Derek Roguski and Hannah Sadtler came to New Orleans in 2008 through Teach For America. The competitive program provided five weeks鈥� training and helped place them in schools, and both young teachers were eager to learn to teach and help the city鈥檚 students.
But they quickly found that they had more questions than answers about the schools they were in and the challenges they encountered.
鈥淲e found ourselves in these classrooms with no training for what we were doing there and no connection to our students鈥� cultures or communities. We鈥檇 expected that would be somehow part of the process of becoming teachers in New Orleans,鈥� said Ms. Sadtler, who grew up in Massachusetts.
So when their two-year teaching commitments ended, the pair founded the , a support group that hosts discussions and story circles in which new teachers start to understand their experiences and roles in this city鈥檚 history and schools.
The frustrations Ms. Sadtler and Mr. Roguski felt are not unique: With growing numbers of charter schools, increasing ranks of recruits to alternative-certification programs like Teach For America and TNTP (formerly the New Teacher Project), and proliferating turnaround efforts that remove a school鈥檚 entire staff, many urban schools are bringing in teachers who are younger, more diverse, and less experienced than the ones they replaced or others in their cities.
But this sea change in personnel is particularly evident here in the Crescent City, where Hurricane Katrina accelerated a dramatic restructuring of the school system that was underway before the storm hit in 2005.
In the 2010-11 school year, close to 40 percent of the 2,500 teachers across the city had been teaching for three years or less. Although that proportion was down from a peak of almost half in 2007-08, it contrasts with the 2004-05 school year, when about 17 percent of the city鈥檚 teachers had been teaching for such a short time.
The racial makeup of the teaching force has also shifted. This school year, 88 percent of the 44,000 public school students across the city are African-American, but only 49 percent of their teachers are, according to the Louisiana education department. Six years ago, 73 percent of the district鈥檚 teachers were African-American. The percentage of white teachers has almost doubled鈥攆rom 24 percent to 46 percent-in that time, while the percentages of Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian teachers have also increased.
Benefits Debated
Educators and parents are divided over whether this transformation has benefited students. The impact of the shift has yet to be rigorously studied, said Douglas N. Harris, a professor of education and economics at Tulane University in New Orleans.
鈥淲hat literally changed was expanded choice, autonomy for schools; ... on the face of it, those aren鈥檛 necessarily changes in policies related to teachers,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut the workforce changed dramatically, and it鈥檚 hard to imagine, based on what we know about the role of teachers, that this isn鈥檛 playing a big role in student achievement.鈥�
The New Teachers鈥� Roundtable is not the only group that is trying to understand the role and impact of the influx of new teachers that has come to the city since Hurricane Katrina. Individual schools and training programs like TFA, which grew dramatically in the city after the storm, are also examining their recruitment and professional-development models.
鈥淲e believe we must continue to focus on recruiting diverse candidates from colleges in Louisiana and across the Southeast to teach in New Orleans so that our corps increasingly reflects the backgrounds of the students we serve,鈥� said Jack Carey, the vice president of regional management for TFA in New Orleans.
The new makeup of the teaching force in New Orleans is the result of a confluence of forces.
One is that every teacher and other public school employee in the city was laid off soon after Hurricane Katrina because of budget woes in the Orleans Parish school system. There was no process for hiring the laid-off teachers who did return. A state civil judge ruled last summer that those 7,500 employees had been wrongfully terminated. That ruling is being appealed.
Meanwhile, a state-run district that had overseen just a handful of schools before 2005鈥攖he Recovery School District鈥攖ook the reins of most schools in the city and has been in the process of handing them over to charter school operators, which have complete autonomy in hiring and firing.
Most of the schools under the authority of the locally elected school board were also converted to charter schools, and though the United Teachers of New Orleans, an affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, still has a small staff, it no longer has a contract in any New Orleans schools.
New Schools, New Staff
Though some schools in the city prioritize hiring veteran teachers or teachers from New Orleans, many of the charter schools that have opened in the city have models that may lend themselves to a younger, less-experienced workforce. Schools that use components of the so-called 鈥渘o excuses鈥� model popularized by the Knowledge Is Power Program, or KIPP鈥攍onger school days, strict discipline policies, a strong focus on preparing students for standardized tests and college鈥攈ave blossomed throughout the city.
Ben Kleban, the chief executive officer of the New Orleans College Preparatory Academies, said that around half the teachers in his network of charter schools have come through either TeachNOLA or Teach For America. He said those programs made it easier not just to find teachers, but to find teachers who were likely to fit in with the mission of his schools.
鈥淭his work is taxing. ... There are people in certain stages in their life that aren鈥檛 looking for that,鈥� Mr. Kleban said.
Schools that might be interested in bringing in more-experienced educators struggle to find them, some charter operators say. 鈥淵ou look at your 20-year or 10-year veterans; ... it鈥檚 a really hard pipeline to tap into,鈥� said Morgan Carter Ripski, the president of Collegiate Academies, a charter-management organization with three schools in New Orleans.
