Abstract
By necessity, Jewish day schools pay a lot of attention to teacher recruitment, but the other side of the coin, retention, gets short shrift. In fact, when it comes to teacher retention, Jewish day schools are like leaky swimming pools: we keep pouring more in at the top, while neglecting to fix the hole in the bottom. Years of research have shown that, in public schools, 30% to 50% of teachers leave the classroom after their first three years. The 2008 JESNA Educators in Jewish Schools Study confirms that Jewish schools aren’t doing much better in keeping our most valued teachers. What are we doing wrong? Or, perhaps more appropriately, what are we not doing at all?