Teachers who leave the profession might be more frustrated with their principals than their students or working conditions. This does not surprise me. One year our school was blessed to have a supportive principal who just brightened everyone's day. She listened to her teachers and allowed us to make decisions. Her enthusiasm was contagious, and we all worked so hard to see that everything ran smoothly. Our campus received all sorts of awards that year. I can still see her waltzing down the halls wearing gold shoes and a flowing dress. She was an incredible principal who visited our classrooms often but never in a threatening way. In other words, she trusted us. Not one teacher wanted to leave at the end of the year. Unfortunately, due to health problems, this lovely lady is no longer a principal.
A recent survey indicates that teachers sometimes feel the need to look elsewhere for work due to inflexible administrators.
It wasn’t her teenage students who drove Meghan Sharp out of teaching—it was the crippling inflexibility of her administrators.
All the innovative curriculum ideas and field trips she proposed to engage her 10th grade biology students were promptly shot down, and she left the profession after just two years.
According to a recent report on teacher attrition by the federal National Center for Education Statistics, her predicament—and her departure—are common in the profession. Among former teachers who took noneducation jobs, 64 percent said they have more professional autonomy now than when they taught. Only 11 percent said they’d had more influence over policies at school than in their current jobs.
The survey, based on interviews with more than 7,000 current and former teachers, also found widespread problems with workloads and general working conditions, and it notes that the percentage of teachers abandoning the classroom continues to grow. Among public school teachers, that proportion reached 8 percent in the 2004-05 school year—up from 6 percent in 1988-89.
Some might think that teachers are frustrated and leave the profession due to increased pressure for higher test scores. This might be true in some cases. I feel that most teachers would stick around and that schools would only get better if we had more principals like the gold shoed angel I described above.