Tapping the Potential - Alliance for Excellent Education

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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 SClearly, to be successful, novice teachers needed education in clinical practice thatwent well beyond student teaching. Researchers soon discovered that the most effectiveinduction programs were those flexible enough to accommodate changes in theclassroom and school setting. Excellent induction programs did more than showteachers how to teach at a certain school; they helped teachers improve the quality oftheir teaching. Education leaders called for mentoring programs designed to accuratelydetermine new teachers’ needs as they changed across time. Induction programswere designed to guide new teachers from day-to-day survival to more analyticand flexible thinking. 12By the early 1990s, it became evident that induction was even more vital than schoolofficials had previously believed. Researchers found retention more positively relatedto the quality of the first teaching experience than to prior academic performance orthe adequacy of teacher education. 13 In 1996, the National Commission on Teachingand America’s Future suggested that the first years of teaching be structured like amedical residency. New teachers in residency programs would regularly communicatewith expert teachers on instructional practices and classroom supervision. They wouldalso get feedback on and receive formal evaluations of their performance. 14By the first decade of the twenty-first century, compelling new research linking theperformance of individual students with specific teachers led many analysts to the clearconclusion that the quality of the teacher was the most important factor in producingstudent achievement gain. The resultant focus on teacher quality brought an increasein schools implementing the kinds of reforms that education researchers had beencalling for since the 1970s. Thus, in 2003, the majority of new teachers (79 percent)reported participating in some form of teacher induction. 15 This represents a considerableincrease when compared to previous years. Only 56 percent of new teachers in1993 participated in a formal induction program during their first year; 44 percent of1989’s new teachers underwent induction; and just 17 percent of 1974’s new teachersreported an induction experience. 16 Now, in 2004, more than thirty states have initiatedinduction programs for their beginning teachers. Fifteen states currently require,and in some measure fund, induction programs for all new teachers. 17Since the passage of the ESEA in 1965, schools and their teachers have found a permanentplace on the national agenda. In the past decade, the specific emphasis in policyand practice has increasingly been on the quality of instruction. Many states anddistricts have raised academic standards, mandated that every child have a qualityteacher, and insisted that teachers have opportunities for continued growth and professionaldevelopment once in the classroom. 18 The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of2002 attempts to help children reach high academic standards by requiring that everyclass be taught by a “highly qualified teacher.” NCLB requires academic achievementof every student in every school. As teacher quality is now understood to be the greatestpredictor of academic success, and induction improves teacher quality, the need tocontinue the education of novice teachers in the first years of clinical practice in theclassroom through well-designed programs of induction could not be greater. 19No Child Left Behind crucially changed the way the nation thinks about educationpolicy. By requiring that every teacher in every classroom be “highly qualified,” the fed-v
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 Neral government has made teacher quality a national priority worthy of federalresources. The kind of education, support, and evaluation that comes with a programof comprehensive induction is one sure way to improve the quality of the teachingworkforce. It is the kind of reform for which thoughtful educational leaders have beenadvocating for more than thirty years.When Carnegie Corporation of New York was designing its ambitious teacher educationreform initiative, Teachers for a New Era, induction was a central element withinthe design principle of conceptualizing teaching as an academically taught clinicalpractice profession. Eleven colleges and universities are now recipients of support onthis challenge, and each of them will construct a means of providing a formal programof support for their teacher graduates during their first two years of full-timeprofessional teaching.Every child deserves effective, high-quality professional teachers. Without them,children will have difficulty reaching the high standards we expect them to achieve,and too many of them will fail. Historically, the federal government has worked toensure that all children have equal access to a quality education, no matter where theylive or what level of resources are available to their local schools. More recently, thisattention to equity has expanded to include efforts to improve teacher quality. A logicalnext step for the federal government is to encourage and fund well-designed programsof induction for all new teachers—a straightforward and reliable way to producerapid improvement in the quality of the nation’s teaching workforce.Daniel FallonChair, Education DivisionCarnegie Corporation of New Yorkvi
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