First, ponder this statistic: According to data supplied by the Texas Education Agency, half of the teachers in Texas' classrooms have less than five years of tenure.


Move a few years up and just one teacher in four has 12 years of tenure.


Now think about the implications of these statistics. What it means to me is that the term "teaching profession" is rapidly becoming a misnomer. The reality we face is that teaching is turning into something one does on the path to doing something else.


The implications for Texas if these turnover rates are not addressed are both negative and profound. The needs of an information-based economy have raised the bar on what students need to learn, while at the same time factors like an increasing number of students lacking English proficiency are increasing the challenges.


We need teachers to accomplish more, yet see a system in place where few will ever reach the level of classroom experience needed to perform at their highest potential. The turnover creates a situation where building a team of skilled faculty on a campus becomes especially daunting. It seems that once you get a new teacher properly trained to draw the best out of each student, they are gone.


Teacher turnover is also expensive for Texas' taxpayers, imposing annual costs that range from the hundreds of millions into the billions.


It seems obvious to me that immediate action must be taken to address the turnover in our teaching ranks. We can't keep trying to address the problem by primarily looking at the supply side of the equation. Our school districts can't hire enough quality recruits to fill the gaps. They lose too many of these promising recruits after just a short time in the classroom and then face finding replacements.


It is like trying to stop a patient from bleeding to death by looking for an endless supply of new blood donors. We have to stop the bleeding from within the teacher ranks.


I have filed a package of legislation during this special session that attempts to systematically address the turnover problem. I believe that only by adopting a coordinated strategy can we begin to turn this around. My goal is to address the underlying causes of high attrition rates at each phase of a teaching career.


First, across the profession, many teachers face either moving into administration or out of the education field altogether once they hit a ceiling regarding career growth. To keep the best teachers in the classroom, we need to facilitate enhanced career path opportunities within the teaching profession.


I urge that we move towards a salary schedule that better rewards teachers who make a career out of the classroom. What we have in place now features very little growth potential between a typical new teacher and a veteran.


Towards this end I have proposed a pay raise plan that couples an across-the-board increase of $2,000 with additional dollars targeted to teachers who reach key longevity milestones. In general, each five years of additional tenure would mean an additional $500 added to the across-the-board.


Under my proposal a 25 year veteran would see a $5,000 increase in pay. This creates a great deal of potential for income growth later in a career.


I propose to expand an innovative pilot program that creates new slots for classroom teachers as both mentors and master teachers. These new teaching positions yield both increased responsibility, greater financial rewards, and lead to improved performance on the campus.


These mentoring and master teacher options will provide opportunities for teachers with a number of years of teaching experience. Coupled with these proposals is a focus on effective professional development for all teachers throughout their careers.


We already have evidence that these strategies can work. A pilot program conducted by the State of Texas on mentoring of new teachers demonstrated a ten point increase in those who returned to the classroom after their first year on the job. California's mentoring program showed first year teachers increasing their classroom performance to be on par with a teacher with four years of tenure.


I also am calling for the State of Texas to partner with school districts on retention demonstration projects to test a number of evidence-based methods to tackle this problem. Instead of a scattershot approach, I want to try what the best evidence available says has potential, and then rigorously evaluate the results to focus our efforts and our dollars on what worked the best.


Addressing teacher turnover rates should be an issue where all sides of the education debate can come together. Let's start the work to restore teaching as a profession one chooses for a lifetime.