Over 50 percent of the nation’s teachers and principals are Baby Boomers. You know, born between 1946 and 1964, Woodstock, hippies, Vietnam War protests, the Reagan Years, my parents (gulp, hides from view). Yeah, despite what you may have heard, they’re retiring and just like everything they’ve done for the past 60 years, they’re doing it in a big way. And for the education system, it’s a big problem.
Why? You ask. Well, according to today’s New York Times, if over the next four years, more than a third of the nation’s 3.2 million teachers retire, the resulting retirement wave would deprive classrooms of experienced instructors and strain taxpayer-financed retirement systems.
That’s according to a new report produced by the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future:
The problem is aggravated by high attrition among rookie teachers, with one of every three new teachers leaving the profession within five years, a loss of talent that costs school districts millions in recruiting and training expenses.
“The traditional teaching career is collapsing at both ends,” the report says. “Beginners are being driven away” by low pay and frustrating working conditions, and “accomplished veterans who still have much to contribute are being separated from their schools by obsolete retirement systems” that encourage teachers to move from paycheck to pension when they are still in their mid-50s.
Check out this chart from the New York Times about the implications of teacher retirement for states. Washington's situation looks pretty scary.
To ease the exodus, the report says, policymakers should restructure schools and modify state retirement policies so that thousands of the best veteran teachers can stay on in the classroom to mentor inexperienced teachers. Reorganizing schools around what the report calls learning teams, a model already in place in some schools in Boston, could ease the strain on pension systems, raise student achievement and help young teachers survive their first, often traumatic years in the classroom.
Sounds like a pretty good idea to me, but one hopes that the mass retirement of boomer teachers will force those in education policy to develop new ways of thinking about what constitutes a “teaching career.” For most currently entering the teaching profession, 30 years in the classroom is no longer a realistic option and most individuals will have multiple careers over their lifetimes. Perhaps this calls on everyone in education to think creatively about how best to recruit and retain the next big generation of teachers? Teach for America and The New Teacher Project seem to have some ideas.