a framework used traditionally for comprehending the development of expertise. A new model has been proposed for understanding this development for teachers, beginning with their preparation in teacher education programs (Lindner, Carson, Dooley & La Prad, n.d.). Taking into consideration the fact that those who have gone through teacher ed programs differ significantly in their training and classroom experiences from those who have not, such as TFAers, generally, it looks like this for teachers in the traditional frame:
Novice (1st year)
Advanced beginner (2nd year)
Competent (3-5 years)
Proficient (5-7 years)
Expert (8-10+ years)
“It is estimated that sometime after approximately 5 years of experience, a small number of teachers will move beyond competence, moving into the proficient stage of development” (Berliner, 2004, p. 207).
Experience is necessary but it’s not sufficient for developing expertise. One must engage in regular, deliberate practice and make concerted, contextualized efforts towards improvement.
References
Berliner, D. C. (2004). Describing the behavior and documenting the accomplishments of expert teachers. Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society,. 24, 1, 200-212.
Dreyfus, H.L. & Dreyfus, S.E. (1980). A five-stage model of the mental activities involved in directed skill acquisition. ORC-80-2. Operations Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, pp. 1-18.
Gladwell, M. (2013, August 21). Complexity and the ten-thousand-hour rule. The New Yorker. Retrieved August 24, 2014, from http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/complexity-and-the-ten-thousand-hour-rule
Gladwell, M. (2011). Outliers: The story of success. New York, NY: Back Bay Books.
Lindner, R., Carson, E. Dooley, C. & La Prad, J. (n.d.). A model of expertise in teaching: Defining a developmental sequence for programs administrators, policymakers and researchers. Western Illinois University.
correction: the author Zelon not Velon
Thanks for those references CT!
HEY FLERP! maybe I’m not an outlier!
My pleasure, Duane!
You are not an outlier in your grasp of what is required to develop expertise, based on having spent all those years consciously honing your craft, according to the research. Not everyone does that though, in ANY field, so genuine experts are actually outliers in themselves.
As Art Segal mentioned, so many mandates for teachers and dwindling autonomy in the classroom have both served as serious obstacles that have prevented many teachers from being able to polish their skills. Since those demands have come mostly from non-educator corporate “reformers,” who seem intent on raising the bar for genuine educators while lowering the bar for non-educators, it appears to be an intentional effort to handicap formally trained, experienced teachers and to try to prove that no skills are really necessary to be an educator, so virtually anyone can teach –which is contrary to research. In Berliner’s 2004 article, he described how National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) have consistently demonstrated high levels of expertise.
A corporate “ed reform” strategy nowadays is to use “disruptive innovation” to ensure that THERE ARE NO MORE VETERAN TEACHERS. The notion that teachers reach “professional efficiency” is sadly no longer. There is no mastering of the craft of teaching anymore. How can a teacher hone skills when they are not allowed to use the skills they know should be honed? How can a teacher reach “professional efficiency” when they must follow a barrage of ever-changing directives that get more and more “complex” at the same time as they get farther away from helping students? But they sure do get tracked with endless data trails. How many teachers get mired in spending untold amounts of time due to supposed “technological improvements” at every turn? Anyone here have to upload a grade or an administrative-issued mandate on a system that is slow or has a glitch and under deadline none-the-less?
Yes, my retired military superintendent, with no teaching experience, embraced ‘disruptive innovation’ wholeheartedly.
We are now entering the 2nd week of the new school year with no computer printers (company cancelled the contract due to low profit margins), no printing services (super fired all the workers and cut the budget to nothing), a completely disastrous HR department incapable of processing new hires correctly and doing payroll correctly (super fired all the experienced workers and replaced them with inexperienced business people), a toxic IT department where half the teachers in the county have no working email accounts and all of the IT teachers have been stripped of their administrative privileges making it impossible for them to do their jobs (super fired all the experienced IT people, all former teachers, and replaced them with a much smaller dept. headed by a young ‘expert’ from business with no background in education), a huge shortage of new ‘Florida (CCSS) Standards’ aligned textbooks (we do not have online access yet and over 50% of the materials are online only and we are told that we MUST use these materials and nothing else to teach now), and classes that far exceed the state constitution’s class size limits (super decreased staffing in order to claim a budget ‘surplus’).
