Thursday, February 28, 2008

APS Teacher Retention

Education, at least for the time being,
centers around teachers.

The quality of the education that students receive
has a great deal to do with the quality of their teachers.

There is currently a teacher shortage; even though schools
of education are turning out more teachers annually
than are lost to retirement. There should be no shortage.

But there is. And the shortage exists because of the number
of teachers who quit their teaching careers before they retire.

They burn out; some in the first few years, some with many
years of useful experience under their belts.

The leadership of the APS has no idea why its teachers
are leaving before their retirement.

APS does not do exit interviews with teachers leaving APS.

Exit interviews are the most effective method of finding out
why teachers are leaving the APS before they retire.

They do not do exit interviews because they don't want to
compile the data that would show that most of the teachers
who quit teaching, quit due to issues with administration.

(Issues that have to do with heavy handed autocrats who
are unaccountable to anyone for their conduct or competence.)


Rather than gather data, and change the paradigm
to conserve our most precious educational resource,
experienced teachers,

the leadership of the APS chooses instead a system that
protects incompetent and corrupt good ol' boys from the
consequences of their corruption and incompetence;

by choosing not to gather data and document problems
with corrupt and/or incompetent administrators.

Instead they proffer statistics of "similar" teacher drop out
rates elsewhere; a red herring.

If one were able to identify somehow,
the APS administrator who has single handedly
driven more teachers out of the APS
than any other,

one would also find the the leadership of the APS has
compiled no data that anyone could use to hold that
administrator accountable for squandering public resources;

decent, hard working, and good teachers.

Furthermore, if any data had been inadvertently compiled
despite the best efforts of the leadership of the APS,

APS Modrall has the will and the wherewithal
to hide that data from public knowledge for ever.

And the community wonders,

why is there a shortage of really good teachers
in the APS?

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