Nearly 17 percent of teachers leave their jobs every year, 46 percent of new teachers leave the profession within five years, and the cost of training replacements is estimated at $7.3 billion annually.

These statistics from the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future show the attrition rate in the Vicksburg Warren School District has been below the national rate in each of the last three years, but is climbing toward it. Certified staff losses rose from 8 percent in 2009 to 10 percent in 2010 and 15 percent in 2011, increases that have alarmed members of the Vicksburg Warren School District Board of Trustees.

“The teacher retention problem crosses all communities and all sectors of education,” the NCTAF wrote in a report issued 10 years ago. “Teacher attrition is highest in low-income communities and in private schools, but suburban schools and affluent neighborhoods are not immune.”

Attrition rates at other school districts across Mississippi are not available, but Dr. David Daves, chairman of the Department of Curriculum, Instruction and Special Education at the University of Southern Mississippi, said his department tracks its graduates, and their rates mirror those reported by the NCTAF.

The report cites four factors in trying to reduce the turnover: salaries, working conditions, preparation and mentoring/support.

Mississippi teacher salaries are set by the state and vary with years of service and type of certification. The VWSD provides a supplement starting at $2,200 a year for each teacher.

Dr. Elizabeth Swinford, superintendent, has initiated other measures, including a program of Positive Behavior Intervention and Support, which she refers to as PBIS, and “Professional Learning Communities.” Both address three of the four turnover factors — salaries excluded — but have added to teacher workloads and stress, teachers say.

“Some of them will resent that we had to do it so quickly, but I do believe it was the right thing to do,” Swinford said. “(There are) a lot of initiatives and it’s a lot to implement all at once. Some teachers had a hard time with that, and that’s understandable. But that is the way we are going, and they have a choice to go along or not. We are not firing anyone, we are trying to talk to them and work with them.”

Swinford also has had to address low school and district ratings and try to bring up student test scores.

She has mandated 90-minute reading blocks to start each school day, stressed teaching literacy across the curriculum and promoted tailoring instruction to students who have different abilities and needs while still moving the class as a whole through the curriculum.

She has led principals in a book study to rethink the workings of school leadership and instituted professional learning communities, intended to be a way for teachers to meet, discuss student objectives and plan coursework.

At PLC meetings, which teachers at each grade level attend about once a week, scores from different types of tests, attendance, discipline referrals and other data are reviewed and analyzed, said Lakesha Batty, a lead teacher at Warren Central Intermediate School.

“They provide a roadmap to guide all of our decision-making in the building,” said the district’s 2008 Secondary Teacher of the Year.

Batty, who shares lead teacher duties at WCI with Julia Hood, said Swinford’s initiatives have “enlightened” the staff.

“They’re working quite well. We feel like we are finally catching up to the rest of the state and the nation in professional development,” she said.

Daves, at USM, said PLCs are a “large part” of the program that trains teachers to assess what their students have mastered and what still needs attention.

Former WCI third-grade teacher Alison Cunningham, who resigned in July, said the constant overseeing in teaching and discipline problems contributed to her decision to leave. Sresses from accountability for student test performance and a lack of support from the administration when discipline problems ruled her classroom landed her on a nine-week medical leave in the fall of 2010, she said.

Hood, who heads the PBIS team at WCI, said the new system has changed the school environment.

“I was not at this school last year, but I think if you took a survey of teachers you’d find they think it’s working well,” she said. “Kids are learning to respect each other as well as their teachers. It’s a long haul, but I think it’s working.”

In addition, the Accelerated Program for Transition, which Swinford piloted this year, has moved over-age students two or more grade levels behind into separate classrooms with a lower student-teacher ratio and curriculum designed to be real-world and practical. They have a second chance to succeed in school, earn GEDs and begin a career path or improve academics enough to graduate with their classes.

“APT is the best thing this district has ever done,” said retired teacher Debbie Freeman.

Still, the attrition rate among teachers, comments from those who have left and other evidence suggest the changes might be too much too soon.

A five-member team from the Mississippi Department of Education last fall visited WCI and Vicksburg Junior High School, two at-risk schools in the district. In a report issued in January, “major challenges” were cited.

“Teachers expressed frustration and confusion with the number of new school initiatives,” the team reported. “Staff development covered too many topics for full understanding and implementation.”

The report called a staff development plan a “one-size-fits-all” plan developed at the district level.

The team also noted that PBIS reinforces positive behavior but that teachers at VJHS and WCI “struggled with implementation.”

Cunningham and others say specific instruction — content as well as method — is dictated by the superintendent’s office.

“Everything is said from a script,” Cunningham said. Former principal Edward Wiggins told the staff at a meeting last year he “should be able to hear the beginning of a sentence in Ms. (Nancy) Caruthers’ room, walk into mine and hear the end of it.”

Except for the 90-minute reading block, Swinford denies mandating classroom schedules. However, she said, the days of teachers deciding to cut short instruction in a certain subject “depending on what they liked or felt they were weak in” are over. Teaching specific concepts and skills according to a timetable set by the central office is non-negotiable.

“We have incorporated pacing guides into the curriculum,” she said. “It means ‘you shall teach these skills this week’ because we are going to test those skills.”

At the high school level, she said, teachers have full freedom to teach the skill in their own way.

“For example, pronouns. I don’t care how they teach it, but they will teach pronouns,” she said. “They have full freedom in the classroom, but they will all teach English, science, social studies and math… We have to do that, or a child who moves from one school to another is going to have a void. But dictating what they say to the minute and the second? That’s their exaggeration. They are being sarcastic because they don’t want to do it.”

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Tuesday: No Child Left Behind