Alternet posted an informative article that explains why charter schools churn through teachers. It was written by Rann Miller, who taught for six years in a charter school in Camden, New Jersey.
He writes:
“John was fresh-out-of-college and had never set foot in a city school before. Hired the day before the school year started, he missed out on the two-and-a-half weeks of training the charter organization had given the rest of us on what to expect at a turnaround school in Camden, NJ. John lasted less than a week.
“I’d started the year as a history teacher, relieved to be without the responsibility of my own classroom and homeroom. But after five more teachers followed John out of the school building within the first month, I had both. When I left at the beginning of the next school year, seven more teachers were right behind me.
“When a school loses teachers, by choice or by chance, students are cheated out of continuity, while the goals and objectives of the entire organization can be hindered. In charter schools, including the ones where I taught for six years, this problem is particularly pronounced. Teachers leave charters at significantly higher rates when compared to traditional public schools. Among urban charter schools, it’s not uncommon to see teachers turning over at a rate of 30, 40 or even 50% a year. I’ve witnessed first hand—and experienced—why this is such a problem, and what causes teachers to flee. But I’ve also seen for myself that there are charter schools and networks that don’t mind high levels of teacher turnover. Turmoil and churn work for organizations that are determined to control both the makeup and the mindset of their faculty…
“The weeding process is all about maintaining control where there is none. It serves to remove “troublemakers”: the folks who will hold the organization accountable. For charter leadership looking to maintain sovereignty of mission and mission implementation, teachers who are independent thinkers and teachers with lives outside of schools are as much of a detriment as those deemed incompetent. The teachers who remain either like the Kool-Aid or at the very least are still thirsty.
“Teacher turnover is an effective tool for organizations that seek to shift accountability away from school leadership. High teacher attrition is an accountability loophole. Rather than rethink a mission that prizes drilling over teaching, or addressing why young teachers get burned out or why teachers of color walk away from the very communities they are so passionate about, some charter leaders will often put the blame on the leavers. “They couldn’t cut it,” you’ll hear them say. They’ll insist to stakeholders that some teachers weren’t good enough, while others weren’t the right “fit” for the organizational mission and culture. The charter school’s organizational leadership and mission remain intact; anyone who is not fighting for “our kids” has been let go.”
Read it all. Quite a story.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
When I was forced to teach outside of my certification, I felt like I was writing with my left hand. Certification, however, is on the road to extinction. The less qualified and the less experienced the teacher, the better.
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OR: how to maneuver the school “reform” game from supporting and retaining highly educated professional teachers to hiring and harassing only minimum-wage computer “facilitators.” Teachers in districts dependent on test-score funding are increasingly treated as interchangeable widgets.
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This is called “churning” and the intent is just as described, control. And cheap labor. It’s borrowed from corporate environments that do the same thing. I once worked at a large tech company that “reorganized” once a year, at least. It was basically firing time. The “weakest” performers would be culled (fired), and then the management structure reorganized. It keeps you in a state of worry and overwork.
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Not to mention that wages can be kept low; benefits, pensions, sick leave, overtime pay, vacation time and personal days are non-existent.
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So when will schools move away from this business model of education that was set in place in the 80’s?
In the 80’s, the government realized that students, taught by certified teachers, were not globally competitive. This is why they implemented “Nation at Risk”. Now, we have charter schools recruiting these young inexperienced college graduates, who do not seem to last. I can see why a young teacher is appealing to a charter school due to low costs and being easily trainable, like most businesses prefer, but why not recruit young qualified teachers? This article tells that the new graduate did not even have the new teacher training that many public schools require.
Although this charter school saved money by hiring a cheap teacher, ultimately they lost. The students are extremely impacted as they do not have the continued education of the teacher. This is another reason that charter schools are deemed ineffective.
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BryGuz
You said, “In the 80’s, the government realized that students, taught by certified teachers, were not globally competitive.”
That was a con, a lie, a deliberate lie, fake.
Ronald Reagon released a report called “A Nation at Risk”. A few years later, while everyone was running around in a panic and driven by fear from all the fear mongering crap out of the media, the Sandia report published a study of “A Nation at Risk” revealing it was all wrong. The war being waged against America’s Community Based, democratically managed, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools and its unionized teachers are all based on that fraud.
“Nearly a quarter century ago, “A Nation at Risk” hit our schools like a brick dropped from a penthouse window. One problem: The landmark document that still shapes our national debate on education was misquoted, misinterpreted, and often dead wrong.”
https://www.edutopia.org/landmark-education-report-nation-risk
Then early in the 21st century came the manipulated facts and propoganda about America’s poor standings on the international PISA tests. More of the same crap Reagan buried us in back in the 1980s.
A study out of STANFORD, one of the top five ranked private sector universities in the world, proved what the U.S. media keeps reporting about the PISA tests and the alleged failing public schools is also wrong.
