WRTV 6 did a story on teacher retention in Indiana schools today. They indicated that 18% of the teachers and administrators left their school in a single year. That puts the retention on average at 82%. With over 12,426 educators, that is a large turnover.
You might think that HSE Schools are immune to this turnover; however, you’d be wrong. We have teachers leaving regularly as well, which is why I’ve raised it as an issue while running for a school board position. While some turn over is expected as a result of retiring or other reasons, there are also those teachers that state they are leaving for reasons such as being tired of “teaching to tests” or the teacher who feels they are not being heard. Some also leave to make more money in other districts.
It was reported that 8.5% of teachers in Indiana left for reasons other than retirement. Before saying 8.5% doesn’t seem bad, that’s over 1,000 educators in Indiana.
You can find the reasons that WRTV 6 found by reading their article at:
http://www.theindychannel.com/longform/call-6-thousands-of-indiana-teachers-leaving-the-classroom
There are a few things that are concerning in the story. This includes the comment that Indiana schools are not tracking why educators are leaving. This is a topic I’m sure will be addressed by the administration as it would be mind boggling to think this isn’t being tracked.
Glenda Ritz’s comment about taking the issue to the General Assembly seems extremely odd. Why would you not simply tell the school administrators to start tracking why teachers are leaving so you can work to retain those that remain? Any administrator deserving of the role should already be tracking or aware of this. If it takes getting a group of politicians to tell you it is okay to do a basic management function, then we have a bigger task ahead of us if we want to fix issues in our schools. Furthermore, creating a panel to review the causes is great, but if that panel fails to ask any of the other 12,400+ educators questions, then the last work that should be used to describe the effectiveness is “proactive”.
On the positive, discussions around teacher pay as well as on how teacher evaluations are done makes a lot of sense. These are topics that do need to be addressed at the state and district level.
The article actually includes retention rates for Indiana schools. I’ve not verified the data with what our administration, but I’ll assume that RTV6 has verified this. Here are numbers for some of the HSE Schools for 2014-15. Note that our average from these schools is 81%, just under the state average of 82%. Nine of the schools scored below the state average.
| School Name |
Retained |
Total | Retention Rate | |
| 571 | Brooks School Elementary | 45 | 57 | 79% |
| 572 | Cumberland Road Elem School | 25 | 34 | 74% |
| 573 | Durbin Elementary School | 19 | 25 | 76% |
| 574 | Fall Creek Elementary School | 34 | 40 | 85% |
| 575 | Fall Creek Intermediate School | 43 | 65 | 66% |
| 576 | Fishers Elementary School | 27 | 27 | 100% |
| 577 | Fishers High School | 141 | 157 | 90% |
| 578 | Fishers Junior High School | 54 | 67 | 81% |
| 580 | Geist Elementary School | 35 | 42 | 83% |
| 581 | Hamilton SE Int and Jr High Sch | 31 | 67 | 46% |
| 582 | Hamilton Southeastern HS | 133 | 162 | 82% |
| 583 | Harrison Parkway Elementary School | 33 | 35 | 94% |
| 584 | Hoosier Road Elementary School | 37 | 42 | 88% |
| 585 | Lantern Road Elementary School | 29 | 32 | 91% |
| 586 | New Britton Elementary School | 30 | 36 | 83% |
| 587 | Riverside Intermediate School | 52 | 60 | 87% |
| 588 | Riverside Junior High | 60 | 71 | 85% |
| 589 | Sand Creek Elementary | 32 | 46 | 70% |
| 590 | Sand Creek Intermediate School | 54 | 64 | 84% |
| 591 | Thorpe Creek Elementary | 36 | 45 | 80% |
| 950 | 1174 | 81% |
Clearly there is work to be done in the area of retaining good teachers.