NEA Priority Schools Campaign
Chasing Experienced Teachers From the Classroom
By Kevin Hart
Every public school student deserves access to a highly-qualified, experienced educator. But experience may matter more at lower-performing priority schools, where students often enter classrooms suffering from significant skills gaps and a variety of social issues that interfere with learning. That’s why many educators are so baffled by a federal plan that they say is destined to chase the most experienced teachers out of the schools that need them most.
From Central Falls, RI to Savannah, GA, lower-performing schools across the country have begun announcing plans to fire their teaching staffs in order to qualify for federal School Improvement Grants. To qualify for a School Improvement Grant, schools must select from one of four federally-mandated intervention models, including the so-called “turnaround” model, where the entire teaching staff is fired and no more than half are rehired.
The turnaround model rests on a simple but perhaps badly flawed assumption: That schools will be able to fire teachers who are not making the grade and replace them with more qualified educators. But according to a recent discussion on the NEA Priority Schools Campaign Facebook page, the turnaround model is likely to result in inexperienced educators – including many recent graduates with no teaching experience – replacing experienced teachers.
Many lower-performing priority schools are cash-strapped and prefer to fill their teaching vacancies with newer teachers, who can be paid less and are eager to land their first jobs. A New York Times story just weeks before the start of the school year discussed how principals’ preference for hiring less costly new teachers was interfering with job placements and transfers throughout the New York City school system, resulting in 1,800 teaching vacancies. In fact, many priority schools throughout the country hire a greater percentage of new teachers than veteran teachers, primarily because of cost considerations.
The end result of the turnaround model, many educators warn, is that experienced teachers will likely be