To say that morale is low would be a vast understatement. To say that our district is floating out to sea without a paddle or compass to guide us would be very accurate.
Disruption for the sake of disruption is idiocy and highly rewarded in the reformist movement.
Y’all have got it wrong.
Remember past postings here that drew the comments of red-hot SA fans and Eva M acolytes?
😳
The answer is, like, gag me with a spoon obvious: her schools are so wonderful that a great many “so-called” teachers cannot stand working in such awe-inspiring environments. Especially those with more experience that are wedded to mediocrity.
Now, I know Señor Swacker will do that “Wilson Quality/Quantity” thing but let’s get Rheeal, in a Johnsonally sort of way.
Even though the numbers are shifting a little, Eva the Unselfish has been hauling in over $70@student@year, while that lazy LIFO-minded head of NYC public schools, Carmen “It’s All About Me” Fariña, is collecting about $0.19¢@student@year.
Folks, that’s over 350 to 1. Like attracts like. SA attracts the highest salaried, er, highest quality head [@student@year] while NYC public schools attracts, well, lazy LIFO types that are worth next to nothing.
These are hard data points. Can’t be disputed. ‘Men lie and women lie but numbers don’t” [“Dr.” Steve Perry, channeling rapper Jay-Z]
See thread of a blog posting here accessed by this link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/04/05/florida-a-charter-founder-who-has-raised-200-million-in-tax-exempt-bonds/
So teachers of America take your pick: would you rather get your tiny share of glory by basking in the warm glow of the world-class achievement gap crushing awesomeness of Saint Eva, or would you rather work under someone who doesn’t even come close [@student@year] to the 99¢ [@student@year] putative upper limit of the items in a cheapo 99¢ store?
I can’t hearrrr you…
I guess some people just can’t appreciate being associated with greatness.
Go figure…
😎
P.S. Duane, next time we meet at Pink Slip Bar & Grille, would you explain to Socrates that the above is meant as satire? He’s too darned serious sometimes. He keeps murmuring under his breath about “It is not living that matters, but living rightly” and combine that with his not-party toga and that little vial of something he won’t name he keeps trying to pour into my drinks—
And I, uh, am not resting easy until this matter is resolved. My treat next time.
KTA,
I’ll try to speak with him but you know that (as your own experience with him has shown you) as a self designated gadfly, he really doesn’t listen much to anyone much less an old fart Spanish teacher (hell, he doesn’t even recognize that language). And I keep seeing scurrilous figures in the shadows (but that may be due to enjoying too much absinthe when the Pink Slip has its specials) who might be holding the goods as it is known that ol Socrates really isn’t looking forward to his “golden years” especially since he didn’t manage to save enough for those special years to be down at the Pink Slip as often as he is.
Krazy, I may have to crash the party. Here in Clark County, Nevada, as we are 600 plus short, our district must just want to mirror the excellence of turnover to avoid burnout. Charter excellences may abound if our governor has his way. I will have to find the Bar on MapQuest. I will try to talk to the old man for you. As a near geezer myself, we have some empathy for each other.
OT,
You’ll always be welcome at the Pink Slip. They’ve got special deals, especially for Old Teacher(s), however beware the Classical Athenian bringing the drinks to you.
Señor Swacker: as Yoda would say—
“Erudite, are you!”
From whence comes the well-known Greek adage, “beware of disgruntled Greeks bearing gifts!”
¿? Trojan War? Iliad? Homer? I got it wrong? ¡Maldito sea esa porquería de CCSS ‘closet reading!/Cursed be that lousy CCSS ‘closet reading’!
😡
When will I learn to bring enough spare batteries with me when I’m in the closet doing my CCSS work and I’ve got Arne Duncan snoring in the corner, distracting me?
There’s just got to be a better way…
😎
P.S. Old Teacher: you’re always welcome. And rest easy. While Duane and I may have our moments with the old Greek guy, Linda and Ang always make sure we stay on track for good conversation amidst good company. They say teachers are good at that…
😏
Meanwhile, a proposal in Missiouri calls for constitutional amendment that will be on the ballot in November, It will require teachers to be paid, promoted, dismissed Primarily on quantitave measures of student performance, require state officials to approve the evaluation system in every district as a condition for state funding (sounds like another round of comply or die). The amendament would prohibit unions from altering the approved district system, and limit teacher contracts to three years.(p.4., Education Week, 8-20-2014).
