Tapping the Potential - Alliance for Excellent Education

A L L I A N C E F O R E X C E L L E N T E D U C AT I O Nyears or requiring extensive internships; others established induction programs forthe first one to three years of teaching.Programs expanded enough that, in 1979, the Educational Testing Service (ETS)commissioned a survey of the history and evaluation of orientation programs fornovice teachers. Many types were listed in the ETS report, along with reasons for theirestablishment. Most programs were small, incomplete, and locally designed and funded.The report describes, for example, a New Hampshire program that was uniquebecause it did not collaborate with an institution of higher learning yet provided ateacher’s sole route to recertification, and several special-purpose induction programsin seven states, such as those designed especially for rural teachers. 8In the 1980s many state legislatures, including Connecticut and California, beganto mandate induction programs. A few states went so far as to specify program contentand design the delivery system. As the research on induction was still relativelyweak, however, most of these programs were neither comprehensive nor based onsolid research.Meanwhile, the 1983 publication of A Nation at Risk drew widespread national attentionto the state of American schools. The electrifying rhetoric of this report resultedin the emergence of a powerful consensus to reform American education. Politicians,business leaders, educators, and ordinary citizens all joined together to push for aquality education for all students. Among other things, A Nation at Risk claimed thatAmerican teachers were ill-prepared. Teachers were roundly criticized for their inabilityto teach higher-level thinking, particularly in the subjects of math and science.The publication of A Nation at Risk gave rise to a series of “educational excellence”reforms designed to change the nature of schools, students, and teachers. Teacherretention quickly became a source of major concern. At first, researchers examined ahost of factors influencing the retention of new teachers. Largely ignoring induction,or variations in teacher quality, researchers focused on teacher salaries and schoolquality to help explain and correct for teacher attrition. 9A Nation at Risk was followed by A Nation Prepared, a 1986 report that called for anational board to “establish high standards for what teachers need to know and beable to do, and to certify teachers who meet that standard.” 10 Of course, this recommendationwas realized in the establishment of the National Board for ProfessionalTeaching Standards. Anticipating many of the features of what are now understood aspositive features of induction, the report recommended creating decisionmaking structuresin which “lead teachers” would play important roles and teachers would directtheir own support staffs.By the mid-1980s, some school administrators and teacher educators concluded thatinexperience accounted for many of the problems facing new teachers. The onlypreparation that most beginning teachers had was the semester-long student-teacherexperience. This was not sufficient. Student teachers had not survived a series ofinstructional failures, experienced students’ boredom, discovered a wall of studentlearning resistance, or felt the isolation of “teaching forever.” Student teachers did notcharacteristically experience the demands of meetings, red tape, extracurricular activities,and student/parent conferences. 11iv