New York's Revolving Door of Good Teachers Driven Out
By MICHAEL WINERIP, NY TIMES, June 1, 2005

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THEY knew from their children that there was trouble in the fifth grade at Public School 111 in Manhattan. But it wasn't until teacher conferences in late February that parents learned how badly the class had fallen apart.

By then, the fifth graders were on their third teacher in seven months. The first left before Christmas to get married. And though her departure was widely known by November, the second teacher, a substitute, Emebet Shiferraw, says she wasn't told about taking over that class until she reported to P.S. 111 in early January.

The sub left after two months, she says, because she got little support and things were not going well in class.

The third teacher, Millie Rodriguez, was pulled off her job as a reading specialist at P.S. 111 and handed the fifth grade just days before conferences. Parents were told their fifth graders would not get second semester report cards. "Ms. Rodriguez told me she was just there a week and had no work whatsoever to go on," said Reyna Soriano, whose son Elmer is a fifth grader. "I was so upset. How could this happen? They don't have report cards? Maybe they don't learn nothing."

Maria Adame described how her daughter Karla had stopped reading at home and had no homework anymore. "I said this could affect the tests coming up," recalled Ms. Adame. "Ms. Rodriguez agreed it's not fair if they're held back. These kids were cheated. Their education was at a pause."

Massiel Fernandez believes that her daughter Catherine did not score high enough on the admissions test at a middle school for gifted students because of the disruptions this year. "There was work on the test that she never saw in class," she said.

Teacher retention is a chronic problem at urban schools, and P.S. 111 - serving mostly poor Hispanic children in kindergarten to eighth grade - has one of the higher turnover rates in New York City. Only 21 percent of its teachers have more than five years' experience; 54 percent have been at P.S. 111 two years or less.

Yesterday it was two years since New York City teachers began working without a contract, and for those hoping the impasse will break soon, P.S. 111 is a cautionary tale. For weeks now, the city and the teachers' union have been sniping at each other in the press. By far, the issue getting the most ink is the need to reduce the time it takes to dismiss bad teachers - a pet peeve of the mayor's.

While this is clearly a problem, the far bigger problem is holding on to good teachers. Last year New York City had 3,567 "regular" teachers leave, the most in memory, 936 more than the year before, and 1,100 above the previous three-year average. These are not retirees or troubled teachers - they're certified teachers in good standing.

In contrast, officially bad teachers - those given unsatisfactory ratings - last year totaled between 645 (union estimate) and 800 (city estimate) of the 80,000 city teachers.

Union officials say the exodus reflects the lack of a contract, plus the modest pay increase being offered by the mayor - 5 percent over three years. Elizabeth Arons, the city schools' human resources director, says her office doesn't do exit interviews and doesn't know the reasons.

But Ms. Arons says teacher retention is a top priority for Chancellor Joel I. Klein. She says a new mentoring program, pairing a veteran teacher with a new one, is aimed at reducing a young teacher's feeling of isolation and improving retention. And the Teaching Fellows program - which enables new teachers to get a master's degree paid for by the city - seems to have helped. Also, in 2002, the mayor raised the first-year salary to $39,000 from $31,000, almost instantly wiping out the annual new teacher shortage.

These measures have improved retention of first- and second-year teachers. Last year, 14 percent quit after one year (it was 21 percent the year before the 2002 raise).

But such gains are not being sustained. By the fourth year, 44 percent of city teachers still quit, a figure that has changed little over time. In contrast, Scarsdale still has 82 percent of its teachers after 5 years.

Richard Ingersoll, a University of Pennsylvania professor, says teachers nationally give four main reasons for quitting: discipline problems; lack of administrative support; too little freedom to do their jobs; and, the biggest, money. That's a problem for New York City, where the salary range is $39,000 to $81,000, versus suburban Westchester County, where the median district's range is $44,000 to $98,000. As Amy Katz, a former P.S. 111 teacher said, "You can make $20,000 more in the suburbs for an easier day with better-prepared kids and more parent support."

At P.S. 111, a lot of bad forces converged. The school had a history of high teacher turnover that worsened under the current principal, Sheryl Donovan. Teachers and parents say the principal put in long hours and cared about students, but was a weak manager who failed to instill discipline - in December three P.S. 111 girls were arrested and charged with beating up a seventh grader in a hallway. Most teachers interviewed mentioned disciplinary problems as a reason for quitting.

Stephen Morello, a city spokesman, said Ms. Donovan, who is leaving this month, declined to be interviewed. He said it was her decision to go and she was proud of what she had done "to improve the performance of a chronically underperforming school."

But teachers described a school that was often in crisis because of turnover.

Eileen McCarthy, a middle school science teacher, taught at P.S. 111 for two and a half years. She says the middle school guidance counselor quit midyear, and she was given a few free periods a week to take over the job. "I was told to help eighth graders pick a high school, and I'm only in my second year," she said. "I didn't know high schools in New York City."

After two years, she said, she was burned out and quit, then returned in the spring of 2003 as a sub, teaching eighth-grade math. "I was about the fifth sub in that math class," she said. "By then, they had no interest, no notebooks, no pencils, and even though it was the second half of the year, we had to start from scratch."

Natalia Mehlman, a Columbia graduate who had been considering a teaching career, spent one year at P.S. 111, then left the field. She was assigned to teach middle school Spanish, but says she was given no curriculum and no reports on pupils' past performance. "The course? I just made it up," she said. "Every night I was pulling things off the Internet. There was no support from the principal. That school was so based on getting to minimum competency on the state English and math tests - Spanish was not on the radar."

