Teacher retention rate hits 90% benchmark

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:this board makes it sounds like every teacher is heading for greener pastures and that no one will fill the roles.

The second part of that statement is correct. My neighbor is a mentor teacher for a local university that has a large education department. She said she used to supervise 40 student teachers every year and most used to go into teaching when they graduated. This year there are 15 students who are doing student teaching and a few of those have other plans outside of teaching.

Most of the incoming teachers at my school are alternatively trained. They have a crash summer program before they start teaching. That’s it. Trust me. It’s not enough.

I was one of those career switchers that went through an alternative program 12 years ago. The first year was hard, but by year 3 or 4, I was being recognized for my skills just as much as everyone else.

I think Career Switchers can be great, those programs just don’t have great retention rates in my experience with the ones at my school.

[Anonymous]

I’m glad you were successful. Most of the new people just don’t have what it takes for the job. I’m surprised that most of them last until Christmas.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I guess….still a lot of SPED vacancies and long term subs in buildings and teacher trainees that are here to stay because FCPS will keep them over kicking them out because they aren’t getting license.

Exactly. Lots of sped and SLP vacancies. Many positions are filled with warm bodies who are not qualified or competent especially in elementary schools.

[Anonymous]

They have so many holidays

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is a complete fabrication. Smoke and mirrors. Someone submit a foia.

This thread was created by Karl Frisch or Reid and is a complete fiction.

[Anonymous]

SPED teacher trainees often can’t do the IEP paperwork and can’t assess with individualized, normed tests. They also (often) aren’t given independent Seastars access. All of that adds up to a bigger workload for already stretched thin experienced special education teachers. One can’t teach 5 classes at 5+ different grade levels, lesson plan for those classes, monitor progress on over 175 goals quarterly (That’s 600+ data samples quarterly), grade work and give meaningful feedback in a timely fashion, provide opportunities for remediation, communicate with parents, case manage 18 students, prepare IEPs, hold IEP meetings, send countless documents home in the time given AND do half the job of the trainee. It’s FCPS’s way of not solving the problem. The kids are not winning here. I am suspicious of the numbers. Who would stay? If they are accurate, it’s because the SPED teachers are moving to another school looking for greener pastures-which aren’t likely to be found.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SPED teacher trainees often can’t do the IEP paperwork and can’t assess with individualized, normed tests. They also (often) aren’t given independent Seastars access. All of that adds up to a bigger workload for already stretched thin experienced special education teachers. One can’t teach 5 classes at 5+ different grade levels, lesson plan for those classes, monitor progress on over 175 goals quarterly (That’s 600+ data samples quarterly), grade work and give meaningful feedback in a timely fashion, provide opportunities for remediation, communicate with parents, case manage 18 students, prepare IEPs, hold IEP meetings, send countless documents home in the time given AND do half the job of the trainee. It’s FCPS’s way of not solving the problem. The kids are not winning here. I am suspicious of the numbers. Who would stay? If they are accurate, it’s because the SPED teachers are moving to another school looking for greener pastures-which aren’t likely to be found.

Regular gen ed teacher trainees can’t attend IEP meetings so guess who has to add that to their schedule and workload?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SPED teacher trainees often can’t do the IEP paperwork and can’t assess with individualized, normed tests. They also (often) aren’t given independent Seastars access. All of that adds up to a bigger workload for already stretched thin experienced special education teachers. One can’t teach 5 classes at 5+ different grade levels, lesson plan for those classes, monitor progress on over 175 goals quarterly (That’s 600+ data samples quarterly), grade work and give meaningful feedback in a timely fashion, provide opportunities for remediation, communicate with parents, case manage 18 students, prepare IEPs, hold IEP meetings, send countless documents home in the time given AND do half the job of the trainee. It’s FCPS’s way of not solving the problem. The kids are not winning here. I am suspicious of the numbers. Who would stay? If they are accurate, it’s because the SPED teachers are moving to another school looking for greener pastures-which aren’t likely to be found.