“Poor ranking on international test misleading about U.S. student performance, Stanford researcher finds”
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2013/january/test-scores-ranking-011513.html
There have been other reputable studies backing up the findings of the Sandia study and the study out of Stanford, but most of the traditional media and all of the hate based, racist Alt-Right conspiracy theory promoting media ignores those studies and keeps promoting the ones that were WRONG!
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I wonder if most if not all of these charter school leaders have armed bodyguards and armored cars. If they were officers in the U.S. military, they wouldn’t last long in a combat situation. In the military, the troops can’t quit so when there is an officer like these charter school leaders, what’s called friendly fire gets rid of the problem.
If this was happening in combat zones like Iraq or Afghanistan, the turnover would be officers not the troops and the officers would be leaving in body bags.
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Mr. Miller-Please come teach in a public school. We need dedicated, passionate teachers like you. We also welcome those who hold all accountable.
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The scenario painted by Rann Miller is only a skosh away from the reality of many of today’s public school teachers, who have been inundated for the last 16 yrs by unfunded fed accountability mandates– adding many hrs of curriculum alignment to CCSS (also hampering their ability to innovate curriculum/ pedagogy), & many hrs of test-prep to their classes to support NCLB/ RTTT stdzd testing (thus narrowing the ability to pursue curriculum), & many after-school hrs of pprwk & data-input to support mandated teacher-evaln programs (causing them to spend endless hrs figuring out how to posit student-achievement goals against probable outcomes).
Granted, pubsch teachers are paid better & get better benefits. But the end result is the same: chasing qualified teachers– & folks who might become good teachers, given a living wage & admin support– from the field of education.
Sometimes Ihink our squabbles over charter & voucher alts to public school, while well-founded & well-argued, miss the point. It is publically-funded education itself that is under siege by our politicians. Once privatization succeeds, it’s a small step to declaring school-taxation unnecessary: sauve qui peut, one less public-good-overhead dragging down our ability to compete w/banana republics. We had best frame our arguments in terms of how best to expend the education dollar– district-wise & nation-wise– w/emphasis on why educating the population makes sense.
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After 45 years as a professional educator I ‘m so glad to be out! I’d never consider going into the profession today, nor would I advise a young person to consider going into the profession.
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When I was a young man, I taught at a private school that had as its mission the serving of children who were not doing well in other private and public schools. The church supported it, as it had since the school was founded as a mission in the early 1900s. Attrition was so high in this residential school that it would mostly turn over in students and teachers every two years.
Teaching at this school taught me how important it is for a staff to be stable. This is especially important where a public school is such an integral part of the community. Students return to see old friends and teachers. The school acts as a dialogue center for the community. Many schools are polling places and thus are integral locations for the practice of the representative government that appears to so many of us to be slipping away.
Once I visited a friend in a small Nebraska town. I really do not know its population, but like other Nebraska towns, the declining profit margin in agriculture had sent so many of its sons and daughters to other places to earn a living. I watched with a sense of respect as several retired gentlemen worked the flower bed in front of their school. Stability is the hallmark of a good school. It is the one metric that really means something. At a good school, some people will come and go, but a core of really good teachers remain for many years. Soon some of their former students return to work or teach. Former students, now members of the community, come back to school to help with the extracurricular programs.
I realize that this is not a possibility in some impoverished communities today. Poverty does not produce stability, and the best schools will not look that way in an impoverished place. That is all the more reason for us to attack the problem of the communities where schools appear to us to be failing in their mission. We will never succeed if the model for success is to provide a few lucky individuals with a means for escaping the community. This will only destroy the community.
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A primary feature, and most definitely not a bug, of so-called education reform.
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I taught in a charter school for four years, and I experienced the extremely high rate of teacher turnover firsthand. There were years when fifteen or even more teachers left. Leadership hired new and freshly graduated teachers with no experience while students were “cheated out of continuity.”
Among the reasons that caused teachers to leave, I would like to mention the feeling of insecurity and uncertainty. Unfortunately, charter schools have become for-profit organizations providing business opportunities for investors. Teachers who worked at this charter school did not receive a pay raise for years, and such thing as a salary scale did not exist upon which they could have held the school accountable. The unused PTO hours could not be rolled over. On the other hand, administration became upset when lots of teachers took their days off at the end of the school year. During my four years, we had five principals in a row, though the management company stayed the same. It was chaotic and scary at the same time.
As a public charter school, it promised better academic achievement and results than public schools. I agree with Diane Ravitch that the charter school system encourages charter schools to compete against public schools instead of collaboration. Though I did not experience it, it can cause English language learners and students with disabilities to be excluded from charter schools.
Since the school fell drastically behind its promise, regarding better student achievement scores, the county decided not to renew its charter. Due to deregulation, and financial oversight, the charter school owes $5.6 million more than it has in assets. The principal accused the district of shorting the school over many years. The principal blamed the district for not providing enough funding, which caused extremely high teacher turnover. For the above mentioned reasons, I agree with the writer that “teacher turnover is an effective tool for organizations that seek to shift accountability away from school leadership. High teacher attrition is an accountability loophole”.
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