The New Teacher Project (TNTP) has recently released a new report, Keeping Irreplaceables in D.C. Public Schools: Lessons in Smart Retention, which holds up the reforms begun in DC public schools by former schools chancellor Michelle Rhee as a model for human capital reform. The main thrust of the reforms highlighted concerns good teacher retention through new processes of teacher evaluation and compensation.
TNTP was founded by Michelle Rhee in 1997, and current DCPS chancellor Kaya Henderson is also a former TNTP executive, so it may come as no surprise that TNTP supports the reforms that have been taking place there, but the findings merit serious consideration because DCPS is “the first large school district in the country known to be retaining far more of its Irreplaceables than its low-performing teachers.”
The report claims that schools lose their best teachers due to the combination of “weak school leadership, poor working conditions, and restrictive policies.” Most school districts retain good and bad teachers at about the same level—bad news for students. But since the reform began in DC in 2007 under Rhee, according to the report, DCPS has retained 88% of its “Irreplaceables” and kept only 45% of its lower performing teachers (2010-2011); both statistics are markedly better than other similar, large school districts.
These statistics are also important because they contradict the main worry that many had about the reforms put in place by Rhee, namely that in the attempt to remove poor teachers, higher performing teachers would also be driven away. In fact, the “Irreplaceable” teachers, according to the surveys of teachers, principals, and reviews of teacher evaluation results used in the report, feel more valued and have the chance to achieve compensation to the tune of $100,000 per year after at least four years of experience.
Finally, the report makes three recommendations about how to continue and extend the recent successes in DCPS:
- Schools should maintain higher expectations for teachers
- DCPS should do more to evenly distribute its top teachers across the District because DCPS is weaker here than other school districts
- DCPS should do more to help principals create the sort of healthy learning environments which will retain the “Irreplaceables”
For more information including links to summaries of the report and the full report itself, please visit the following websites:
http://tntp.org/irreplaceables/dcps
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