When a large number of teachers leave a school in one year
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Anonymous
It's ridiculous how much admin in the W clusters cave to parental pressure. I know of one shining star in her first year who's already developing an escape plan. very sad b/c she was a dynamic and creative student teacher The annoying and controlling W parents coupled with no support from admin crushed her. I support her move out, but at the same time, as a parent and educator, I worry about the profession and how any mass exodus will affect my own children's education. At this point, I envy my friends whose children have exited the system. I work in an area with little to no parental involvement. So our issues are drastically different. If there's mass exodus (and there has been in the recent past), it's b/c of exhaustion. very sad all around |
Anonymous
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Sometimes a large number of teachers will follow a principle from one elementary school to another.
In our one experience with this, MCPS seemed to notice and seemed to work to slow it down but over three years 9 teachers transferred. Now it could just be the natural flow from less desirable to more desirable school but it didn't seem that way. In the 4th year, the principle moved on and the 9 teachers didn't follow to middle school. |
Anonymous
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It is important to look at how many teachers normally leave a a school each year and how many total teachers/staff there are. In some of the smaller ESs, there are only maybe 40 total staff members. If there is not normally much turnover and 6 leave - that's a lot for that school. Other schools have over 100 staff members and if 6 leave, that's nothing.
Also, any teacher knows that there are a host of excuses you can give for why you're leaving when you don't like the admin or the school - "I want to be closer to home" or "I want to try a different experience" are often codes for "I don't like my principal" or "The culture at this school is killing me". |
Anonymous
Teacher who posted earlier--yes, and those things are also code for "I want to be closer to home" or "I want to try a different experience." You just don't know. My DH is also a teacher and hated one principal, as did many staff, who left after his first year. Yet when he left, some teachers followed him to his new school. So which is it, was he a terrible leader and made the school bad, or was he so amazing that staff followed him to his next guaranteed-successful project? I also had a negative principal experience this past year, and we lost a few staff members, but one had moved during the year and didn't want an hour-long commute, two moved out of the area completely, one decided to take long-term parental leave, and two had their positions cut from full time and found full time positions elsewhere. So that's six teachers leaving that had nothing to do with the (terrible) principal. You just do not know. If there was an exodus at my kids' school, I would not make any assumptions until I'd gone through the teacher grapevine and gotten at least part of the story. |
Anonymous
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Can anyone clarify why in it should actually matter if teachers leave?
Your kid gets a new teacher each year, right? Does it matter if its someone they have some knowledge of or not? I would say probably it doesn't. |
Anonymous
Yes, Pyle is having a huge turnover this year. A lot of good teachers and staff are leaving. |
Anonymous
Well, if you are a parent of s 6th grader and a school loses 9 seventh and eighth grade teachers who are fabulous, isn't that kind of a bummer for your kid? It also speaks to the feeling in the school. Happy teachers are better teachers, and kids benefit from having happy teachers who feel supported in their buildings. Also, it raises a red flag for potential transfer teachers if they know many are trying to get out or just got out. |
Anonymous
As I believe some teachers who posted above pointed out, this is not the case at all. If there are "unhappy" teachers in school you don't want your kid in their class. If they are able to leave - good. Your post leaves out a lot of clear thinking and makes a lot of assumptions and generalizations which are pure speculation and probably utterly irrelevant when it comes to the experience of the students. |
Anonymous
| I agree to a point, pp, that when there is dysfunction in a building, it's good for the unhappy teachers to be able to leave. But if they are great teachers, it's a loss for the school. It's better to find ways to fix the dysfunction and keep these teachers. Plus, when schools are in a bad state, it's often the worst teachers who stick around because they are stuck. They can't get hired elsewhere. It is naive to think that your kids' teachers' happiness doesn't impact your kids' educational experience. As parents, we want healthy school environments that support our kids' most innovative and effective teachers. There of course can be many reasons teachers choose to leave, but when they depart in big numbers, then as parents we should wonder whether there is an internal, school problem. |
Anonymous
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I think parents are also super twitchy about this, sometimes needlessly so. We're at a smallish ES and a handful of parents were tying themselves in knots because "everyone's leaving!"
Turns out there were some retirements, some folks moving out of state, someone who got a specialist job at another school, etc. When you added it up, the turnover wasn't much more than my similarly-sized employer saw over the last year, except that it was spread out at my job, as opposed to everyone moving at once. |
Anonymous
| It's a way to take the temperature of a place. If it's mostly retirements, that's a different ball game. When a bunch of strong and experienced educators want out simply to go to a similar school down the road that has a different culture or stronger leadership, then there likely is a problem. When this happens, it's worth digging a bit. |
Anonymous
I think one of the points being made is that it's difficult to determine why or where--yes, if teachers go to nearby schools and teach in the same capacity as they did before, it would raise a red flag. But to determine that, a parent would need to track down who is leaving, where they are going, and what their role would be at that new school. For each one. And once you have that info, what are you going to do? Pull your kids out for private? Move? No, you'll stick around and see how the next year goes, which is what you'd probably do anyway. |
Anonymous
| I am sure that's true for most parents. The people higher up in MCPS really should pay attention to these things. Though I think parents often have an idea what's going on and if there are legit problems, like the pp who knew why her kid's teacher was unhappy. Also, parents can raise that question themselves and may be able to make a difference. Depends what the issue is. |
Anonymous
Not just young teachers. |
Anonymous
Why? |