Letter: La. teachers are retiring

Here is a story about your child’s favorite teacher. On Jan. 14 The Advocate ran a story headlined “Rate of teachers retiring spikes” with numbers taken directly from the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana. Teachers are suddenly retiring at much higher rates, and local superintendents, who actually deal with teachers on a regular basis, are understandably concerned about this loss of experienced talent. They said the instability caused by new education “reform” is causing it.

Imagine your daughter coming home and telling you that Mrs. Guidroz, her favorite teacher and your favorite teacher when you were in the fourth grade, was retiring next week, and was not even going to wait till the end of the year! Apparently state Superintendent John White shared your alarm at this loss of great teachers, and immediately ordered his researchers and staff at the Louisiana Department of Education to look into it. No surprise here, as most of us would be concerned to know that our most-experienced and knowledgeable employees were suddenly heading for the door.

Using their powerful databases and computers, White’s staff quickly handed him the results of their study. The four-page report along with charts and references was released to the media and reported in The Advocate on Jan. 29, “White countered data that indicates increase in number of teachers retiring.”

You can imagine that across the state, there were sighs of relief in learning that the claims of increases in teacher retirements were bogus. But any relief we might feel is false, because John White did not provide data to show fewer teachers are retiring. Instead, he shared a blizzard of numbers that showed information about all teachers who were leaving, those early in their careers as well as those moving on to administration.

Overall, the problem reported by The Advocate remains, and John White totally ignored it. The number of teachers retiring each year has increased by over 30 percent, and we are losing veteran teachers left and right.

John White is playing a shell game with us. Like a magician, he draws our attention to a completely different set of numbers to distract us from what should be of great concern.

Why not address the real issue? Why are large numbers of teachers fleeing our schools? Why are your favorite teachers leaving?

Noel Hammatt

independent education researcher

Baton Rouge

Comments

1) Comment by InPVille - 26/02/2013

I doubt very much that the curve of the work product of Teachers varies over the long term that much from the work product of people in the state and other bureaucracies and fields. In over 35+ years working in the state it was impossible not to notice that the performance of people who stayed rooted in the same job year after year after year eventually tended to fall off. Keeping up to date with change also becomes an issue. SOME very experienced teachers may still be better at their job than some of the newer teachers. But for the most part over time as routine sets in and it all becomes mechanical there is a decline.

2) Comment by HerbF - 22/02/2013

Mr White is a very nice, well intended and intelligent person, whose policies have simply been disastrous. It is a shame for him and for us. But, this experiment needs to go. This should end, quickly.

3) Comment by prbeav - 21/02/2013

Thank you, Mr. Hammatt for the explanation as to why Mr. White's response made no sense. He is almost as amateur as Gene Mills of La Family Forum and his pal Bob Jindal of the Louisiana administration.

4) Comment by twinkie1cat - 21/02/2013

A friend who works for Teacher Retirement has been highly alarmed by the numbers of teachers who are quitting and retiring. Most are older, experienced, career educators, he says. There needs to be a report by a reputable group that tells us, truthfully, why they are leaving. It is just abnormal that teachers quit their jobs in the middle of the school year, yet two Teach for Americas told me that at their rural elementary, they have had at least 6. Teachers do not quit like that, in my experience, unless there is a major crisis, like at a school in Georgia when a teacher quit because her husband was planning to kill her and she needed to get out of the state very fast. There was another one who quit because her call to become an FBI agent, which she had been waiting for for 3 years finally came through. And that was at the end of the school year although after she had signed her contract. This is not normal no matter how it is dressed up. And with veteran teachers, they will stay on even if they have to take leave for cancer surgery and chemotherapy. That's why they save their sick days. Even if their mama dies they will take a week or two and be right back in the classroom. And if she is sick, find a sitter.

5) Comment by bigfatman - 21/02/2013

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6) Comment by DMJ - 21/02/2013

We're losing teachers because they're tired of being blamed for everything. Just ask any recently retired teacher.

7) Comment by Traveler - 21/02/2013

Noel, when it comes to research about education, you're the BEST! ["No brag----just fact."] On several occasions, I've challenged The Advocate to discover the answer to the following questions, but they have not accepted the challenge. How many high school graduates are enrolling as education majors in our state universities, compared to, say, 10 years ago? And what percentage of those who do enroll are sticking with that major (once they wake up and discover what is happening in that career field today)? While the figures about retirees are certainly informative, the reason for the rise in retirements is open to dispute by opponents of public education. If the number of education majors is down (as I believe it to be, from empirical evidence), there is NO WAY those opponents could dispute that fact. And there is NO WAY that those same opponents could dispute the only reason for the drop: education is no longer an attractive option for our young men and women, thanks to the wrongs being done to teachers today by the current administration, BESE, and the legislature. Thanks, Noel!

8) Comment by crazycajun - 21/02/2013

In my home parish,Vermilion, 127 teachers have either quit or resigned since the beginning of the school year. Now if you would be ignorant and believe White, it would be because they were incompetent. You see White belongs to the "because I say,It is" club started by his boss L'jl booby.

9) Comment by SuzanneMS - 21/02/2013

Many of these teachers are "retiring" only in the sense that they are leaving the teaching profession in Louisiana. They are 55, have put in their 30 years of service, and, as Traveler notes, moving on to other jobs and careers for the next 10 to 15 years. That's 10-15 years that they could be mentoring beginning teachers as well as continuing to teach children in this state. The teachers under 30 who are leaving for other states are, by and large, the better teachers. They are the ones who can get jobs in other states. What Louisiana will be left with is a few excellent teachers who are can't leave for personal reasons, and a lot of mediocre and poor teachers -- which is Jindal's plan. Destroy public education.

10) Comment by spqr - 21/02/2013

Inpvlle...you are partially correct. There is another story about the huge number of teachers under age 30 who are planning to leave the state and begin their careers anew elsewhere. And there are the teachers who are simply leaving possessing other skills because they see the demise of education under this so-called reform. In all cases the dissatisfaction in the profession is raging. White does not understand because he is inexperienced in so many ways. Jindal? We all know he is corrupt.

11) Comment by Traveler - 21/02/2013

In recent months, many highly-rated veteran educators have told me that they intend to retire as soon as they reach their date of eligibility to do so. In sum, they have said that they are willing to put up with wages that are lower than the income of people with comparable degrees who work in other fields. They are willing to put up with substandard working conditions (peeling paint, broken desks, leaky ceilings, moldy walls) in their classrooms. They are willing to put up with insufficient funds for supplies and materials, thus having to reach into their own pockets to purchase teaching tools for their classes. They are willing (not happy----just resigned) to putting up with indifferent parents who send children to school unprepared to learn and who will not attend parent-teacher conferences. They are willing to put up with being required to attend after-hours events for which they are not paid. What they are NOT willing to put up with is an illogical, unreasonable evaluation plan that sets them (and they schools they work in) up for failure. What they are NOT willing to put up with is being blamed by the current administration, their own State Department of Education, and some news media for all the ills of our very complicated (sometimes broken) society. In following up with excellent teachers who have already retired, I'm finding that many of these very intelligent, industrious people have used their degrees and experience to find jobs in the private sector, where they are earning more money and achieving success. Our wonderful teachers are being replaced by inexperienced people who often lack the same professional training. The loss is ours.

12) Comment by InPVille - 20/02/2013

Given that the "Baby Boomer Generation" is reaching retirement age, that teachers and occupants of many other professions would be retiring would not be hard for me to believe. The coming experience gab was a topic of discussion within the department of state government I worked in before I retired.