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Background/Context: Most accounts of teacher attrition fall into one or both of the following categories: teacher life cycle and workplace conditions. Many educational researchers
have described and analyzed teaching in moral and ethical terms. Despite the numerous
articles and books that study the personal convictions of teachers, a sustained consideration
of how moral and ethical factors may contribute to educators decisions to leave the profession is absent from nearly all the literature on teacher attrition and on the moral life of teaching. This article couples these two literatures to highlight the moral and ethical dimensions
of teacher attrition through the experiences of 13 experienced and committed former teachers
from high-poverty schools.
Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study asks: Why do experienced and committed teachers in high-poverty schools leave work they love? This article
explores how the former teachers in this study weighed the competing calls to teach right
and their responsibilities to society, the profession, their institutions, their students, and
themselves. The participants principles, or core beliefs, are analyzed in light of John Deweys
description of a moral situation. Following Dewey, it is shown that in deliberating on their
moral dilemmas, principled leavers ask not only, What shall I do? but also What am I?
Population/Participants/Subjects: The research participants are 13 former teachers from
high-poverty schools with tenures ranging from 6 to 27 years of service.
Research Design: The study is a philosophical inquiry combined with qualitative analysis
of portraits of former teachers.
Teachers College Record Volume 113, Number 12, December 2011, pp. 26702704
Copyright by Teachers College, Columbia University
0161-4681
principled does not imply that teachers who leave for other reasons are
unprincipled. However, there is something particular to this category of
leavers that is distinct from other kinds of attrition described in the literature. The teachers in this study were loath to be simply successful
teachers.1 Rather, they consistently wove the idea of the good into their
visions of teaching. As Sonia Nieto (2009) argued, Too many teachers
are leaving the profession because the ideals that brought them to teaching are fast disappearing (p. 13). This study highlights the content of
those ideals and how ideals, or principles, can provide justification for
leaving.
WHY DO TEACHERS LEAVE?
Most accounts of teacher attrition fall into one or both of the following
categories: teacher life cycle and workplace conditions. Beginning with
Lorties (1975) sociological work on the nature of teaching, the profession has always contended with high levels of turnover. In fact, Lortie
argued, teaching was institutionalized as high turnover work during the
nineteenth century and the modern occupation bears the mark of earlier
circumstance (p. 15). Lorties historical prcis serves as a reminder that
initially, men served as teachers until they could find better work. When
women first gained entry into the work of teaching, it was on the condition that they would leave if they became married. Today, in heterosexual couples, womens work often is viewed as secondary or supplemental
income that is abandoned if the couple has children or if other family
caretaking responsibilities take precedence (Borman & Dowling, 2008;
Kersaint, Lewis, Potter, & Meisels, 2007). Yet, not all teacher turnover
takes on the mark of past patterns. Moore Johnson and the Project on
the Next Generation of Teachers (2004) have documented the wider
range of options available to women and people of color, thus rendering
less attractive the relatively lower salary, lower status work of teaching,
especially for those who are academically gifted (Buckley, Schneider, &
Shang, 2005).
The better opportunity explanation accounts for entry into the profession. In terms of career longevity, Moore Johnson distinguished
between long-term and short-term career expectations in the new generation of teachers (Moore Johnson & the Project on the Next
Generation of Teachers, 2004). Many teachers entering the profession in
the last 10 years, unlike those in previous generations, do not view teaching as a lifelong, or even long-term, career. Rather, they see it as an
opportunity to do meaningful work before embarking on another career
path. Teaching may also serve as a change of environment from previous
work experiences, following the trend in the United States to change jobs
and perhaps career interests several times over the course of a lifetime.
Studying graduates from UCLAs Center X teacher preparation program,
Quartz et al. (2008) and Olsen and Anderson (2007) generated greater
specificity in the language of teacher attrition by noting the subcategories
of role changers and role shifters, respectively. Olsen and Anderson
argued that role shifters should not be simply considered leavers
because they continue to serve urban youth as principals and teacher
educators, and in other positions that enable them to expand their
spheres of influence.
