Lamenting the loss of veteran teachers
Dennis Sparks | Contributor
And what happens to the soul of a profession like teaching if experience becomes a dirty word? What message do we send to people who want to commit their lives to teaching and to children?
—Claus von Zastrow
This month thousands of veteran Michigan teachers and administrators will leave their classrooms and offices for the last time. At least for some of them, retirement was not on their minds when they entered their schools last fall, but recent cost-cutting legislation that offered a significant incentive for retirement served its purpose, and they will be ending their careers earlier than they had anticipated.
While it is essential that state schools look for cost savings wherever they can find them, the retirement of so many veteran teachers and administrators may undermine the quality of teaching and learning at a time when the educational stakes have never been higher.
Some critics of public schools may view these retirements as a way to replace ineffective, poorly motivated teachers with idealistic, energetic, and better-prepared new ones. Undoubtedly, some less-than-competent teachers are retiring, and that is good news. But so, too, are countless teachers who made significant and lasting contributions to the learning and lives of their students.
Teachers improve their teaching through thousands of hours of experience and by analyzing with other teachers the effectiveness of their lessons. In effective schools novice teachers are supported by mentors and coaches. They are members of teams in which all teachers, no matter their level of experience, learn from one another. Such ongoing professional learning and support for new teachers and principals cannot be left to chance if schools with steadily diminishing resources are to successfully educate all students to higher standards.
Fortunately, there are many outstanding veteran and mid-career teachers and principals who remain in our schools. The strength of public education in the state will depend to a large extent on their ability to continuously improve teaching and learning in all schools, which is no easy task in the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of times for Michigan schools.
Dennis Sparks’ “Things Observed” essays and photos encourage readers to see familiar things in new ways. He can be contacted at dennis.sparks@comcast.net.
Comments
Pamela LeBlanc
Sat, Jul 31, 2010 : 4:21 p.m.
I'll start w/ the image Dennis. Beautifully composed and extremely fitting for your story.
Jason Glass
Tue, Jun 15, 2010 : 11:48 p.m.
Dennis and I are in complete agreement that the move in Michigan to drain the state of experienced teachers is a mistake. My only point was that the usual move to hack off the youngest teachers is also a mistake. Using either of these methods, you run a tremendous risk of draining school systems of their most effective teachers. Michigan's economic future is bleak enough without robbing students of arguably the most important talent building tools we have - quality educators. And for the record, Dennis is definitely "part of the solution!" Jason Glass Eagle, CO
Dennis Sparks
Tue, Jun 15, 2010 : 7:14 a.m.
I am in Jason Glass's district in Colorado as I write this, Betty, a district that has been committed to performance-based compensation for almost a decade and is arguably one of the most advanced in the country in that area. I am a member of a team of "national experts" invited to help them continue to strengthen their program. The recent Michigan legislation, however, was not intended to improve the quality of teaching in the state, but rather to reduce costs in local districts. Eagle County's most expensive teachers are those it judges to be most effective, and if the district was in Michigan it would not realize the cost savings the legislation was intended to produce.
Betty
Mon, Jun 14, 2010 : 8:40 p.m.
Dennis be part of the solution. Jason's spot on. Dennis is only lamenting this one narrow point. This system is failing our children-and ultimately our community. Sadly every effort to provide a system to quantify, incentivize or otherwise provide an assessment of effectiveness is stopped. I can't believe the district doesn't make a demand of the union to come up with a system to measure performance. (Perhaps the district is afraid the assessment would be turned on them... just a thought) There must be a way, every other job has one. I challenge you Dennis to come up with a way to measure teaching success and get it implemented through the Union and Administration. Be part of the solution.
DagnyJ
Mon, Jun 14, 2010 : 12:39 p.m.
Ummm, no one put a gun to a veteran teacher's head and said retire. Some may have been delighted to get a generous incentive. There is zero evidence that any teacher didn't want to retire but did any way.
Jason Glass
Sun, Jun 13, 2010 : 4:35 p.m.
These have indeed been tough times for public education Dennis, with Michigan certainly taking one of the most severe beatings as it feels the national recession coupled with a declining tax base and population. In a slightly different take on your article, I think we should be lamenting the loss of effective teachers, regardless of their experience. There are absolutely tremendous teachers with years of experience and it is a terrible waste for schools to amputate them, thinking that younger and less experienced teachers will be superior. This is simply ageism and wrong. It is equally a tremendous waste (and a far more common one) when we use the "last hired, first fired" maxim in making decisions about who must be laid off in tough budgetary times. Releasing staff who are most recently trained, and in many cases just as effective as veteran teachers, is a poor human capital strategy as well. We should be thinking about teacher effectiveness and what value the individual brings to their students, their school, and the organization and making retention decisions based on that. Making these decisions on experience, for either end of the spectrum, is a mistake and borderline morally wrong. Being a more experienced teacher does not necessarily mean you are an effective teacher, nor should it provide some sort of reverent an deferential treatment when it comes to getting the job done. Being a less experienced teacher does not necessarily mean you are not an effective teacher, nor should it mean your head is on the block until you out-rank your colleagues in years. We need to stop measuring teachers in terms of time, and start measuring them in terms of impact. Jason Glass Eagle, CO