retire

Education News for 12-13-2012

in

State Education News

  • Perry Local Supt. Richard to retire, Bowe to replace him (Canton Repository)

    • After seven years, Perry Local Schools Superintendent John Richard plans to retire at the end of January to become the senior executive director of the Ohio Department of Education…Read more...

  • Ohio Senate OKs new school evaluation system (Cleveland Plain Dealer)

    • The Ohio Senate on Wednesday passed a Republican-backed education bill that calls for a more demanding evaluation system for schools, along with other significant changes…Read more...

  • State officials auditing troubled charter school (Columbus Dispatch)

    • A Columbus charter school already strained because of poor fiscal management now is under state scrutiny for its work with special-needs children…Read more...

  • House likely to OK school report cards (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The House is expected to approve legislation today to create a new school report card and accountability system that supporters hope will help improve student learning…Read more...

  • Steep cuts, levy crucial for Carlisle schools to avoid takeover by state (Dayton Daily News)

    • Carlisle Local Schools may consider eliminating at least one bus route in January as part of $400,000 in potential cuts to keep the district from falling into fiscal emergency status and a takeover by the state…Read more...

Local Education News

  • 25 local leaders on Coleman’s city schools panel (Columbus Dispatch)

    • The chief executive of a major corporation, a federal judge and a prominent attorney will lead a commission of 25 people appointed…Read more...

  • Berea school officials listen to parents, readjust next year's hours Sun Newspapers)

    • Berea school officials reconsidered next year’s proposed time changes for the district’s elementary schools…Read more...

  • Midview schools facing major cuts WKYC)

    • The Midview Schools may cut up to 25 percent of teachers and go to a five-hour school day. The Midview School District says if a levy fails in February, $2.3 million will need to be cut…Read more...

Editorial

  • Newfound urgency Columbus Dispatch)

    • Ohio’s new “third-grade reading guarantee” is causing big headaches, especially in big-city school districts. While they aren’t anything to celebrate, those headaches are necessary and overdue…Read more...

What We Lose When Teachers Retire

in

In many of his speeches, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan cites the projection that one million teachers will retire over the next decade. He uses this projection to support his policy objectives to transform the profession by reforming teacher evaluation systems, identifying effective and ineffective teachers, rewarding and removing teachers based on their effectiveness, and recruiting a new brand of teacher.

These are all common strategies leaders use to improve the labor force, but I wonder if these are the right strategies to emphasize when one third of the individuals in the profession are about to exit. I worry about the loss of what Dorothy Leonard and Walter Swap call "deep smarts" within schools. In their book Deep Smarts, Leonard and Swap describe how experienced professionals carry a highly sophisticated mixture of explicit and tacit knowledge. This knowledge is developed over time when experiencing variants of common problems. Leonard and Swap describe how this specialized knowledge is often lost when experienced professionals leave an organization. They urge organizations to protect this essential knowledge that resides in the heads of their professionals.

[readon2 url="http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning_forwards_pd_watch/2011/10/in_many_of_his_speeches.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+LearningForwardsPdWatch+%28Learning+Forward%E2%80%99s+PD+Watch%29"]Continue reading...[/readon2]