Teachers in North Carolina are leaving their schools at a significantly higher rate this year.

The governor and legislature have targeted teachers for punitive measures, and they are succeeding in making teaching a less desirable career path.

Lindsay Wagner of NC Policy Watch reports:

“In 2008-09, only 35.55 percent of teachers who had tenure, also known as “career status,” left their jobs. That percentage has steadily risen and last year nearly half (49.35%) of all of those who left their positions were tenured teachers.

Mooresville Graded School District Superintendent Dr. Mark Edwards said it’s important to consider the fact that the state will see large numbers of baby boomers retiring during the next five years or so.

“We need to recruit people to stay,” said Edwards to his colleagues at this month’s State Board of Education meeting in Raleigh.

North Carolina ranks 46th in the nation in teacher pay. It takes 15 years for a teacher to make about $40,000 a year.

Last summer, state lawmakers decided to stop funding the North Carolina Teaching Fellows program, which awards scholarships to North Carolina high school students to pursue teaching degrees in state. Graduates then must teach for four years in North Carolina. More than 75 percent of Teaching Fellows teach in the state beyond five years, and many stay on for their entire careers.

Lawmakers took some of the money designated for the Teaching Fellows program and put it toward expanding the state’s presence of Teach For America (TFA), a national program designed to place graduates without degrees in education in teaching posts that are in low-performing schools.”

You can see where this is going.

As the state pushes out experienced teachers and eliminates its Teaching Fellows program, it clears the way to hire more inexperienced TFA, who pledge to stay for only two years. Call it turmoil by design.

Eric Guckian, the governor’s senior education advisor, is a TFA alumnus.

– See more at: http://www.ncpolicywatch.com/2013/12/05/teacher-turnover-in-north-carolina-significantly-higher-than-previous-year/#sthash.xL5z2KML.dpuf

Helen F. Ladd is a distinguished professor of public policy and economics at Duke University.

In this article, which appeared in the News-Observer in North Carolina, Ladd explains why the schools need experienced teachers, not just a steady supply of novices who serve for two or three years, then leave.

She writes:

In an effort to keep educational costs in check, America’s cash-strapped states, local school districts and charter schools are hiring less-costly novice teachers. Some of the new hires are energetic college graduates supplied for two-year stints by programs such as Teach for America.

In the late 1980s, most of the nation’s teachers had considerable experience – only 17 percent had taught for five or fewer years. By 2008, however, about 28 percent had less than five years of experience. The proportions of novices in the classroom are particularly high in schools in underprivileged areas. Some observers applaud the rapid “greening” of the teaching force because they think that experienced teachers are not needed. But this view is short-sighted. Although a constant flow of new recruits is healthy, research shows that teacher experience matters in important ways:

Experienced teachers, on average, are more effective at raising student achievement. In research I have done with colleagues in North Carolina, experienced teachers greatly boost student achievement in elementary, middle and high schools alike. This pattern holds even after we adjust for the fact that experienced teachers are more likely to work in schools with more advantaged students.

She and her colleagues recently completed a study of teacher effectiveness in North Carolina among math teachers, and they found that:

…math teachers become increasingly effective at raising student test scores through about 15 years, at which point they are about twice as effective as novices with two years of experience. The productivity gains are less dramatic for middle school English teachers but follow the same trajectory.

Experienced teachers also strengthen education in numerous ways beyond improving test scores. Our research suggests that as North Carolina middle school teachers gain experience, they become increasingly adept at producing other important results, such as reducing student absences and encouraging students to read for recreational purposes outside of the classroom. More experienced teachers often mentor young teachers and help create and maintain a strong school community.

Also, as other research has shown, constant teacher turnover is disruptive for schools and harmful to students, especially in disadvantaged schools. All too often, inexperienced teachers are initially assigned to disadvantaged schools, where the challenges of maintaining order and effectively instructing students are very high.