The Leadership We Need: New Teacher Retention –

A Bare Bones Introduction

John Baird, M.Sc.

Austin ISD

Introduction

• Better education means we need better teachers

• Retention of the best and most effective teachers is a measure of how well our school systems perform

The Problem

• According to the NEA, as many as 50% of new teachers leave within the first five years

• According to the Gates Foundation, the top 10% of new teachers leave education at a rate of 60-70% within the first five years

• We are not only failing to retain teachers, but we are specifically failing to retain the very best and brightest!

The Cause

• According to the Gates Foundation, the reason most cited by top tier teachers for leaving: administrative leadership

• Principals, assistant principals, and other school leaders are NOT leading effectively

• That ineffective leadership is causing the best to leave rather than affect change

Case Studies

• A Houston charter school• Special population with low SES

• Very small (~40 students)

• Oversight from a Texas university

• An urban Houston school• Low SES student population, majority Hispanic

• Academically struggling

Case Studies

• A small Austin charter school• Highly diverse with a spread of SES

• Ranked highly for math and science

• A large Austin charter school• Part of a national chain of charter schools

• Academically successful

• Predominantly Hispanic

Case Studies• Each of these four schools failed to retain their

best talent

• The first closed completely after a few years

• The second lost its math department head and subject team leads

• The third lost half the math department and much of its social studies department

• The fourth lost 30% of all teachers one year, after losing 50% the year before

Why?

• Leadership, or the lack thereof

• There have been plenty of proposed techniques that work – but what about all the things that fail spectacularly?

• Better leadership can come from knowing how others screw-up as much as how others succeed!

Ways to Flunk a School

• Negotiating in bad faith

• Making decisions without data

• Ignoring the value of extracurricular clubs

• Changing the goal posts without warning

• Bringing up problems but no solutions

• Unwilling to try new best practices

• And more!