State school superintendent addresses teacher recruitment and retention concerns

Plans for less redundancy in testing and a tiered teacher observation initiative are in the works for in 2016 according to Georgia School Superintendent Richard Woods. 
 
His remarks come after results of a teacher survey released Wednesday by the Georgia Department of Education showed that the primary reason teachers state they leave the profession is the number of state mandated tests, with methods for evaluating teachers being a close second.
 
Woods says that school systems have been forced to increase their testing capacity in the past few years as the concern became more about meeting and exceeding test scores than the child.
 
"A part of this resulted from initatives from the federal government and it has really reached critical mass here," says Woods, who wants to minimize standardized testing where possible. 
 
"We are looking at how we can collapse some of the tests so we dont have so much redundancy across the borard."
 
Another approach Woods says is important to retaining and recruting teachers is accountability. 
 
"We are piloting a tiered teaching observation component this year and we hope to make that state-wide. That would free up teachers allowing them to do their job and spend time with students. It would also free up time for administartors so that they can actually go and visit and work with the teachers that need that extra attention."
 
The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Survey released by the Department of Education showed only 2.7% of teachers said it was "very likely" they would encourage their students to go into teaching, while 33.2% of teachers said it was "very unlikely" they would encourage their students to pursue teaching. Woods says that this is an important area to address moving forward. 
 
"In the past, teachers have always been our best PR arm so we have to do some things to change that. If we change the environment for our existing teachers, they will be the ones that turn around and say 'Teaching is a wonderful profession and you may want to consider going into that.' So I think we need to work on the perception in the field and get our teachers to encourage the very best and brightest to get into the profession as it was when I was a teacher starting out."