These contemporary analyses of teacher life cycles update and situate
Hubermans (1993) work in the context of U.S. teaching environments
and policies. However, these studies do not address teachers who, despite
trends of frequent role changing, shifting, or career changes, intended
on teaching for the long haul or who had already made shifts to remain
in schools in new roles. Huberman highlighted that all teachers tend to
go through a reassessment phase in which they face some sort of existential crisis, typically around years 715. Margolis (2008) suggested that
the period of reassessment occurs much earlier, perhaps even as soon as
46 years into teaching. Kukla-Acevedos (2009) analysis of the National
Center for Education Statistics surveys on teacher mobility revealed that
first-year teachers leave for reasons distinct from those of their more
experienced peers. She recommended that research into teacher attrition be differentiated based on tenure.
Although folk wisdom suggests that pay is the most significant factor in
teacher dissatisfaction and attrition, careful studies show that pay
emerges as a significant concern only when other conditions that enable
teachers success with students are not met (Lobe, Darling-Hammond, &
Luczak, 2005; Moore Johnson & Birkeland, 2003; Moore Johnson & the
Project on the Next Generation of Teachers, 2004), when teachers feel
constricted by the inability to engage in meaningful ongoing learning
(Margolis, 2008), and when the poor quality of school facilities is
omnipresent (Buckley et al., 2005). Teachers are more frustrated by a
lack of collegial interdependence, rigid curriculum mandates, testing
that seems more punishing than problem-solving, and hierarchical decision-making than by low pay.
An absence of a sense of success with students seems to contribute
most to teachers decisions to leave (McLaughlin, 1993; Moore Johnson
& Birkeland, 2003; Moore Johnson & the Project on the Next Generation
of Teachers, 2004). That lack of efficacy may be due to inadequate
teacher education and ongoing professional development, impotent and
isolating professional communities, and perceptions of ineffective and
ences, often for the first time in a systemic way, gained new perspectives
on their decisions to leave. None of the experienced teachers in this
study was asked to participate in an exit interview at his or her school or
district upon resignation. For example, Susan taught for 10 years in the
same urban elementary school where she had sent her children and
where she had volunteered prior to becoming a teacher. Over the course
of the interview, she came to articulate that her decision was one that
involved contradictions in the practice of teaching, and not simply a personal disagreement with enacted policy. She explained, I would say, if I
looked back on it, maybe I didnt know it at the time, but I was becoming
increasingly uneasy about the profession and what was being asked of
me. The researchers interest in the moral and ethical dimensions of
teacher attrition came into sharper focus as certain lines of follow-up
questions were pursued, and especially in reading, interpreting, and analyzing the transcribed interviews.
Portraiture, as described by Lightfoot (1983), fits well with the praxis
of philosophy and qualitative inquiry, especially from a research perspective informed by Deweyan pragmatism and feminist theories. Portraiture
eschews dualisms such as subjective and objective, reality and philosophy, and personal and political. Portraiture seeks to reveal how
subjects make sense of their experiences and to explore aspects of their
lives and experiences that would not be illuminated, save for the portraitists work. Meaning is co-constructed between the portraitist and the
subject of the portraitand that meaning is mediated by the theories
that frame the inquiry. The interplay between qualitative research and
philosophical inquiry brings the abstract to light and enables lived experiences to be illuminated in new ways (see Fields & Feinberg, 2001;
Garrison & Rud, 2009; Hansen, 1995, 2001a; Jackson, Boostrom, &
Hansen, 1993; Knight Abowitz, 2000; Mayo, 2004; Smith, 2001).
The interviews took place between 2006 and 2008, before the height of
the current economic crisis in the United States. Most of the interviewees
left teaching without another job in place, and all the interviewees pay
was reduced if they moved on to new jobs elsewhere. The bleak unemployment picture in the education sector and the rest of the U.S. job market serves as a stark reminder that leaving ones work can be a luxury.
Future research on moral and value conflicts in teachers work will need
to look at those who struggle through the dilemmas described here while
remaining in their jobs in schools, in addition to those who leave.
