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Although the data are typically released in the fall, the N.C. Department of Public Instruction has not posted the 2009-10 teacher turnover report on their website. Not to worry, readers, I have the aggregate data. In this week’s CommenTerry, I will discuss last year’s teacher turnover in the context of this year’s state budget debate.

 

Bulletin Board

 

  • The John Locke Foundation is sponsoring two upcoming constitutional workshops in western North Carolina. The first is Friday, May 20, from 1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at The Fun Factory in Franklin. A second workshop will be held on Saturday, May 21. from 1:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. at Journey Church in Murphy. Historian Dr. Troy Kickler and political science expert Dr. Michael Sanera will discuss "What the Founders and the State Ratification Conventions Can Teach Us Today." The cost is $10.00 per participant, lunch included. Pre-registration is strongly suggested. For more information or to sign up for the event, visit the Events section of the John Locke Foundation website.
  • The John W. Pope Civitas Institute will hold its monthly poll luncheon on Monday, May 23, at 12:00 noon at the Hilton Raleigh-Durham in the Research Triangle Park. Dr. Michael Munger, Duke University professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, will be the guest speaker. Cost is $20. To register, call 919-834-2099 or go to http://www.nccivitas.org/events.
  • Early April marks a major milestone for college-bound high school seniors: the end of a long college search. That task may be easier in the future, thanks to a new web site created by the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy. NC College Finder (nccollegefinder.org) provides a wide range of information on 54 accredited four-year universities in the state.
  • The North Carolina History Project would like educators and homeschool parents to submit lesson plans suitable for middle and high school courses in North Carolina history. Please provide links to NC History Project encyclopedia articles and other primary and secondary source material, if possible. Go to http://www.northcarolinahistory.org/edu_corner for further information.

 

CommenTerry

Two weeks ago, John Locke Foundation president John Hood confronted politicians (Governor Perdue, Democrats) and special interest groups (NCAE) who have made outlandish job loss predictions. Perdue and others contended that the $19.1 billion budget proposed by Republican leaders in the House would produce between 20,000 and 30,000 job losses across the state. Hood responded,

 

… Perdue conflated the concepts of lost positions and layoffs. They are not the same thing. As House Majority Leader Skip Stam pointed out, annual attrition will supply many of the positions to be lost. In the public schools alone, between 10,000 and 11,000 teachers leave their jobs in a given year. Some retire. Some move. Some leave the profession entirely, while others leave temporarily (to have children, for example, or go back to school). Thousands more choose to leave other jobs in public schools, colleges, universities, and other state agencies.

 

Ditto.

N.C. Department of Public Instruction statistics for 2009-10 provide specific details about annual attrition in the teacher workforce. Of the 11,000 full- and part-time teachers who vacated teaching positions last year, approximately 1,000 resigned to teach in another district or charter public school. Another 900 teachers accepted a non-teaching position in a public school district or state education agency. To put it another way, our public school districts "repurposed" 1,900 teachers.

As usual, normal attrition accounted for most of North Carolina’s teacher turnover. This included 1,900 retirements and 5,000 voluntary resignations due mostly to personal circumstances and undisclosed reasons. The Republican budget proposal would eliminate a portion of these vacant positions — no layoffs required.

Of course, school districts initiated some of the turnover. For example, school districts did not renew interim (contract for six months or more) or probationary (non-tenured) contracts of nearly 1,400 teachers statewide. Most of that turnover was the elimination of temporary teaching positions. District officials chose not to renew the interim or temporary contracts of 1,000 teachers; about one-third of this total came from Wake County. Durham, Wilson, and Chapel-Hill/Carrboro shed the most probationary or non-tenured teachers. Over one-fourth of the probationary teachers laid off or fired came from these three school districts. Finally, around 150 teachers failed to obtain or maintain their teacher’s licenses, and sadly, 56 teachers died.

School districts also reduced their workforce by another 500 teachers, which is considerably higher than reductions in previous years. Even so, the reduction in workforce statistic — teachers not rehired because of loss of enrollment, funding, or programming — is a bit misleading. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools accounted for 347 of the 495 teachers in this category. In comparison, the district with the next highest number in this category, Lenoir County Schools, lost 14 teachers.

We will learn more about teacher turnover in North Carolina when NC DPI releases the full 2009-10 Annual Report on the Reasons Teachers Leave the Profession. Like previous editions of the report, however, it will show that normal attrition, not layoffs, accounted for most of the teacher turnover during the 2009-2010 school year.

 

Random Thought

 

In a recent volume of the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion (Vol. 26, No. 2, Fall 2010), Sharon V. Betcher published a cutting-edge article titled "Becoming Flesh of My Flesh: Feminist and Disability Theologies on the Edge of Posthumanist Discourse." Betcher, Associate Professor of Theology at the Vancouver School of Theology observed,

 

Indeed, Lady Gaga argued in one of her 2004 academic papers for New York’s Tisch School of the Arts that over against "social bodies," disabled bodies might claim the only and enviable authentic ground of difference, of individuality. In other words, as she explains, "for the deformed, there is an ownership of one’s difference, an ownership that is visible and indisputable." Lady Gaga’s recent Monster Ball Tour presumably took its name, at least in part, from her ongoing reflections on the primary sixteenth-century text she used in her essay–Michel de Montaigne’s "Of a Monstrous Child" (p. 114).

 

That makes you think differently about Lady Gaga, doesn’t it? Me neither.

 

Facts and Stats

 

Mailbag

 

I would like to invite all readers to submit announcements, as well as their personal insights, anecdotes, concerns, and observations about the state of education in North Carolina. I will publish selected submissions in future editions of the newsletter. Anonymity will be honored. For additional information or to send a submission, email Terry at [email protected].

 

Education Acronym of the Week

 

RIF — Reduction in Force

 

Quote of the Week

 

"Our results suggest that the average rate of teacher turnover is very close to similar professions, contrary to the conventional wisdom. It is slightly higher than that of nurses, but lower than accountants and social workers, even after controlling for various measurable differences among workers."
— Douglas N. Harris and Scott J. Adams, "Understanding the level and causes of teacher turnover: A comparison with other professions," Economics of Education Review 26 (2007), p. 336.

 

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