"Behavior was a big problem," said Ms. Mehlman, who is getting her doctorate in history and teaching at Stanford. "It got to the point, I'd see a few kids in back quietly playing cards - I'd ignore it."

Glenda Pettiford, a first-year teacher, was assigned an in-school suspension class made up of the worst-behaved middle school students from Region 9 in Manhattan. She was put in a windowless room in the basement with up to 13 pupils. Even though, under city policy, Ms. Pettiford was supposed to have a second teacher, a security guard and guidance counselor to help, she was alone much of the fall. Only after the union filed grievances did she get the extra staff, and during Christmas break, she, too, left.

CITY officials would not comment on problems at P.S. 111 or the in-school suspension program, except to acknowledge that it is rare for a first-year teacher to be given such an assignment.

There was some improvement at P.S. 111 this year, and that, too, says a lot about the need to hold on to veteran teachers. On the fourth-grade state English test - the most closely watched by the public - the school went up 13 points, to 57 percent passing; citywide the average increase was 9.9 points to 59.5 percent passing. The staff believes a big reason was that the four teachers assigned to fourth grade are among the most senior at P.S. 111, all with at least six years experience.

In contrast, turnover has been worse at P.S. 111's middle school, and the eighth grade results were abysmal. Citywide, 32.8 percent of eighth graders passed the English test; at P.S. 111, 15 percent passed, a drop of 9 points. As for the fifth graders with no report cards - test results are expected later this month.

The exodus of experienced teachers from P.S. 111 has been noticed by fifth graders, including Karla Adame and Elmer Soriano. "Ms. Macken, our second grade teacher, left," said Karla. "And Ms. Rosado in kindergarten and Ms. Haddad, first grade."

"Second grade Ms. Kline," said Elmer, "and the science teacher, Ms. Astor."

"Third grade Ms. Myers," said Karla.

"Ms. Martinez left fourth," Elmer said.

"A lot of teachers coming and going," Karla said, "but it doesn't matter."

But Ms. McCarthy, who was hired to teach science, then turned into a guidance counselor and math sub before quitting, thinks it does. "Kids get angry," she says. "There's no consistency - adults they care about keep leaving."

It haunts teachers, too. Three years later and 3,000 miles away at Stanford, Ms. Mehlman has a recurring nightmare about her year at P.S. 111: "I wake up late. I have no lesson plan. The principal is standing at the door and I don't know what to teach."

E-mail: edmike@nytimes.com

THE EMPEROR IS NOT WEARING ANY CLOTHES
by Paul Heller
The DOE's dirty little secret is exposed. Of course teachers are leaving in droves. A lot more would leave given the opportunity. Poor quality supervision, intimidation of teachers and no real plan to deal with unruly students who prevent teachers from teaching are mostly to blame. I experienced the reason for this first hand. I taught in an inner city New York high school for over thirty-five years. Last year I was given a supervisor with hardly any teaching experience. He was given this job after being thrown out of his position recruiting new teachers (how ironic). Needless to say, he was a total incompetent. He was never willing to demonstrate what he wanted us to do. When he was viewed teaching, he was a total disaster. He has attended the Principalís Academy and is or will be a Principal.
This year our department got another supervisor. Again she had little teaching experience and a total unwillingness to demonstrate what exactly she wanted. A complete incompetent, she gave me my first and only unsatisfactory observation in thirty-five plus years of teaching. We were also given an acting Principal who spent all his time barricaded in his office. Since I had planned to retire in January, the observation was moot. I told her that I would be gone soon. She said the students would still be here. The truth was that, in spite of numerous parental contacts, most of the students werenít there.
Last year, the head of Region Eight, came into my room. I told her that I had to use handouts for homework because the supervisor had not been organized enough to give out textbooks. In an imperious manner, she said that we no longer will be using textbooks in Social Studies. This was news to me. She would never have allowed this for her own children. This would be unacceptable in the suburbs. This is someone who rips apart teachers who have been doing the 'wrong' things in the past. Where was she for the last thirty years? The system is filled with incompetent retreads in spite of all the ìwe are cleaning house' claims by Bloomberg-Klein. They (the retreads) have now become "born-again" Klein-bergs.
The modus operandi of Bloomberg-Klein is to blame the union contract for their failures and then to refuse to negotiate unless ALL their demands are met. Even the fourth grade assessment is a fake because of the way some students were excluded from taking the test. Left-back third-graders never took the test. That is one way to raise stats.
The Union, for its part, made the mistake of backing a loser in the last mayoral race. Randi Weingarten also thought that by embracing Teaching College fads, untested teaching methods and greater Principalís control over staffing called SBO schools (theoretically, the staff and parents pick the teachers, overriding seniority) would be seen as leading a progressive union, willing to change, and then bring back the bacon to the rank and file. Of course, the Principal exerts the real authority in these choices (does the public know this?). It all backfired under Bloomberg-Klein, who saw this as an opportunity to do a Reagan-Patco redux. Break the union and get a scapegoat for their failures all at the same time.
Parents of all economic and social classes who are involved and concerned about their children's education will continue to send them to the few Public Schools where the critical mass of kids are just like theirs. Hence, a successful, orderly, school essentially run by parents and students. They will learn because or in spite of their teachers and Principal. The rest will vote with their feet: off to Parochial, Private or suburban schools. The merry-go-round will continue with teachers constantly getting on and off.
Sincerely,
Paul Heller
P.S. I congratulate you on your story. The public won't find much of this in the conservative, union-bashing Post and Daily News. Bloomberg has successfully bamboozled the press and the public on the condition of the schools.