The interviews, or sittings, took place at a location of the participants
choosing and tended to last between 1 1/2 to 2 1/2 hours. The interviews
were transcribed and then read several times for repetitive refrains and
resonant metaphors (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Hoffman Davis, 1997).
These refrains and metaphors led to four broad categories that were used
to code a subset of the transcripts: core beliefs about teaching, value conflicts with institution/policy, value alignment with institution/policy, and
moral reasoning for leaving. After analyzing the results of initial coding,
the categories were simplified to align with the questions arising from the
moral and ethical focus of conceptual framework: What does it mean to
teach right? What are the conditions that lead to teachers feeling that
they cannot teach right? The final three categories that were then
explored in the complete set of transcripts were: core beliefs about teaching, sources of conflict, and moral dilemmas. The former teachers may
not have used the language of moral or ethical in describing their
dilemmas or conflicts, yet their responses were coded as such when the
concern touched on their sense of rightness, goodness, or justice in relation to the work of teaching. This article focuses on the teachers core
beliefs about teaching and the dilemmas they faced in weighing competing responsibilities in their profession.
PRINCIPLED LEAVERS
As a result of analyzing these portraits through an ethical and moral lens,
a new category to describe certain forms of teacher attrition is necessary.
Attention to what constitutes the good in teaching entails engaging with
the moral and ethical dimensions of the work. Although some may cringe
at the notion of the moral dimension of teaching, it is important to keep
in mind that the moral does not require adherence to a fixed set of
dogma or taking on a smug or condescending tone. The moral means
how we affect others and ourselves for the better and the worse. There is
not a single moment of teaching that cannot be considered moral in the
sense that teachers, by virtue of their positions as leaders in the classroom, are enacting and communicating values, often in subtle, indirect
ways (De Ruyter & Kole, 2010; Goodlad et al., 1990; Hansen, 2001a,
2001b; Jackson et al., 1993).
John Dewey described a moral situation as one in which there is an
incompatibility of ends (Dewey & Tufts, 1909, p. 207). The dilemmas
described by the former teachers in this study are concrete exemplars of
Deweys philosophical problem; the choices they have to make appeal to
distinct goods, each worthwhilethe commitment to good teaching and
the commitment to the well-being of ones students and/or himself or
herself. Ideally, these goals would not be at odds, but when they are perceived to be, they have the makings of a moral situation. Dewey posited,
We have alternative ends so heterogeneous that choice has to be made;
an end has to be developed out of conflict (p. 207). This situation is not
about cold-blooded calculation. The experience of being in a moral situation can be intensely personal because the incompatible ends can be
equally desirable or repugnant. Said Dewey, This is the question finally
at stake in any genuinely moral situation: What shall the agent be? (p.
210). The choice demanded calls out not only what one in a moral situation should do, but also who he or she is.
Principles do not prescribe particular actions or make choices in moral
situations straightforward. Dewey explained that the object of moral
principles is to supply standpoints and methods which will enable the
individual to make for himself an analysis of the elements of good and
evil in the particular situation in which he finds himself. No genuine
moral principle prescribes a specific course of action (Dewey & Tufts,
1909, p. 333). Dewey argued for principles in judging, and these principles will serve as tools for analysis in moral situations. Dewey did not
argue for principles in morality in which good and evil would be determined independent of the context of the situation. Moral situations are
experiences that have the potential to be educative. As a result, ones
principles will change as ones experiences grow. The conflicts experienced by the participants in this study provide an opportunity to learn
about the living, dynamic principles that motivate the work of these
teachers.
Principled leavers do not need to proclaim the moral high ground or
tout inflexible moral yardsticks that cannot accommodate the complications of everyday professional life in public schools. The principled
leavers in this study first compromised the way they believed they should
teach in order to negotiate ways to teach well within the system and serve
their students. After accommodating their visions of good teaching to
remain working with a high-poverty population, they arrived at a juncture
at which their work was incompatible with their visions for good teaching,
working with students, and their own sense of the good life.