Can you imagine how many people it will take to approve the evaluation systems for every school system in a timely fashion? Illinois will probably adopt that requirement. It would allow them to withhold state funds, something of which they seem to be perpetually short.
Laura,
I’m betting that Sinquefield’s ballot babosity will be defeated 73% to 27%. Needless to say I will be speaking with any and everyone that I can (not that I have a huge circle of friends but I can’t help but talking with anyone, strangers included) to show them the idiocies behind ol Rex’s inanities. The initial reactions by one and all has been one of disbelief: “What, are you kidding me? That’s not on the ballot, no way?, How stupid is that?”
Show Me Staters don’t take changing the State Constitution lightly unless it’s going to be against “them queers” trying to steal marriage away from the righteous. This amendment has no christian fundamentalist bent to it to arouse the hard core religious conservatives. Generally, in Missouri teachers are still quite respected by the average Joe and Jane. The Rexster has way overshot his wad (double entendre intended) on this one.
My son in Missouri has already been told that if he and his wife do not vote against this measure the only thing they will inherit from me will be a bunch of bills and my disgust. They don’t realize that as things stand bills are all they will likely get from me if administration has its way.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The probably reason for the turnover– this article quote from Harlem Children’s Zone: “They understand that this organization is here for them for whatever they need, 24/7, until they graduate college.”
Collaboration, and building on results of previous yrs’ collaboration, would be impossible in such a setting.
You can see why teachers leave Success Academy at the Glassdoor.com SA reviews page here (there’s no fee to join Glassdoor):
http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Reviews-E381408.htm?sort.sortType=OR&sort.ascending=true
Thanks for link, scathing reviews:
Worked for one of the highest performing schools in the network in the Bronx. Entire school focused on remaining at top of network schools assessment wise while pushing students in completely developmentally inappropriate and emotionally ABUSIVE ways. When I brought up that Eva and the network and research disagrees with practices at my location, I was told the network didn’t know what they were talking about, haven’t I seen our top assessment scores, and that my primary responsibility was to make sure my classroom assessment data was up. Teachers openly MOCKED 6 year olds with learning disabilities telling them they would see them in the same grade again next year because they were neither smart nor hard working and hopefully would not be in their student again- in front of the entire classroom. Left work every day feeling angry at the school until I left permanently.
Advice to Management
Teacher culture needs to be totally reformed- experienced total lack of professionalism by newer teachers in front of children we were meant to be models for.
“Teachers openly MOCKED 6 year olds with learning disabilities telling them they would see them in the same grade again next year because they were neither smart nor hard working and hopefully would not be in their student again- in front of the entire classroom.”
Are you sure you’re not talking about Catholic education in the 50s and 60s???
Success academy review from Glassdoor:
Cons
1. Micromanaging by leadership
2. No autonomy in your classroom, it’s like they’re making all their teachers into replicas of the one model they’re looking for
3. Overworked school day – I would arrive by 6:45 am and I felt like I was running behind already. I would work till 5:00 pm at school, then bolt out the door to get home to my family. I would tirelessly grade papers while on the subway, try to respond to the absurd amount of emails and constantly changing meetings, expectations, etc. I would work on school work for extra hours at night and it was never enough.
If this had been my first teaching job out of college, I would have hated teaching. Luckily I had 6 years experience in a great school district in a different state.
The stories I had to tell about this job made everyone in my life tell me to quit. There was so much stress and anxiety going into each week of the job.
All teachers are extremely overworked. 12-hour work days are the norm. Very, very little prep time during the day, as meetings are held during “prep” periods. Management encourages bizarre competition between teachers, and as a result, morale is low.
Students are pushed out of the school if they exhibit any negative behaviors or if their data is low. In either case, management will meet with the family to tell them that this school is “just not the right fit for them”. If that doesn’t work, they will suspend the child ad nauseum or even push them down into a lower grade, so that their exhausted parents give in. It’s absurd that this school is publicly funded when it does not serve the population it purports to serve. It is honestly more a school for gifted students than a school working to close the achievement gap. I include this in my review because it contributes to the low morale of the school – your students who you love are constantly being kicked out.
