One in eight teachers leave within two years of getting tenure?
Michael Mulgrew was interviewed on NY1, and the video is up at Edwize. 17 minutes or so. Worth watching. Just a qualitative evaluation (no data) – he opens a little tight, stays a bit closer to “message” than he needs to, but gets better as the cameras roll.
Anyhow, good stuff, some new data. The interviewer asks about everyone getting tenure, and he corrects the misconception. (I wonder where his numbers are from. They sound better than the numbers we used to throw around, but it would be good to have the source.)
34% don’t make it to the end of year 3. Of the 66% who get there, 97% get tenure. That’s about 64% of those who start.
More interesting, 45% don’t get past year 5. So 55% do.
Get this. Of every 64 who get tenure, only 55 are left teaching 2 years later. In other words, 9 of 64 disappear between Year 3 and Year 5.
Brutal system. So much for lifetime employment.
JD2718 
I left mid-year in my 3rd year. It was a difficult decision to leave, even though things were rough at my school. While I’m struggling to find a new job now, I’m much happier.
I also wonder how many teachers don’t get tenure for vapid reasons. My wife was denied tenured for having the audacity of being hospitalized with the swine flu in a school whose principal refused to leave her office out of fear of getting sick herself (I’m sure the UFT will do something about that… eventually… someday… maybe…).
Of course, she was given the opportunity to dispute it (she is), yet naturally the penalty for doing so is that she isn’t allowed to user her license (and thus lacks a teaching job) until it’s resolved.
What’s fiscally moronic is that the DoE dumped thousands of dollars into getting her a Masters, and then allowed a principal to release her from the system against her will for such a moronic reason. And then, of course, who knows how long until the DoE actually allows the UFT and themselves to get together and hopefully realize how idiotic they acted in letting her go, and by that time if she has another job elsewhere, what would be the encouragement to shift gears again and go back into teaching?
Other teachers are threatened with U ratings and must agree to have tenure extended for an extra year and must agree to leave quietly. One did. Guess what school?
By the way her new school loves her!
I am ready to leave at year 8. Wrong turn in life Board of Ed