RESPONSIBILITY TO SOCIETY
Elizabeth, who taught for 27 years, articulates succinctly the moral
dilemma faced by many of the teachers in this study. After transferring to
three different schools in the last 5 years of her tenure, she came to the
realization that her vision of good teaching was incompatible with the
pedagogy required in schools in her area that served poor students. Her
decision to leave hinged on the fact that she could not compromise further her dual commitment to teaching right and serving the neediest
populations:
English teacher and as a team leader of her middle school. Yet, instructional effectiveness was not enough when she had become worn down by
what she viewed as anemic or slapdash approaches to teaching and
school policy that neglected students needs. She knew that there were
easier places to teach, but easy was not why she taught:
I loved feeling a part of something bigger and better. I think I
knew I was going to do some kind of social change work, and
even though teaching wasnt paying that well and even though it
was really frustrating to me on a lot of levels personally and professionally, I felt I could go home at night saying I felt good about
what I did. [Unlike other teachers who left for a charter school,]
Im gonna stick it out here and do the best I can for these kids,
cause they dont have the option to leave.
Stephanie S. also combines the moral and ethical in her reasons for
pursuing and remaining in teaching for 9 years. Her view of the moral
aspect of teaching issues an injunction that she should not leave the
school for a better environment if the students are not able to make that
change. Her ethical development is supported through her participation
in something bigger and better than her individual commitments.
Tanessalyn, who taught for 10 years, had moved from a rural school in
South Carolina to work in the city schools in Atlanta. She believed she
generated resentment from teachers who did not appreciate the high
expectations she set for her students and the ensuing successes they
enjoyed.
Here in Atlanta, I taught again in the inner-city schools because
I found that [was] when I was the most valuable. Thats where I
felt my passion was. So, I got here to Atlanta, got in the inner-city
school. Loved it. . . .The new administrator just loved what I was
doing for the kids. Again, these were kids who had been in trouble; they were on their way out of the school . . . but I turned
them around.
Tanessalyns moral commitments involved holding high expectations
for her students and instilling clear codes of conduct that would generate respect for her class. Her ethical self-image was fed by the success of
students who had previously known failure and disorder.
In these excerpts, the teachers speak to a sense of moral and ethical
value in their work, alluding to the social responsibility it carries. Others
used terms such as mission (Maggie and Susan) or sacred duty (Rick), and
it impossible to do good work when they felt they were sending messages
to students that were antithetical to their core beliefs as they sought to
implement policy mandates.
Budget shortfalls and local politics also impact the sustaining ethical
features of the work. At the beginning of his 10-year teaching career,
John P. had attended summer workshops at Harvard on portfolios and
authentic assessment, but the money to support that level of professional
development dried up. Lisa had built a thriving journalism program and
was a new teacher coach, but those responsibilities were eliminated
because of funding constraints. However, Lisa also viewed the decision to
cut the positions as retribution for being a squeaky wheel in her denunciation of the schools reinstatement of tracking. Part of Susans decision
to leave involved her losing the student teachers who invigorated her
practice when the local university ended its partnership with her school.
Nearly all the teachers mentioned that they were teaching at their best
and felt the most positive about the profession when they were involved
in collaborative problem-solving with colleagues and with the support of
outside programs such as the Annenberg Foundation, AmeriCorps, the
Boston Writing Project, the Bay Area Coalition of Equitable Schools, the
College Board, and other reform initiatives that involved teachers in
developing standards, curriculum, and mastery assessments.
School leadership changes affected profoundly many of the teachers in
this study. Former alliances with likeminded principals enabled the
teachers deviations from scripted curricula because their students were
performing well. Or, teachers special projects were supported because
they were viewed by administrators as providing an important community
service. These experienced teachers viewed new, and often younger, principals as insecure and having something to prove, or as just merely ineffectual. The moral and ethical import of these conflicts with school
leadership relates to the dignity of the profession. For Rick, who taught
for 11 years, the institution of public schools impinges on the professionalism of teachers. He explains,
The way we set up our public schools, and Ive always thought
this, but the way we set them up is just cruel, its cruel to teachers. It says to teachers, Youre a jerk. Youre kind of a loser.