Advice to Management
Value your teachers more by making their workday more manageable. This will lead to teacher retention. 6:30am – 6:30pm is not sustainable, as the teacher turnover rate clearly attests. Also, value the children who are told they don’t belong at our school. If we can’t help them, what are we doing in the education business?
All comments were posted at charter school reviews, link from CosmicT
Thanks, Linda!
I’m going to pull out some additional comments that caught my eye from different SA employees, some of which actually came from the more positive reviews (like the one about “Magic 5” further down):
“Unethical treatment of students and teachers, competition at all costs, little support for students with disability, retains an average of less than 50% of students, retains an average of 30% of staff, leadership and staff are replaced with no communication or explanation, humiliation used as main motivational tool for both students and staff, students struggle with anxiety, very little emotional or social support (students stay silent 80% of the day, silent hallways in upper grades, young students told to stop crying when dealing with personal trauma), no work-life balance, CEO is in constant conflict with city government which causes ongoing location uncertainty, network is rapidly opening new schools while neglecting to fix all of the other dysfunctional sites first”
“…Militaristic style of teaching to the test. Students did not learn content. ”
“Cons
Everything… the style of teaching and discipline is horrifying, I didn’t like who I became after working here…”
“Focus on test scores and nothing else.”
“…their very strict classroom rules for students also border on abusive
– While building critical reading and writing skills in kids, also severely stamps down on self-expression or autonomy (punishments are plentiful, harsh, and unexplained)
– absolute silence in hallways, even teachers are discouraged from speaking”
“Uncertain how much school cares about kids (it’s more about the numbers).”
“Was assigned way more tasks than what I believe a teacher should be asked to do (which resulted in lower quality work in the classroom). Extremely micromanaged, which was forced upon me in my work, and forced upon students as well. Little creativity encouraged in learning.” and “…this school turned me off from teaching. Literally worked me until I was sick. Actually care about your employees well-being and sanity–work smarter, not harder. Allow kids to be kids, and let the teachers teach.”
“Huge focus on testing and test scores. The image of multidisciplinary “whole-child” curriculum just isn’t true in Grades 3 and up, when the students spend months on end preparing for the state tests.”
“Cons
there is sometimes some mis-alignment between network requirements and the day-to-day business of classrooms. If you’re interested in taking your teaching career beyond the charter world, you won’t get much experience here in things like unit/lesson planning or or social/emotional development. the emphasis on meeting testing benchmarks is not for the faint of heart.
Advice to Management
more training on developing the whole child! it’s not just sending them off to specials! I wish we could learn more about how kids learn, and especially how to deal with exceptional learners and behaviors…”
“Advice to Management
Less focus on 100% one hundred percent of the time. Sitting in magic 5 for 15-20 minutes on the rug is not easy….I’ve tried it out and I was not comfortable. There must be some way of striking a happy medium. T&G/Private schools have demanding behavior codes w/o resorting to 100% all of the time.”
I tried to find out more about the 100% compliance requirement with “magic 5” 100% of the time for 15-20 minutes sitting on a rug and I found this info, from the SA Family Handbook, indicating that “Slouching / failing to be in “Magic/5/Ready to Succeed” position is a “Level 1” infraction, which becomes a Level 2 infraction if committed after intervention, and if repeated, then Level 3 and then Level 4. Ultimately, failure to comply can result in expulsion –See increasing consequences here:
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/2012/04/success-academy-family-handbook-only.html As a child development specialist, I think this requirement of young children is abuse.
There is a recurring theme in reviews regarding how young (TFA?) automatons are quickly promoted to management, which is like the blind leading the blind and is typical of what we are seeing at middle and upper management levels of reformy education run by non-educators across the country today, such as this:
“Young employee demographic with little experience.”
and this: “I got the impression many employees were working there as a transitional job”
and this: “over-promotion, young workforce that exudes professional immaturity, heavy test prep that no one speaks of outside of the organization”
Finally, interns are paid about $10 per hour and this one noted:
“They will not give you reference letter, its against company policy.”
The salaries at Success Academy look very good to me, even for assistant teachers:
http://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Success-Academy-Charter-Schools-Salaries-E381408.htm
For context: as of this school year, the starting salary at an NYC DOE school is $54k and change (up from about $46k on the previous contract).
