The National Commission on Teaching and Americas Future Presents The Cost of Teacher Turnover Projec

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The National Commission on Teaching and
Americas FuturePresentsThe Cost of Teacher
Turnover Project

• Digging Deep

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Agenda

• The design
• The progress
• Experiences and challenges
• ? National
• ? State and local
• ? District
• 4) Questions and comments

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Project Goals

• Document the cost of teacher turnover
• A. Rural vs. Urban
• B. High and Low Poverty
• C. High and Low Academic Performance
• II. Develop a toolkit for school districts
• A. Tools for collecting data
• B. Tools for analyzing data
• C. Cost effective retention strategies

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Cost Elements

• Recruitment
• Special Incentives
• Administrative Processing
• Training for New Hires

• Training for First-Time Teachers
• Training for All Teachers
• Learning Curve Loss
• Transfer

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Project Steps

• 1) Pilot the project
• 2) Scale up
• 3) Gather retention
• strategies from
• across the country
• 4) Develop toolkit
• for school leaders

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Progress

• Determined cost elements and designed databases
• Met with districts and researchers to revise data
  collection protocol
• Identified focus schools (long vs. short form)
• Collected first round of data
• Began preliminary analysis

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Project Team MakeupPilot Phase
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Pilot Districts
Jemez Valley Granville Santa Rosa Milwaukee
Chicago
Milwaukee
Chicago
Granville
Jemez Valley
Santa Rosa
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Experiences at the National Level

• District site visits are essential
• Data on turnover rates are available
• Turnover costs data are generally not in
  machine-readable format and must be derived or
  estimated and then allocated to schools
• Turnover costs must reflect growth/decline

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Necessary Steps

• Tighten definitions of costs, poverty, and
  performance
• Modify data systems so that they capture and
  share needed data
• Use results to inform policies
• Develop a full toolkit

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Experiences at the State and Local Level

• Jemez Valley and Santa Rosa,
• New Mexico

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AccomplishmentsJemez Valley and Santa Rosa

• Collected detailed data on all teachers
• Identified gaps and redundancy in data
• Learned the unique challenges of data collection
  in rural school districts

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What Are the Challenges? Jemez Valley and Santa
Rosa
Lack of Systems Infrastructure
Lack of Time
Lack of Resources and Authority
Lack of Accurate Data
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Three Key QuestionsJemez Valley and Santa Rosa

• What kinds of data do educational leaders need
  to address the cost of teacher turnover?
• What does the data reveal about retaining our
  most effective teachers?
• What are the constraints that educational
  leaders face in accessing and using the data
  effectively?

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Experiences At the District Level

• Granville, North Carolina

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AccomplishmentsGranville

• Used surveys to collect accurate teacher data
• Calculated detailed turnover costs
• Identified challenges

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Data Collection ChallengesGranville

• What data to collect and where to find it
• Integrating software and databases
• Time needed to collect, sort, audit, and analyze
  the data
• Calculating the cost to student learning

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Importance of the StudyGranville

• Every year, we lose 15-20 of our teachers to
  turnover. We cant help but wonder what we could
  have accomplished for our students if we could
  redirect the time and resources spent replacing
  100-125 teachers each summer.
• UNDOUBTEDLY, TEACHER TURNOVER ROBS US OF
  IMPORTANT TIME, FINANCIAL RESOURCES, AND, WE
  BELIEVE, STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT.

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The Cost of Teacher Turnover

• Presented by
• George Ann Rice, Project Director
• Gary Barnes, National Researcher
• Madeline Feijoo, District Researcher, Santa Rosa
  and Jemez Valley Schools
• Dave Bennett, Assistant Superintendent, Granville
  County Schools
• For more information, contact
• Ben Schaefer
• Program Assistant
• National Commission on Teaching and America's
  Future
• 2100 M Street, NW Suite 660
• Washington, DC 20037
• 202.464.1933
• 202.429.2571 (fax)
• bschaefer_at_nctaf.org