Tapping the Potential - Alliance for Excellent Education

TA P P I N G T H E P O T E N T I A L : R E TA I N I N G A N D D E V E L O P I N G H I G H - Q U A L I T Y N E W T E A C H E R SOn this point there is broad, even international,agreement: Once on the job, allbeginners must learn to teach to establishedstandards, evaluate the effects of theirinstruction on student performance, usestudent achievement data for planning andcurriculum, tailor instruction to addressspecific learning needs, and learn how tothrive in the culture of their school. 51 Thiskind of learning can only happen withstrong support and assessment—that is,with comprehensive induction.The Short End of the Stick: OnceAgain, Poor Schools Suffer MostA major result of teacher attrition andinadequate induction is that poor, urban,and minority children are taught by lessexperienced, less qualified teachers whodo not stay long enough to become theexpert, high-quality teachers their studentsdesperately need. High-povertyschools have proportionally greater numbersof teachers with less than three yearsof experience than affluent schools. 52High-poverty schools with high percentagesof students of color are more likelyto employ teachers who are on emergencywaivers and who are not certified inthe subject they teach. 53 At the turn ofthe millennium, urban and poor childrenin the United States had only a 50 percentlikelihood of being taught math andscience by a teacher with a college majorin those subjects. 54In the words of the Education Trust:No matter which study you examine,no matter which measure of teacher qualitiesyou use, the pattern is always thesame—poor students, low-performingstudents, and students of color are farmore likely than other students to haveteachers who are inexperienced, uncertified,poorly educated, and under-performing.Many of those teachers demonstratemost or all those unfortunate qualitiesat the same time. 55There are several reasons why highpovertydistricts rarely get quality teachersand often lose the ones they have. Themost obvious factor is a lack of funds topay teachers the competitive wages theycan find in wealthier schools. A 2003report by Levin and Quinn of the NewTeacher Project revealed that urbanschools often lose their brightest candidates,who actually want to teach there,during a lengthy, bureaucratic hiringprocess. 56 Poor schools often have themost challenging working conditions,prompting many teachers to move toother schools or leave teaching altogether.In 2002, Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkinargued in a National Bureau of EconomicResearch report that hard-to-staff schoolsstruggle to recruit and keep high-qualityteachers precisely because those districtsfail to provide effective training, valuableinduction programs, and a generally supportiveteaching environment. 57In a 2004 report by the HarvardProject on the Next Generation ofTeachers, researchers found that newteachers’ decisions to transfer out of lowincomeschools rested on the extent towhich those schools supported them withwell-matched mentors, guidance in usingcurriculum, and positive hiring processes.“Given the many challenges of working inlow-income schools,” the report concludes,“teachers need to have broad, substantivesupport from a range of experiencedcolleagues. At a minimum, newteachers in these schools need substantive,structured, regular interactions withexpert, veteran colleagues.” 58 Becauseteachers in poor schools receive so littleComprehensive inductionintegrates beginners intothe profession by guidingtheir work, furtherdeveloping their skills, andevaluating theirperformance during thefirst few years of teaching.New teachers’ decisions totransfer out of low-incomeschools rested on theextent to which thoseschools supported themwith well-matchedmentors, guidance in usingcurriculum, and positivehiring processes.9