Youre really, youre just trying to slide out and not do any work,
so you need to see 5 classes, and you need to do this, you need
to do that. And it really doesnt allow us to be professionals.
For Maggie, who taught for 27 years, the disrespect surfaced at a time
of leadership change.
I was just a kind of very active person [on school committees and
projects] and when [the new principal] came in he brought
some of his own people and that was difficult. Because you had
to defer to him the things that you had been able to do before
and you couldnt do it anymore because it was almost like people
dont trust you. Dont trust you to do the right thing. Maybe they
had experience in their [previous] school with deadbeat teachers, which happens everywhere. . . . Especially for them to establish their authority as the new principal or the new assistant, they
have to kind of take this hard line so that they can get respect. A
lot of times they dont get the respect, they just hear the disdain.
Both Maggie and Rick speak to the presumption that they are losers
and deadbeats, which diminishes the ethical standing of the profession
by ascribing to teachers the qualities of incompetence and untrustworthiness. A butterfly garden planted at her Newark school in partnership with
the local conservancy and suburban womens clubs was a point of pride
for Maggie. Without being notified, the organizations were directed to
meet with another teacher. Later, the garden was mowed down at the
principals directive. Such actions motivate the teachers to ask, What does
it say about me if I am part of this profession? Briefly, other examples of
what the teachers viewed as professional transgressions were: Tanessalyn,
a married woman, was called into the principals office and accused of
having an affair with a male colleague with whom she was collaborating.
Susan approached her principal with a years worth of documentation on
a student to discuss a possible action plan. The principal suggested that
she take the student home to live with her. John P. had been issued a
warning regarding the number of Ds and Fs he assigned in his math class.
He wrote a letter to the assistant principal requesting a meeting to discuss
strategies for assessing student work, but a meeting was never granted.
John R., who taught for 16 years, was told by his principal that he was put
on a growth plan, but he was never given a copy or informed of the recommendations for growth. Colin resented that on an in-school professional development day, after several hours of no guidance from school
leadership, teachers were instructed to create midterm exams as an afterthought.
Finally, the teachers resisted the standardization of teaching itself. John
R. explained that with the emphasis on testing, he couldnt be a real
teacher. Instead, he was rendered a technician and argued that with
scripted curricula, anyone could do this. Noelle also bristled under
the focus of standardization and the accompanying paperwork. She said,
I have knowledge of how kids learn to read, and I saw needs in my
sequence of units, and mandated test preparation that narrows the curriculum, squeezed out all protected institutional space.
Before resigning, Elizabeth struggled to find a way to remain in teaching. Her reaction to the scripted reading program in her district was no
mere resistance to change. She wrote to the programs publisher asking
for research to support approaches that she viewed as miseducative for
her students.
I really felt like I had spent a couple of years trying to work with
the system, talking to people about what the most egregious
things were, trying to figure out how to get around them without
doing anything as drastic as we did [publicly voicing opposition
to a scripted reading program]. I really felt like Id done my best
to do that, so for me, I felt like I had three options at that point.
I could quit, I could shut my door and do my own thing and stay
out of the fray, or I could stand up for what I thought was important for children.
Like Elizabeth, Stephanie F. took a stand for her moral convictions. She
and a group of colleagues attempted to empower parents to resist narrowed curricula and standardized testing. They also wrote letters to the
editor of the Washington Post:
For a long time, we thought that where we could change [the
school system] was in our own classrooms. . . . No matter what
came down from above, if we closed our doors and we did what
we believed was right, we could go forward. But that turned out
not to be the case because what started to come down from
above just got worse and worse and worse, and the pressure
became so great that there was no way around it. And I think
thats the most insidious part of itthe idea that if you havent
prepared your kids for all of this, that youre putting them in a
bad place.
Stephanie F. worried that by capitulating to her districts directives to
focus primarily on testing, she would be complicit in harming children.
However, she also points to the paradox that by refusing to engage in
practices that she believed were not conducive to good teaching (such as
teaching to the test), she likewise could be accused of harming her
students.
