Teachers SASS back

Interesting new data from the federal government’s School and Staffing Survey (SASS) released last week provides an interesting look into teacher attrition and mobility. The data comes from a follow-up survey of teachers in 04-05 based on the sample included in the 03-04 data collection. The great thing about this data is that it includes teachers who changed schools or left teaching—a subset of people that are often hard to track down for research. The study is also valuable because its sample includes nearly 7,500 teachers, of whom almost 92 percent responded to the survey.

Some highlights that I found interesting:

• The percent of teachers leaving the classroom has steadily increased from 5.6% in 88-89 to 8.4% in 04-05 (somewhat due to an aging workforce).

• Among teachers with no full time teaching experience, nearly 20% departed in 04-05, more than double the rate of any other group.

• Teachers in high minority schools are the most likely to move or leave.

• Teachers moved to other schools for a better teaching assignment, administrative support, and workplace conditions.

• Teachers left K-12 schools to retire (30%), work in education outside of teaching (29%), care for family (13%), and work outside education (12%).

The part that I found most interesting was the perceptions of former teachers now working outside of education. Compared to their current jobs, the only aspects on which teaching compared favorably were in benefits and the opportunity to make a difference in others’ lives. On every other measure, respondents felt their current position was superior or similar. On several dimensions, these differences were huge—65% cited a more manageable workload in their current work, 65% felt better able to balance personal life and work outside of teaching, 64% felt more autonomy or control over their own work, and 61% noted better general work conditions. These responses dwarfed the more common things you might think teachers were seeking improvements in: salary, prestige, performance evaluation, safety, etc.

It’s important to take these with a grain (or lump) of salt. These are the people who were unhappy enough to leave teaching, and it’s possible that some of them may have been less effective teachers—unfortunately we have no way to know. Also, we don’t know the types of positions that they have moved into—only that on average they did not experience dramatic salary changes.

However, these findings do suggest that there is a fairly significant problem of teacher support—whether that comes in the form of mentoring, planning time, or other measures to help teachers manage their workload and find balance. While I don’t often agree with Linda Darling Hammond, her description of most teachers’ early careers as “hazing” does ring true to me.

In addition to supporting teachers, this data suggests that working conditions and autonomy in teaching lag behind those in other professions. While complete autonomy is impossible in a standards-based environment, allowing successful teachers to innovate seems like a clear win-win to me. And finally, not to ride a union hobby horse, but the poor working conditions in many schools are totally inexcusable both for students and teachers. Schools not having heat (including Simon ES where I taught) is only the latest shameful example in D.C.