For one, schools with high turnover may be forced to fill many vacancies with inexperienced teachers, deflating student achievement. New teachers are barraged with unfamiliar textbooks to read, programs to learn, lesson plans to write and no idea whether what they try will work, says Kymara Chase of DePaul University s School Achievement Structure. Imagine having a teacher like that every year. That s very detrimental, and in a lot of schools, that s what s going on. Many school consultants have observed higher turnover in probation schools.
Many people are embarrassed by the label.
And many teachers run away from the problem. But consultants say they also know of schools where staff remained and rallied to move off probation. Fiske elementary in Woodlawn has an average teacher turnover rate of only 8 percent about half the district average even after landing on probation in 1996-97. The reason, says Principal Clarice Jackson-Berry, is that staff already had a long history together. Staff stability has made for closer ties to parents, she says, and after probation hit, she called a family night to rally support.