Elizabeth and Stephanie F.s experiences highlight three strategies that
most of the teachers in this study attempted to employ, if possible. They
spoke up about what they saw students needing and why they felt students
needs were not being met, they attempted to work within the expectations
set by their schools and districts, and finally, they left. It is possible that the
classroom door is no longer the impermeable membrane that isolates
(and also protects) teachers and their work. Even behind closed doors,
the teachers in this study found it impossible to pursue their visions of
good work in the current pedagogical policy environment.
RESPONSIBILITY TO STUDENTS
For the teachers represented in this study, no one event or policy catalyzed their decision to leave. Rather, they ceased to feel joy at work,
found themselves consistently impatient, or sensed, as Rick put it, the
edges of burnout. In assessing their current practice, they found that
they no longer recognized their teaching selves, and they did not like
what they saw. By compromising and being willing to adjust their practice
in order to comply with relatively small and gradual external demands,
they eventually were teaching in a way that was inconsistent with their
vision of good work.
Lisa told her class that she would not be returning the following year
by explaining to the students that they deserved more than she was able
to offer.
I said, You know that teacher who you kind of feel like should
have left a long time ago because they arent really in it and they
get mad all the time and you kind of feel like they should just
step back a few years ago? And theyre like, Oh, yeah! and they
were all trying to name them. You know? [Laughs] They all
wanted to say, Yeah, so and so, she really should have left. And
I said, Well I dont want to be that person and Im not that right
now, but I kind of feel it and so I want to step back before Im
that person.
Self-described as a rebellious believer in kids, Lisa knew she had to
make a change when she sensed she was giving up on students she would
have normally done everything in her power to reach. Colin also based
his decision to leave in part on the fact that he was losing patience with
students. He explained, I felt, I feel like I worked up until the last day at
seeing students progress. And thats the other reason why I had to go.
He did not want to have on his conscience that he did not teach to the
best of his ability, and so he left midyear.
Colins decision was not without consequence. He became physically
Noelle explained that she had to leave teaching because her continued
presence at the school signaled complicity with the districts mandates for
high-stakes testing and teacher-centered curriculum:
I dont believe in any of this. I cant be a part of any of this if you
are doing wrong by children. Its sort of like, being involved is
tacit approval for something that I fundamentally disagree with
. . . I think thats in my core; thats what I believe.
Maggie also spoke of high-stakes testing as traumatizing the newcomers
to English whom she taught. She felt that inflicting such pain was antithetical to her role as an ESL teacher. Susan pushed back against the
expectations for standardized testing for her first-grade students and
refused to have 6-year-olds take an exam for 2 1/2 hours with no breaks:
I left the woman who was delivering the [test] books in my room
and I said, I have to go talk to the principal about this. And I
just walked down to her office and I said, Im not going to do
this. My assessment as a teacher of the students in my room . . .
I said, If Im going to ask them to do this, I have to do it in conditions that I think are going to be the least offensive to their sensibilities. And, umm, she said that she couldnt allow that. And
I said, Well, that is what Im going to do, and I guess were going
to have to talk about consequences later.
Despite Susans willingness to challenge practices she deemed wrong
and harmful to students and to voice her concerns with school and district leadership, she could not brook the onslaught of curricular and
assessment requirements. By the time she left, first graders were expected
to take 28 formal written assessments over the course of the school year,
and she was unwilling to serve as a willing party in those practices.
The teachers refused to teach in ways they believed were harmful to
children, whether due to policy requirements or their own demoralization in the face of the overwhelming conflicts and dilemmas presented
by the work. They found practices expected by their school leaders and
articulated in educational policy unrecognizable in relation to their
visions of good education and teaching right. When Elizabeths principal asked her why she might not return to teach, she responded, [The
school has] completely changed from a place that is engaged in educating kids to a place thats engaged in instructing and testing kids. As a
consequence of the changes that altered teachers relations to students,
teaching everywhere, cookie-cutter kind of stuff, took the passion out of teaching as well . . . I wasnt getting up in the morning wanting to be [at the school] because it was just toouh,
bogus or disheartening on too many levels. And the bureaucracy
at every level kindve saying the problem was me.
