MOVING ON: Long time teacher Marcia Smith works with students in her second-grade classroom at Western Primary School. The school had the highest retention rate going into the 2013-14 school year among area institutions. Staff photo by Tim Bath
Raised in a family of educators, Brad Resler planned to follow his parents and grandparents’ footsteps into the classroom. Yet after just one year of teaching, he landed a job in sales – and never looked back.
“I got into the business side, and I think the danger is that once you get into business and can make more money and have more flexibility that teaching doesn’t offer, it’s hard to go back,” said Resler, who now is vice president of sales, direct at Brady Trane, a company in North Carolina that provides HVAC solutions to promote energy savings.
Resler, his wife and their children moved to North Carolina in 1999. He grew up in West Lafayette, and his father was superintendent of Western Schools in the ‘90s. Resler spent one year teaching high school history and government at Kokomo Schools in 1996 after earning an education degree from Purdue University.
When his wife, Dana, graduated a year after him with a degree in chemical engineering and got a job offer in Chicago, Resler followed her there with the intention of getting another teaching job. He figured his career was more “portable” and his wife had more earning potential.
“Back in ’96, I was getting job offers for teaching at $20,000 a year,” Resler said.
Salary was one of several reason teachers gave for voluntarily leaving the profession on the National Center for Education Statistics’ 2012-13 Teacher Follow-up Survey. Going into that school year, 259,400 teachers left the profession, which accounts for 7.7 percent of the 3.38 million public school teachers employed in the U.S. in the 2011-12 school year.
The peak of educators leaving the field was going into the 2004-05 school year, when 8.4 percent of teachers changed professions. The lowest percentage of “leavers” (5.6 percent) came in the 1988-89 school year, according to the survey.
Of the teachers who left the profession, 38.4 cited personal life factors, 13 percent left because of factors related to the career as a whole, 6.8 percent left because of salary or other benefits and 6.3 percent cited factors in their schools. About 9.7 percent left the profession involuntarily.
Resler fell into the “salary or other benefits” category. Instead of finding work as a teacher in the Chicago area, he was given an opportunity to work in sales. With the goal of raising a family, that salary was more attractive to him than what teaching could offer. Still, he misses being in the classroom and the connection with students. “I miss the relationships with the kids and being able to be in a mentoring role,” he said. “That’s as important as anything I’m doing now. Teachers aren’t as respected and appreciated as they should be.”
At area schools, teacher retention rates range from 94.8 percent to 56.7 percent, looking at recent data from two school years. The Indiana Department of Education released teacher retention rate data for the first time with the 2013-14 educator effectiveness ratings, tracking how many teachers at each school had been evaluated in both the 2012-13 and 2013-14 school years.
Administrators look at teacher turnover as a potential sign of issues within the school – though usually the turnover rate is simply due to retirements or families relocating.
“I do take it very personally when teachers leave because I think we do such a great job here. I think we offer great benefits and I think we have a great school. I take it personally because we treat everybody as family,” said Tim Garland, superintendent of Tri-Central Community Schools. “I want teachers to stay here. I want them to feel they’re part of something.”
A 50 percent teacher retention rate, for example, would signal to Garland that there is a problem with a school’s environment. He’s comfortable with the 71.2 percent retention rate the corporation had from 2012-13 to 2013-14, noting that there were several teachers who retired that year. Teachers with 20 or more years of experience made up 37 percent of Tri-Central’s teaching force in 2012-13 and fell to almost 29 percent in 2013-14. The percentage of new teachers rose from 14.5 percent to 25.4 percent those same school years.
“With our budget cuts, some teachers who were here felt like it was time for them to go and let younger teachers come in,” Garland said. “We do have a younger staff. I think you’ll see our retention rate go up.”
Garland noted the difficulty in hiring AP teachers, especially in math and science classes, so retaining those teachers is especially important. Kokomo Schools Superintendent Jeff Hauswald also emphasized the value of providing teachers with opportunities to develop professionally.
“Quality teachers are investments. Kokomo Schools is proud of the investments we make in our teachers through quality professional development and other learning opportunities,” Hauswald said. “This investment is essential in the work of our district and an integral part of who we are. These learning opportunities are one component that is essential in teacher retention.”
Central Middle School had the lowest teacher retention rate in the area going into 2013-14, with 56.7 percent of teachers staying from the previous school year. That was the year Kokomo re-opened Bon Air Middle School and turned Central into an International Baccalaureate school that also offered a KEY gifted and talented program. Many teachers involved in the traditional middle school program at Central followed their students to Bon Air, said Dave Barnes, director of communications for Kokomo Schools.
Western Primary School had the highest retention rate going into the 2013-14 school year among area schools, and Principal Steve Arthur echoed many of Garland’s and Hauswald’s comments on the importance of investing in teachers.
“Consistency is critical, probably from a professional development standpoint and what your focus is in the school,” Arthur said.
Second-grade teacher Marcia Smith spent the majority of her 28-and-a-half-year teaching career at Western Primary, and she plans to retire at the end of the school year.
“I’ve always felt the support from everyone who works with the kids out here,” said Smith, adding education should be a partnership among administrators, school board members, bus drivers, teachers and other school staff. “It all fits together and it takes all of these people to make it happen.”
Of her peers who have left the profession, Smith said the main reasons they cited were retirements, families relocating or wanting to stay home with children. Technology and the emphasis on test scores have changed the atmosphere of the profession over the years, she added.
“In recent years, the pressure to meet certain test scores has added to what we do, but the kids are meeting those expectations,” Smith said.
Mike Wise left teaching five years ago after spending 13 years in the classroom at Northwestern Schools. He taught elementary computer classes, joining his father and sister in careers as educators.
“I’ve always enjoyed the learning aspect of [teaching] and being around kids is great,” said Wise, who now runs his own photography business. “The part I enjoyed the most was the daily learning. That part of it I miss the most.” Wise dabbled in photography while teaching and opened Mike Wise Photography nine years ago, running that business while keeping up with his responsibilities at school for two years. The workload became too much, and he had to decide which to pursue.
“I felt like I wasn’t doing what I needed to in my classroom, and I felt like I wasn’t doing what I needed to in my business,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate to have two jobs that I love.”
Wise thought he would regret it later if he didn’t commit to photography, plus he has more control over what he can earn and a more flexible schedule than if he had stayed in teaching. The fact that he can stay involved at Northwestern Schools in his children’s classrooms and still see his former co-workers made the transition easier.
“I miss the daily interactions with the kids,” he said. “It’s been an interesting journey. I feel like teaching prepared me to be a good wedding photographer. When you’re used to dealing with 25 second graders, you can deal with a wedding party.”
One thing he doesn’t miss about working in education is the criticism directed at teachers lately, mainly by elected officials.
“I don’t miss hearing how bad of a job everybody’s doing in the profession from the government and the state,” he said.
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