Sign up for Chalkbeat Detroit’s free newsletter to keep up with the city’s public school system and Michigan education policy.
A new report by Wayne State University researchers has found that the Detroit Public Schools Community District has a much higher than average rate of teacher retention compared to its peers in suburban school districts and city charter schools.
It’s a trend that probably would have seemed unthinkable during many years of state oversight of city schools, when the district struggled to staff classrooms and typically began the school year with hundreds of teacher vacancies.
The report, “Teacher Recruitment, Retention, and Racial Composition,” was released recently by the Detroit Partnership for Education Equity & Research, or Detroit PEER, at Wayne State. Researchers noted in the report that while teacher recruitment and retention has become more difficult across Michigan, the Detroit district “has substantially reduced large annual teacher vacancies.”
The Detroit PEER report shows that DPSCD ranked at the 62nd percentile when compared to school districts in Macomb, Oakland, and Wayne counties during the 2022-23 school year, the most recent year available. The ranking improved to the 92nd percentile when the comparison was with Detroit charter schools.
The district did particularly well in retaining Black teachers, where its ranking was at the 80th percentile compared to suburban districts and at the 92nd percentile for Detroit schools.
It’s unclear exactly why — a subject that will likely be addressed in future research topics, said Bianca Burch, the lead researcher on the report and research assistant at Detroit PEER.
Burch cited as possibilities the district’s increased teacher compensation, improved working conditions, and grow-your-own programs like the On the Rise Academy,
Burch said she and her team — which includes researchers Whitney Miller and Ben Pogodzinski — tackled the topic as part of the research organization’s ongoing look at issues related to how students are learning, how motivated they are to come to school, whether and how they’re being supported in school. That includes topics such as teacher shortages and how they’re affecting schools and students.
Teacher retention matters because, for one, it creates stability within schools. A 2021 Chalkbeat Detroit report found that when schools struggle with teacher retention, and turnover rates soar, student learning suffers. It also found that rapid teacher turnover was disproportionately affecting Black students and students in low-income communities.
There are some limitations with the state data PEER researchers used. Burch said more research is needed to not only understand why retention rates are high in the district, but also what role the use of uncredentialed educators — those who aren’t fully certified — may play in the data. She’s also curious why, even with the district’s ranking being as high as it is, it fluctuates from year to year. For instance, for the 2021-22 school year, the district was at the 76th percentile for the comparison with metro Detroit districts. The year before, it was at the 62nd percentile.
Lakia Wilson-Lumpkins, president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers, said she’s not surprised by the district’s ranking.
“Not only have we been retaining members but we’re also regaining many that left,” Wilson-Lumpkins said.
The Detroit district’s teacher retention has consistently been strong since the 2017-18 school year, the report shows. The year before, a legislative initiative ended emergency management and returned the district to local control. A new board with the power to oversee the district took office in January 2017, and in May the board hired Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, who has made it a priority to increase compensation for teachers and instituted initiatives, such as mentoring and the grow-your-own program, designed to recruit and retain teachers.
Wilson-Lumpkins said that when emergency managers controlled the district from 2009 to 2016, many teachers left the district. That has changed as the district has sought to increase compensation so salaries are comparable to suburban districts.
She said that “having the stability and the continuity with an elected school board,” and the continuity of a superintendent has helped. She also credited the work of DFT leaders and members. Teachers, she said, are staying because they are passionate about their work.
“Our educators enjoy the students and the families that they serve. We are a very diverse district, students, and educators. And we don’t have to have a special initiative or special program to be a diverse district. That’s our demographic,” Wilson-Lumpkins said.
“People are wanting to work in a setting where you can grow, have representation, learn from one another with different perspectives, expand your empathy of different populations. It helps on both ends, not just for students but for us as educators.”
Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit and writes about Detroit education. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.