Susans description of her experience as demoralizing highlights the
significance of the moral and ethical dimensions of her work. When the
moral and ethical benefits of teaching begin to erode, as they also did
with John P., the reserves to persevere in challenging environments are
depleted. Likewise, for teachers who identify strongly with their work and
for whom it is an ethical source of sustenance, the appearance that policy is made on the presumption that teachers are deadbeats or losers
can be a grave source of discouragement.
Personal dignity also factored into the teachers decisions to leave.
Despite commitments to students, the profession, and the social import
of their work, they opted for what they described as self-preservation
(Stephanie F.), respect (Colin), and mental health (Lisa). In a profession where selflessness is often lauded, heeding ones responsibility to
self can present a challenge. The teachers, such as Stephanie S., felt the
need to justify prioritizing their personal well-being: Teachers are so
underpaid and so underappreciated and so degraded and they never
stand up for themselves, because theyre either dependent on their job,
or theyre so committed to it, they just keep accepting compromises. I
guess I was neither of those things.
Tanessalyn had to come to terms with the fact that she was not able to
do the work she felt was so important and function in her family:
I would come home from work, even though I had an eight-,
nine-month-old, I would just fall into bed and just cry, dreading
the next day that I would have to go into work. And that was taking a toll on my family . . . at some point you have to say, Well,
youve been in the field this many years, and youve made a mark
on some lives, you hope that in the future you can make change
in a different way. But at some point, you have to say, Enough
is enough. Ive done all that I can do.
Most of the teachers in this study enjoyed what Gardner et al. (2001)
called authentic alignment (p. 27). The teachers core beliefs were
once aligned closely with the values of the institution, and this alignment
enabled a sense of professional well-being. The dissonance caused by the
clash of the teachers values and the school administrators expectations
decision that is. Looking only at teachers sources of conflict, independent of their core beliefs, might make their reasoning seem petty or idiosyncratic. These sources of conflict take on greater significance when
taken in consideration with their core beliefs about teaching and learning. They take on moral and ethical weight when placed in dialogue with
the questions, What is good? What is right? What is just?
When teachers work is invested with moral and ethical import, there
is a personal toll in resigning. Nearly all the teachers interviewed for this
project spoke of recovering from the process of leaving. Maggie taught
for 27 years and still aches from her decision to leave the inner-city
schools where she worked throughout her career.
This feels like a personal failure. Were kind of looked at, as
teachers are, like we are in the noble profession. [People say],
Youre doing such wonderful things and Schools need people
like you. And when you feel like you cant live up to the expectations or you cant deal with the stress level or cant deal with
people constantly expecting more and more of you because you
are a good teacher. Then, if you kind of buckle under this stress,
you feel like youre a personal failure, and that you cant do your
service. You cant, you cant fulfill the mission that you wanted to
fulfill when you became a teacher.
The category of principled leaver enables teachers such as Maggie and
the others in this study to call on a tradition of resigning for moral and
ethical reasons rather than viewing their departures as personal failures
and the result of individual weakness. Principled leaving as a category of
teacher attrition provides a vocabulary for such resignations and may
enable community to arise rather than isolation to prevail.
Certain kinds of teacher attrition should be given greater attention.
When experienced teachers who expected to work in high-poverty
schools for the long haul leave, it should command attention, at the
very least, at the school and district levels. The costs borne by highturnover schools (which tend to be high-poverty schools) are high
(Allensworth, Ponisciak, & Mazzeo, 2009). Borman and Dowling (2008)
and Lobe et al. (2005) illuminated the problem from an organizational
perspective. Losing experienced teachers results in weakened collective
knowledge; a drain on school finances in terms of recruiting, hiring, and
retraining; a lack of mentors; repetitive professional development that
consistently attempts to catch up new hires and frustrates experienced
teachers; and shame for experienced teachers who remain (Lobe et al.).
