To the Editor:
Re "At Charter Schools, Short Careers by Choice" (front page, Aug. 27):
Thank you for shedding light on the appalling turnover rate for teachers at many charter schools. Research has shown that teacher-student relationships are absolutely crucial to student success. These relationships cannot be built in a year or two.
Working at a charter school, I saw the kids cry every year over their favorite teachers leaving. Each year, I watched the new teachers scrambling. Instability created by the constant churn of staff was devastating, especially for the most vulnerable students, who felt constantly misunderstood and undervalued.
I've taught for over a decade. I didn't begin to hit my stride until my fifth year teaching. I've never seen a teacher with less than three years of experience whom I would even call "good." Teaching is incredibly complex and multifaceted. A teacher must deeply understand the content he or she teaches, as well as possess pedagogical knowledge, classroom management techniques and relationship-building skills.
The charter school representatives in your article defend the rapid turnover of teachers. Wendy Kopp, founder of Teach for America, even says that teachers can become great in one or two years! Would we expand this idea to other professions? Do we think the best lawyers are those fresh out of law school? Should we choose a rookie physician for complex surgery, because this surgeon is more "enthusiastic" than veteran surgeons?
The "short term" teachers speak of teaching not as a profession, but as a steppingstone to a career in another field. A 24-year-old charter-school teacher is quoted saying, "I feel like our generation is always moving onto the next thing and always moving onto something bigger and better." Bigger and better than teaching children? How disrespectful of the profession and the children themselves.
CATHERINE M. IONATA
Aberdeen, N.J., Aug. 27, 2013
To the Editor:
This article highlights high turnover for teachers at charter schools like Yes Prep and KIPP. But it missed the successes that these charters are having in turning around low-performing schools.
The Recovery School District in southern Louisiana was formed in 2003 by shutting down 107 of the worst-performing schools and converting many of those to charters. This year, it reports that the district's achievement gap with the state average has been reduced by 29 percentage points over the past five years. Arthur Ashe Charter School students beat the state average by five points, while serving the highest percentage of special education students in New Orleans. Success Prep Charter students increased their score 15 points in one year, while 96 percent of their students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.
These schools attract top college graduates as teachers and put them through grueling training and coaching throughout the first year. Some say it is not sustainable, but these schools are still making rapid gains after a decade.
RICK BERGDAHL
Issaquah, Wash., Aug. 27, 2013
To the Editor:
The high teacher turnover at charter schools leaves these institutions fragile and ill equipped to support their most vulnerable students. It takes far more than a year or two in the classroom to develop that elusive set of skills needed to serve our nation's neediest cohorts of students — young men of color, English language learners and so on. And I have seen some of the most well-regarded charters here in Massachusetts left reeling and in danger of closing after extensive teacher departures.
During recent years, the average experience of teachers in my school's humanities department essentially doubled, and we have correspondingly seen increased performance by students with disabilities, decreased student attrition and some of the top high school test scores in the state.
Our school's leaders haven't done anything radical; they have simply continued to make thoughtful moves year after year to support our faculty — whether trimming after-school duties, providing mentors for new teachers or offering more teacher leadership opportunities.
It is possible to achieve great results for all students without burning through our youngest teachers.
HENRY SETON
Cambridge, Mass., Aug. 27, 2013
The writer is a humanities teacher at Community Charter School of Cambridge.
To the Editor:
Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, makes the claim that the "strongest schools" can develop their teachers so that "they become great in the classroom even in their first and second years." My experience (nine years of school teaching, then 25 years of running teacher preparation programs) suggests otherwise.
Teachers go through three stages in learning the craft. The first stage, the first full year of teaching, is just learning to be comfortable in a roomful of adolescents. The second stage, typically the second year, is teaching, with some success, the given curriculum. The third stage, which can begin in the third year and shouldn't end, is teaching shaped by the creativity and originality of the teacher herself.
Most of the "short-timers" in the article will never reach the third stage. No wonder so many leave after too short a time.
"O.K., I've got this," an administrator at a charter school imagines such beginners thinking about their teaching. But they don't; they can't. Ms. Kopp's idea that one or two years of teaching can be enough to become great is arrogant nonsense.
DANIEL LINDLEY
New York, Aug. 27, 2013
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