The power of teacher longevity at DSST

There's a moment that happens in classrooms across DSST, a moment that can't be scripted or manufactured. It's when a teacher anticipates exactly where a student will stumble before they do. When they reference a lesson from two years ago that connects perfectly to today's challenge. When they know not just the student sitting in front of them, but their older sibling, their cousin, and the family story that shapes how they show up to learn.

This isn't luck. It's longevity.

And at DSST, we're proving what research has long suggested: teacher consistency doesn't just maintain academic performance, it accelerates it.

The 2024-25 school year data tells a compelling story. Christine Kennelly, who has spent 13 years in the DSST network and now teaches at DSST: College View High School, achieved an 82.5 Median Growth Percentile (MGP) on the P/SAT. Josh Wright, who teaches at DSST: Cedar, is in his 10th year and posted a 67 MGP. Tracey Shipman has devoted 12 years to DSST and is teaching math at DSST: Conservatory Green High School. She reached a 77 MGP. For context, the Colorado School Performance Framework sets the "blue" threshold (the highest performance level) at 65 MGP. All three teachers cleared that bar.

But MGP isn't just a number on a spreadsheet. It measures something profound: how much students grow compared to peers across the state with similar starting points. However, it's not about where students begin, it's about how far they travel.

Ask any first-year teacher what consumes their energy, and you'll hear about classroom management systems, pacing guides, assessment structures, and simply learning how to teach the content. These are essential foundations, but they're cognitively expensive. Kennelly describes it as a shift in mental capacity.

"Every day, teachers make thousands of decisions about instruction, culture, and student needs," she shared. "Over time, many of these decisions become second nature because systems, routines, and expectations are deeply internalized. This frees up cognitive space to focus on what matters most: student learning."

After 13 years in the DSST network, Kennelly said she no longer needs to spend energy reinventing classroom systems. Instead, she can devote her attention to analyzing student data, responding to individual learning needs and developing those relationships that drive engagement and achievement.

"Longevity creates the conditions for teachers to shift from managing to truly mastering their craft," she explains, "which directly translates into stronger outcomes for students."

Shipman sees this evolution in her own practice as well. When teachers remain in the same role year over year, their comfort with the curriculum's pacing and assessments deepens.

“This allows teachers to differentiate per student needs, bring creative approaches and engagement strategies to the classroom, and anticipate tension points within a lesson or within a year's scope and sequence," she said.

That anticipation, knowing where students will struggle before they struggle, is the difference between reactive teaching and truly responsive instruction. All of these, Shipman noted, are contributing factors to increased student performance.

There's something else that happens when you've taught at the same campus for a decade: you don't just know this year's students, you know their families' stories. Shipman has worked at DSST for ten years, and she knows the families "really, really well." Leaning on her relationships with siblings and cousins and leveraging her reputation for high expectations and support have helped her establish immediate investment with new students

"This is so special when you understand the framework that a family is working with, as they've sometimes had relationships with the campus for longer than most staff members," Shipman said. "We can learn from them and pull from their historical knowledge as well."

Wright calls this "cultural capital," the trust and recognition that comes from longevity. "Not only is there a cultural capital you gain when you're at a school for a long time (kids already know/hear about you when you've taught their friends, siblings, etc.), but when you're teaching before/after someone consistently, you build a vertical relationship there and understand both how things were taught before your class and how to set students up for success in the class that comes after yours," he said.

These stories are proof of a larger commitment. This year, DSST reached and surpassed our Big 5 Goal No. 2: to retain 80% of our transformational talent. This milestone reflects an intentional investment in creating the conditions for teachers to grow, thrive and stay. When schools invest not only in pay but in purpose, through recognition, autonomy and growth opportunities, it strengthens both the teaching profession and the long-term outcomes for students who deserve experienced, deeply committed educators.

The compounding effect of teacher longevity isn't visible in a single lesson or even a single year. It accumulates in the relationships built, the systems refined, the content mastered and the students transformed. At DSST, we're seeing that effect in the data, but more importantly, we're seeing it in classrooms every day.

In the coming weeks, we'll dive deeper into the individual stories of Kennelly, Wright, and Shipman, exploring how their journeys have shaped their teaching, their students and the DSST community.