Regular gen ed teacher trainees can’t attend IEP meetings so guess who has to add that to their schedule and workload?

Are you sure about that? I'm a SPED teacher and have definitely had teacher trainees in IEP meetings as the gen ed teacher.

In any case, I agree with most people posting here. These numbers aren't accurate. I wish someone in the know would post the number of trainees and unfilled positions at various schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:No one ever posts positive news here. FCPS teachers are staying. Looks like Reid is doing something right. The article also talks about the foreign teachers being hired. I do not have experience with any of these, but I imagine it must be horrible for a teacher to come from a nation where teachers are respected, to one with such awful parents and their entitled, bratty students. Also the lack of discipline. I'm curious about the retention rate for the foreign teachers.

https://wtop.com/fairfax-county/2024/12/fairfax-co-schools-reaches-teacher-retention-benchmark-for-1st-time-in-4-years/

Great so we can stop hearing about how miserable their working conditions are and opt out of whatever horror the PTA has in store for appreciation week? Problem solved?

Sounds like homeschooling is right for you.

No thanks I pay for the public services same as anyone else— but I’m glad we can stop having threads about how fragile teachers are and how ready to abandon their jobs at a hint of adversity. Let’s start bringing the highway department a week of breakfasts and give the sanitation workers early days off for training.

I’m sorry you aren’t appreciated at your job.

I am, thanks for asking. But no one at my job thinks bringing me breakfast is the magic bullet to keeping me in the workplace, and I don’t respond to any criticism of my profession by hyperventilating that this is why people will leave the profession…

Criticism? People on this forum call teachers dumb losers. That’s not criticism, that’s hate.

DP. Sure, it’s hate. But it comes from people who don’t have a remote clue what teaching is like. It’s hard to take that criticism seriously.

Yup teachers don't lose sleep over armchair critics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SPED teacher trainees often can’t do the IEP paperwork and can’t assess with individualized, normed tests. They also (often) aren’t given independent Seastars access. All of that adds up to a bigger workload for already stretched thin experienced special education teachers. One can’t teach 5 classes at 5+ different grade levels, lesson plan for those classes, monitor progress on over 175 goals quarterly (That’s 600+ data samples quarterly), grade work and give meaningful feedback in a timely fashion, provide opportunities for remediation, communicate with parents, case manage 18 students, prepare IEPs, hold IEP meetings, send countless documents home in the time given AND do half the job of the trainee. It’s FCPS’s way of not solving the problem. The kids are not winning here. I am suspicious of the numbers. Who would stay? If they are accurate, it’s because the SPED teachers are moving to another school looking for greener pastures-which aren’t likely to be found.

This. And on top of all this FCPS likes to play the CYA game and keeps adding time consuming paperwork to the IEP process. SPED teachers can't work with kids/deal with behaviors/monitor progress/etc and be expected to do a full time "desk" job within contract hours. SPED teachers need to start saying no and work to contract. And before you say but what about the kids I agree the kids are losing out but you go fight and ask the hard questions to Reid and Gatehouse. They are responsible and don't seem to care about the kids or the teacher shortage. SPED teachers are leaving in high numbers. You can play with numbers and visually hide truths but it doesn't make it real.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:SPED teacher trainees often can’t do the IEP paperwork and can’t assess with individualized, normed tests. They also (often) aren’t given independent Seastars access. All of that adds up to a bigger workload for already stretched thin experienced special education teachers. One can’t teach 5 classes at 5+ different grade levels, lesson plan for those classes, monitor progress on over 175 goals quarterly (That’s 600+ data samples quarterly), grade work and give meaningful feedback in a timely fashion, provide opportunities for remediation, communicate with parents, case manage 18 students, prepare IEPs, hold IEP meetings, send countless documents home in the time given AND do half the job of the trainee. It’s FCPS’s way of not solving the problem. The kids are not winning here. I am suspicious of the numbers. Who would stay? If they are accurate, it’s because the SPED teachers are moving to another school looking for greener pastures-which aren’t likely to be found.