Another challenge for recruiting and retention: A workload that averages 80 hours per week for teachers, she said.
Jonathan Bertsch, a spokesman for KIPP, which has nine schools in the city, said the network is increasingly trying to reduce teacher attrition. The network started a day-care program in which teachers can enroll their children and created a database of resources so teachers can spend less time planning.
TFA鈥檚 teachers commit to two years of teaching, which some argue guarantees a level of turnover that is detrimental to students鈥� learning and schools鈥� community-building efforts. But the organization says that 78 percent of its alumni in the New Orleans area still work in education.
And among local policymakers, there is no consensus that this younger teaching force is a bad thing.
鈥淲e have a lot of mini-experiments going on, with many charters using many different human-capital models,鈥� said Neerav Kingsland, the chief executive officer of New Schools for New Orleans, which invests in charter schools in the city. 鈥淒o we explicitly know that high teacher turnover is bad for kids? I don鈥檛 think we know that yet.鈥�
Regardless of how new teachers arrive, figuring out how to develop and support them is 鈥渢he next chapter in the New Orleans story,鈥� Mr. Kingsland said.
鈥淚 think New Orleans has done a good job in getting really talented folks in front of kids,鈥� he said. 鈥淏ut that talent鈥檚 often very raw.鈥�
Wary of Outsiders
A survey of parents conducted last summer found that 鈥渢here was frequently a debate about the importance of teacher experience,鈥� said Jill Zimmerman, the assistant director of research at the Cowen Institute for Public Education, a think tank at Tulane that studies education improvement efforts in the city.
鈥淪ome would say, my child has a brand-new teacher who鈥檚 great and it鈥檚 OK, ... but the prevailing sentiment was that parents value experience in their kids鈥� teachers,鈥� she said.
鈥淭here鈥檚 some uncomfortableness,鈥� she continued, 鈥渨ith teachers who aren鈥檛 from New Orleans, who don鈥檛 understand the community, who don鈥檛 look like them.鈥�
Jolon McNeil, a managing director at the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said that many in the city felt that the district had been taken over without community input. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a sense of, 鈥楾hey鈥檙e not from here; they don鈥檛 care about us,鈥欌�� she said.
But New Orleans鈥� schools were notoriously low-performing before the governance changes, and city schools鈥� scores on Louisiana鈥檚 state school performance ranking system have been improving: Twenty-one percent of the city鈥檚 schools were graded F by the state department of education in 2011, compared with 50 percent in 2009.
鈥淚s this young teaching force, with more churning鈥攁re we doing harm to students? Compared to where we were, absolutely not,鈥� said Leslie Jacobs, who was on the state鈥檚 board of education from 2000 until 2008. 鈥淐ompared to some ideal staffing tenure, possibly. But I can鈥檛 measure against an ideal. I can measure us against where we were.鈥�
Patrick Dobard, the superintendent of the Recovery School District, said, 鈥淚鈥檓 concerned about getting the best, most effective teachers while being conscious that we have to increase the number of minorities in the field.鈥�
Ms. Carter Ripski said that Collegiate Academies is working with alumni from the high school that was formerly in its Carver campus to help find more teachers from the community and give students a sense of the school鈥檚 history.
For its part, TFA, which currently has 375 first- and second-year teachers in New Orleans, has been focusing on increasing its diversity: Sixteen percent of its 2012 corps in the city identified as African-American, a percentage that has tripled since 2011. TFA has also increased its recruiting at local universities, and this year will focus on the history of race and education in New Orleans at corps members鈥� first training, Mr. Carey said.
TeachNOLA is upping its local recruitment, too, said Ana Menezes, a vice president at TNTP, which runs TeachNOLA.
Shared Concerns
Some TFA alumni come out of the program feeling empowered, and the new governance structure has brought a wave of energy to the education community in the city.
鈥淔or a young person, it provides an opportunity to have more influence than you鈥檇 have in a traditional setting,鈥� said Andrew Cox, who joined TFA in 2007 and taught in New Orleans schools for three years. While he no longer teaches, he still works at a school as a data analyst.
But, meanwhile, Ms. Sadtler and Mr. Roguski found their concerns resonating with other teachers and parent and activist groups.
鈥淚t wasn鈥檛 just a setup for the kids, it was a set-up for the TFAers, too鈥攖hey didn鈥檛 get the support they needed,鈥� Ms. McNeil said.
And while the New Teachers鈥� Roundtable, which has about 25 regular members and 75 who have come to larger events, plans to continue its discussion and support groups for new teachers, there鈥檚 something else stirring here, too.
At a recent event, when one participant suggested that teachers should have a stronger voice when they had questions about what was happening in their schools, another teacher suggested that they look no further than the group that had provided the room where the event was taking place: the United Teachers of New Orleans. A recruiter was standing by.