Few schools and school districts require or recommend exit interviews
for teachers who resign. Comprehensive data on teachers who leave the
profession are even more difficult to find. Kersaint et al. (2007)
explained, Ideally, one would identify teachers most likely to resign
while they are still teaching, and then meet their needs (p. 786). Yet,
without an understanding of what precipitated the leave-taking of those
teachers whom schools would hope to keep, there is little guiding this
kind of preventive work. Quartz et al. (2008) highlighted the costs of
teachers moving into nonteaching professional roles on their schools and
their students, even considering that the former teachers were still working within the school system. They explained, Policy makers currently
struggle with how best to sanction or encourage attrition among bad
teachers, yet there is virtually no attention paid to all the ways that the
educational system sanctions attrition of the nations most well-prepared
teachers (p. 245, see also Coggshall & Ott, 2010). In the case of highpoverty schools, the concern should be even more urgent. It has been
well documented that schools with poor populations and students who
fall into the many of the disaggregated subgroups that need to show
progress each year under No Child Left Behind (English language learners, poor students, Black and Latino students, special education students) feel the effects of wide-sweeping policy mandates in more
Draconian formsrelentless test preparation, scripted curriculum, and
public shaming.
Further research into the causes and conditions of experiencedteacher attrition in high-poverty schools needs to be conducted. Gardner
et al. (2001) explained, When a professional realm loses some its most
thoughtful people because of constraints that they see as endemic, it has
ventured into dangerous territory (p. 141). The conflicting responsibilities described here point to a larger concern regarding how teachers
retain integrity in their work. The conflicts the teachers experienced
were symptoms of a larger concern: Am I doing good work? Am I living
a good life? Ultimately, these teachers responded in the negative and left.
As John P. explained, All jobs have contradictions . . . teaching is not special, but deeper. His point is confirmed by Ng and Peter (2010), who
found that psychic rewards are the most significant reason for pursuing
teaching and remaining in the profession (see also Stotko et al., 2007).
Attention to the moral and ethical dimensions of teaching is necessary,
but not sufficient. Material conditions must support, or at least not substantially hinder, teachers visions of good work. Marilyn Cochran-Smith
(2004) recognized the limits of moral commitments. She explained,
Good teachers are still lovers and dreamers. . . . But these reasons are
not enough to sustain teachers work over the long haul . . . teachers
Notes
1. Consider the teacher in Jonathan Kozols (2005) Still Separate, Still Equal who,
after successfully giving a number of hand signals to manage her classroom, turned to Kozol
and said, I can do this with my dog (p. 49).
2. John R. worked as a per diem teacher following his resignation to support himself
during graduate school. Maggie wrote in June 2010 that she missed the community aspect
of her former school and returned as a substitute.
3. The contributor to this article shared responsibility for conducting the interviews.
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APPENDIX
Appendix A: Interviewee Information
Name
Alternate
Route?
Years
Teaching
Subject/Grade
Colin
No
Social studies/HS
Washington, DC
Stephanie
S.
Yes, then
credential
program
English/MS
Phoenix, AZ
Mesa, AZ
San Lorenzo, CA
Oakland, CA
San Francisco, CA
Baltimore, MD
John P.
No
10
San Francisco, CA
Technology resource
development, school reform/
restructuring committee
Noelle*
Yes, then
credential
program
10
Elementary
Milwaukee, WI
Boston, MA
Baltimore, MD
Susan*
No
10
Elementary
Marshville, MA
Tanessalyn No
10
Elementary
Greenville, SC
Computer specialist, math
Atlanta, GA
specialist
Dekalb County, GA
Rick
No
11
Social studies/HS
Berkeley, CA
Lisa
Yes, then
credential
program
12
English/HS
Saundersville, GA
San Francisco, CA
Marney
Yes
12
Phoenix, AZ
Tempe, AZ
Tucson, AZ
Bradley, AZ*
Stephanie
F.
No
14
Falls Church, VA
John R.
No
16
Maggie
No
27
ESL, HS/elementary
Elizabeth
No
27
Newark, NJ
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.