“Half of All New Teachers”…Should Read the Shanker Blog
I doubt if Matthew Di Carlo of the Albert Shanker Institute and I see eye-to-eye on much regarding education labor, but he’s devoted to ensuring that arguments and opinions at least have a basis in documented evidence. There may be some propaganda value in repeating verifiable falsehoods, but I think there are enough legitimate ways to disagree that willfully getting it wrong is neither desirable nor acceptable.
Recently Di Carlo has examined the claim that teacher candidates come from the bottom third of college graduates (incomplete and out of context), and whether Al Shanker actually said, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children” (probably not).
Yesterday, Di Carlo asked the question, “Do Half Of New Teachers Leave The Profession Within Five Years?” He looks back at the relevant data and reaches the conclusion that such a claim is incomplete.
As is usually the case, the statistics paint a somewhat nuanced picture that doesn’t lend itself to screaming newspaper headlines and TV sound bites. But the usual case also is that the headlines and sound bites are what people remember, while the detailed explanation of the numbers is intricate and sleep-inducing. So while I applaud Di Carlo for his research and for publishing his results, I can also say from experience that the claim will long outlive his explanation.
Di Carlo’s focus was on whether the retention numbers were accurately cited and added up, but he only spent a little time on why the retention numbers are where they are. After all, the purpose of virtually everyone who cites the “half of all new teachers” claim is to illustrate that teaching is such a low-paid, high stress occupation it is driving out newcomers in droves.
In April 2004 (see item #2), I cited statistics showing that by far the two most common reasons teachers left the profession were a) “family or personal reasons” and b) retirement. Then I noted government data showing K-12 teaching having the second highest retention rate of all professions.
In June 2006 (see item #2), I asked a series of contextual questions in response to a teacher retention report by the Public Policy Institute of California, including “compared to what?” That is a question Di Carlo also asks in his analysis.
Finally, in a February 2007 story headlined “School Staffing Survey Provides Perspective” I cited a National Center for Education Statistics report demonstrating that most of the reasons teachers leave the profession have very little to do with the profession – such as pregnancy, relocating or health.
I hope Di Carlo’s efforts lead people to stop using the apocryphal Shanker quote and authoritative-sounding claims that lack sourcing, but the political climate being what it is, I wouldn’t bet the house on it.
