In Florida, county-level school district administrators report directly to state administrators who are
under the direction of the Commissioner of Education and the Florida Board of Education.
Regulatory authority for decisions at the school board level comes from the Florida Constitution, the
Florida Education Code and district-level policies, which are set by school boards and
superintendents.
There is great variation in the 67 counties across the state of Florida. Some counties are
geographically large but sparsely populated, while some counties are relatively compact and
densely populated. The demographics of counties also vary widely across lines of race, ethnicity,
language proficiency, and socioeconomic status. Thus, it is difficult to generalize about all school
districts across Florida, especially because public school participation also varies across Florida’s
counties. About half of Florida county school districts have fewer than 1,000 teachers (FLDOE, Staff,
2018). Of the remaining districts, only 10 have more than 5,000 teachers (FLDOE, Staff, 2018). Across
the country, the vast majority of school districts contain less than 5,000 teachers. Several Florida
school districts rank among the largest in the country, according to both total student
enrollment and number of teachers.
In general, large school districts across both the country and the state of Florida tend to be
located in densely populated urban areas and contain high proportions of students of color. Large
school districts also tend to be both racially segregated and segregated on the basis of income. As the
proportion of students of color from low-income backgrounds increases, the pace of white
students and families leaving large districts accelerates. Sometimes this movement includes
moving to nearby suburban counties with predominantly white families or establishing separate
school systems including private and parochial schools as well as public charter schools with
restrictive participation or enrollment requirements.
Despite student-level demographics changing rapidly, teacher-level demographics across the
country are “overwhelmingly homogenous,” with white teachers making up more than 80% of public
school teachers across the United States (USDOE, 2016). These disparities persist across
multiple segments of teacher and school leader experience, from traditional college of education
teacher preparation programs to school leadership; whereas “alternative routes to teacher
certification tend to enroll more racially diverse populations of candidates” (USDOE, 2016).
Traditional college of education teacher preparation programs have been slow to adapt their practices
to recruit more diverse teachers and to encourage teacher education on issues of
diversity and working across lines of racial, ethnic, or socioeconomic difference. Alternative
preparation programs such as Teach For America and TNTP (formerly known as The New Teacher
Project) set specific diversity goals and design their programming to include education on issues of
diversity (Bireda and Chait, 2011). The cultural narrative that exists around the teaching profession is
beginning to fray; gone are the days of a one-room schoolhouse with parents and families who have
lived and worked in the same town for generations.
Significant financial investment is made at both the district and state level in order to
recruit, retain, and continuously train educators. While it is difficult to estimate a precise cost of
teacher turnover, the Learning Policy Institute estimates the cost of replacing one teacher within an
urban district at $21,000 (Learning Policy Institute). This figure includes costs such as personnel for
managing the human resource processes required for hiring, advertising, building and maintaining
application systems, and recruitment. Even if the estimated cost of replacing a teacher is adjusted to
$1,000, this represents a significant financial burden for school districts; in a large urban district that
employs thousands of teachers, any cost associated with replacing non-retained teachers is
multiplied by a factor of dozens. There are 198 schools across DCPS and even if only one teacher
from each school turns over every year, this number represents a substantial financial burden for the
school district.
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