From offering signing bonuses to searching internationally, Maryland school administrators have consistently failed for a decade to solve a revolving door of teachers.
School districts have plenty of temporary solutions, but experts said more should be done in the long term, particularly in retaining quality teachers.
“They leave when they feel they can?t make a difference, and they feel they aren?t supported in the school,” said Elaine Stotko, chairwoman of the Department of Teacher Preparation at Johns Hopkins University.
This year, the state?s two dozen school systems opened with about 700 vacant positions, according to the state Department of Education. They were short several thousand after the school year ended last year.
In the past few years, there are usually between 500 and 1,000 vacancies, said Bill Rienhard, spokesman for the state education department. There are about 80,000 teachers in Maryland.
Experts said the problem isn?t in recruiting teachers.
Many of the often expensive approaches are misguided, said Richard Ingersoll, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania?s Graduate School of Education.
Rather, schools should focus more on retaining teachers by offering more structured support programs and giving teachers more say in the decisions affecting their jobs, he said.
“Instead of all these signing bonuses, they might figure ways to cut these losses,” Ingersoll said.
Donna Wiseman, associate dean for teacher education at University of Maryland, said more effort should be spent developing mentor programs for teachers within their first five years.
“I would like to see us spending more time into making the transition into professional teaching much easier, because this a tough job,” Wiseman said.
Educators also should be more creative in their approach to attractingteachers, by encouraging different paths into the profession rather than just from a four-year education degree program, Wiseman said.
Parents? Right To Know
» Under the No Child Left Behind Act, school systems are required to tell parents the number of teachers in classrooms that are not “highly qualified,” including teachers with conditional certificates. Conditional certificates are given to teachers who do not meet full requirements for the professional certificate because they are missing a required course and haven?t passed an assessment test.
» In Maryland, the number of new hires with conditional certificates was 1,109 last year, down 11.4 percent from previous year. This decline may be due to the NCLB requirements. These conditionally certified teachers include 616 with experience and 493 with no experience.
? Source: Maryland Teacher Staffing Report, state Department of Education
