Giving Compass' Take:

• Brenda Tanner argues that listening at scale to teachers’ needs is not only feasible but invaluable for ensuring that educators who want to be a part of their district’s future have the support they need to stay.

• How are the schools in your community helping support their teachers? 

• Learn about this teacher partnership aims to reduce teacher turnover. 

Even halfway through a new school year, some district administrators are frantically racing to fill teaching positions. As a former superintendent, I well recall the joy of our human resources director when the announcement was made that all positions had been filled. During my tenure, I became disheartened each year as I saw the list of “hard to fill” positions steadily grow from science, math and special education to almost every teaching category. The day that I heard that elementary teachers had been added to the critical shortage list, I knew that the world of not just recruitment, but retention, as we know it, had changed.

The Economic Policy Institute found that the percentage of schools that were working to fill a vacancy but couldn’t tripled from the 2011-12 to 2015-16 school years. During this same period, the percentage of schools that found it very difficult to fill a vacancy doubled. While some teachers are retiring, being promoted or leaving for personal reasons, dissatisfaction with teaching itself is unfortunately another cause of departures. For many years as an administrator, I fell into the trap of thinking I could fix the teacher retention problem from the top down. But as it turns out, education’s leaky bucket is fueled by a confluence of forces that can confound even the most discerning district leaders. Salary raises, benefits, professional development and even mentoring may not address other critical issues that are driving teachers away.

Read the full article about listening to teachers by Brenda Tanner at The 74.