Reply to The wisdom of rewarding Montgomery’s school employees (Washington Post)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]8:17 here, I'm not the teacher, but I'm on her side.

I certainly don't have MCPS turnover data because I have no association with MCPS besides sending my kids there. However, I work in research, so I'm aware it's quite common for data to be released with a lag of 1, 2 or even 3 years. Think about it: first, somebody (schools? central admin?) needs to report turnover stats, so if the fiscal year ends in June maybe they have until September to report. Then the statistic types in central admin need to compile it, somebody needs to compose a press release, about a dozen other people need to sign off. The worst part is tracking down the outliers: quite frequently, you get data like Poolesville reported 120% turnover (I'm making this up), but we know this isn't right, so we go to Poolesville to ask for an explanation or correct figures, and it sits on someone's desk at Poolesville for 2 months. I work with federal data and I see this sort of thing all the time. A friend worked at the World Bank and he claims the country-level data there really needs to be scrubbed.

So consider: FY2010 closed in June 2010. We're almost in July 2012. In my long experience with federal data, 2 years is about on course and maybe we'll get the new release soon.

Sure, BLS releases inflation and unemployment data with a 2-month lag. But that's the result of thousands of surveys, interviews and the rest. It's very expensive to do this, but it's considered worth it to get good, current stats on the economy. Do you really want MCPS concentrating proportionate resources on turnover data?

So I certainly wouldn't read anything nefarious into MCPS' failure to provide data for 2010 by now.[/quote]

I am in research too.   I produce quarterly statistics and they just roll right out of a controlled process.  They are audited and checked constantly.  It really is not that expensive to produce once the process is set up.   We are now 6 months into 2012, do you really think MCPS doesn't know the turnover rate at the close of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 school years?  I think these numbers exist.  They may even be public, but I can't find them.   MCPS put out these numbers for 2009 and the previous 8 years, so I know it is possible.

But let's leave this aside because you  are proving my point.   Either there is or there is not data that shows increasing turnover around the pay freeze period.   In 2009, turnover was around 5%.  I didn't raise the issue about how the pay freeze is causing increased teacher turnover, some of the teacher posts did.  Based on your premise, however, there is no way to even prove that turnover is increasing.   Therefore, I don't think teacher retention should justify the pay raise.   Retention has just not been proven to be an issue.  If I am wrong, then show me some evidence of teachers leaving MCPS because of pay.  That is the point I want to make.

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