This! I have two friends in SPED who tried new schools. Both are unhappy and one told me they are leaving SPED next year because the issues are the same all over the county and even though they feel they have better admin at their new school the issues in SPED are to great to keep them there. Prepare for more trainees in SPED.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:From the meeting, it sounded like there were two incidents of foreign teachers not having the necessary English fluency. But they didn’t explain those incidents so they were talking amongst themselves. Overall seems like the program has been successful and they are going to expand it,

I attended one of Reid's community conversations in the fall.

Half the parents there were from one of the elementary schools that had one of those teachers.

I think the problems went beyond language issues. My impression was that the teacher had zero teaching experience in their own country, and behaved in ways that were completely unacceptable in and incompatible with US school culture. I didn't take notes on that topic, but I seem to recall some discussion about issues with the background checks of the foreign teachers came up in the discussion. The parents did not share specifics, but every single one of them was horrified by the experience.

The parents there were very reasonable people, but their concerns really alarmed me.

The meeting was over a month into the school year and the teacher had just been removed. The fact FCPS left the teacher in the classroom for at least a month with no mentorship or real oversight was also alarming.

This is not at all surprising. When I saw that they were hiring foreign teachers, my first thought was how bad it would be when those teachers behaved in ways that are normal in their countries, but the exact opposite of what is OK here. I studied in a foreign country, and it's worlds apart. For example, it was common in that foreign country for teachers to have blatant favoritism toward boys and to make overtly sexist and racist comments. It was also common for teachers to announce student grades aloud and to publicly chastise a student who did poorly, even calling them stupid. When I took college classes related to that country, and the college had wanted to hire a "native speaker," I often found myself in a US classroom with a similar type of teacher. Until someone complained, of course, and then they'd be fired, but in fact anyone with knowledge of that country could have predicted it. Shows how stupidly and ignorantly FCPS blunders into things it knows nothing about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn’t Reid come out and say the foreign teacher program had problems because a lot of the candidates misrepresented their English abilities? They have to be very careful what countries they hire from and even then, there are still going to be people who aren’t completely fluent in English even though they say they are.

+1
I personally think it’s awful to make students even more confused by not even being able to understand their teacher. I had several professors in college who had such thick accents that no one could tell what they were saying. Consequently, there were many bad grades/failures. This is the worst way to hire teachers.

Also really racist, since the teachers hired were from places like Korea, while there are excellent, licensed teacher candidates who have difficulty getting jobs in FCPS because they have mild Spanish accents on their nearly perfect English.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:SPED teacher trainees often can’t do the IEP paperwork and can’t assess with individualized, normed tests. They also (often) aren’t given independent Seastars access. All of that adds up to a bigger workload for already stretched thin experienced special education teachers. One can’t teach 5 classes at 5+ different grade levels, lesson plan for those classes, monitor progress on over 175 goals quarterly (That’s 600+ data samples quarterly), grade work and give meaningful feedback in a timely fashion, provide opportunities for remediation, communicate with parents, case manage 18 students, prepare IEPs, hold IEP meetings, send countless documents home in the time given AND do half the job of the trainee. It’s FCPS’s way of not solving the problem. The kids are not winning here. I am suspicious of the numbers. Who would stay? If they are accurate, it’s because the SPED teachers are moving to another school looking for greener pastures-which aren’t likely to be found.

Regular gen ed teacher trainees can’t attend IEP meetings so guess who has to add that to their schedule and workload?

Are you sure about that? I'm a SPED teacher and have definitely had teacher trainees in IEP meetings as the gen ed teacher.

In any case, I agree with most people posting here. These numbers aren't accurate. I wish someone in the know would post the number of trainees and unfilled positions at various schools.

Yes our department case manager was told that by the county. They can attend but still need another licensed teacher there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I guess….still a lot of SPED vacancies and long term subs in buildings and teacher trainees that are here to stay because FCPS will keep them over kicking them out because they aren’t getting license.

Exactly. Lots of sped and SLP vacancies. Many positions are filled with warm bodies who are not qualified or competent especially in elementary schools.

Like monitors or IAs.