If salary is all you are interested in, you might meet some professional fulfillment snags along this path…..
Who said salary was “all” anyone was interested in? People have asked what teachers at SA are paid, like Donna above. Most P-12 teachers don’t go into education to get rich. It’s the non-educators who do that, like Moskowitz and her $500K per year income.
Why is turnover to high in NYC charters? The answer is pretty simple… those in positions of power in charter schools want turnover to be high as it is part of their financial bottom line. The heads of these schools manage to keep their salaries high (at teacher’s expense?). They know teachers won’t stay lone… will leave because their policy is designed to wear teachers out! You cannot expect teachers to live and breath their teaching ignoring anything in their personal lives. Most public school teachers who are non charter are feeling the same way these days yet don’t have “official long hours” and “required on call” at home after school. I hear stories of charter teachers being required to be on call with cell phones on for students to answer questions up until 9pm (as if the teacher’s own family life does not matter)… the school day hours are grinding… I knew one teacher who returned to regular public school living to tell her tale! I knew one school that started at 7am and ended after 4pm and think this is typical. And charter school teachers, like public school teachers, NEVER leave when the school bell rings at day’s end. So these charter teachers are getting home super late, answering student questions once they get home AND THEN doing all the work that keeps all teachers charter or not doing work well beyond the school day (as in grading, lesson planning, preparing accountability paperwork etc..). Sounds like an answer to high turnover… teachers are still human after all!
“teachers are still human after all”
And that will soon be remedied when K12 and the other online learning scams achieve full takeover.
In FL all ‘at risk’ schools (used to be F schools, now includes all F, D, and C schools!) are required to add an extra hour of scripted phonics instruction to ‘bring up’ the state’s reading scores. We are quickly adding all the worst aspects of charter teaching to the public school teacher’s day.
Coming to an ALEC-controlled state legislature near you! FL is a testing ground.
The author of this article is far too credulous in accepting at face value the crocodile tears of charter operators concerning teacher churn.
One of the many dirty secrets of charter schools is that high teacher turnover is the unspoken, de facto policy, since it maintains a cheap and compliant workforce. It’s a critical feature, not a bug, and is a major reason why the Overclass is so infatuated with charters.
Given the soul crushing, Skinner Box-type pedagogy used at Success Academies and other No Excuses charter chains, with their high student attrition rates, why should anyone be surprised that the teachers are trampling each other to get out?
Michael Fiorillo: what you write high teacher turnover “is a critical feature, not a bug” you are not being contentious or exaggerating or making it up.
It is a simple statement of fact.
And notice the double-think employed by the edufrauds who provide spin control for eduprenuers: when the parents of public school students take their kids out of “factories of failure” and “dropout factories” and put them in marvelous charters, they’re ‘voting with their feet’—
But when the people working on the front lines of those awesome Centres of EduExcellence ‘vote with their feet’ by leaving in droves, not a single peep. Or if it’s a peep, it’s done in such a quiet and hidden manner that it doesn’t damage the brand.
Could this be—gasp!—one of the reasons that charters loathe transparency and accountability and openness with their ‘hard’ data points?
Nah, couldn’t be. I have it on the slightest, er, highestestest authority:
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
Meant, of course, in the most Johnsonally of ways…
😎
It would be interesting to know what percentage of the turnover is involuntary: teachers being terminated or failing to get a contract for the next year. In my experience in Michigan, some charter management companies like to promise longevity bonuses to teachers who stay for a certain number of years. It is not unusual for a teacher about to enter the final year towards completing the requirement to get the offered bonus to not be renewed or to be fired right towards the end of the penultimate year.
There are also terminations of teachers who rock the boat, and the definition of what comprises rocking the boat at many of these charter schools is quite amorphous and arbitrary. Calling into question management practices and decisions that appear to be illegal or unethical is a ticket on the fast track to getting thrown under the train. It’s not hard to guess why charter schools so rarely have anything like tenure, due process, or collective bargaining. Unions are virtually unknown in the charter world.
Couple that with those teachers smart and fortunate enough to jump to a unionized public school job, those who are driven out by intolerable teaching conditions and administrative/management practices, and you have a pretty good idea about high turnover rate.