By Dalia Zabala, Associate Director of Policy

 

District and school administrators will soon begin the search -- if they haven't already -- for about 350,000 eager, optimistic, enthusiastic new teachers whom we will trust with our nation's most precious resource: our children. Most of these beginning teachers will be placed in the toughest assignments, working with students who have the greatest need of a strong, seasoned teacher. However, nearly half will leave the classroom within five years.

 

According to New Teacher Center founder and CEO Ellen Moir's Phases of First Year Teaching, these new teachers will enter the classroom in the midst of the anticipation phase, filled with a tremendous commitment to making a difference and a somewhat idealistic view of how to accomplish their goals. This feeling of excitement will carry them through the first few weeks of school. Soon after entering the classroom, new teachers will move into the survival phase, caught off guard and overwhelmed by the variety of problems and situations they had not anticipated. By the sixth or eighth week, they will enter the disillusionment phase, followed by the rejuvenation phase, and many will close the school year in the reflection phase during which they will review successes and challenges, think about the various changes for the following year and, most importantly, develop a vision as to what their second year will look like. This will bring them back to the anticipation phase. Unfortunately, not all teachers will end their first year on a positive note. 

 

The high rate of teacher turnover and the increasing number of retiring veteran teachers (about 300,000 annually) means that the teaching workforce has a growing number of new, inexperienced teachers who need help and guidance as they transition from preparation programs to the responsibility of their own classroom. Various states and districts acknowledge this challenge and have developed policies and implemented programs to assist new teachers and ease their transition. According to NTC's review of state policies, three states (Delaware, Connecticut, and Iowa) require and fund induction support for all new teachers for two or more years. Six states (Arkansas, Kansas, Kentucky, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia) require and fund induction support for one year. 

 

Numerous school districts are addressing the challenge directly. NTC has been a partner with school districts across the country like Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida and the TriValley Teacher Induction Project comprised of five California districts (both showcased in the NTC report Cultivating Effective Teachers Through Evaluation and Support).

 

 

 

On July 4, 2013, PBS NewsHour addressed the issue and featured NTC's work as a solution. The segment, "Mentorship for New Educators Helps Combat Teacher Burnout, Improve Retention," opens in teacher Abby Miller's third grade class at Sumner Elementary School on Chicago's west side. She's a first-year teacher who leads her classroom like a more experienced educator thanks to the support of a mentor she works with through a  partnership between NTC and Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Viewers also follow Larissa Bennett, Abby's NTC mentor, through her own training and hear how she's making a difference across many CPS classrooms. The piece ends with an interview of Ellen Moir sharing why she created the organization and how she hopes to bring its work to scale across the country.   

 

Watch the PBS NewsHour segment, "Mentorship for New Educators Helps Combat Teacher Burnout, Improves Retention." 

The Wallace Foundation released a report, Six Districts Begin the Principal Pipeline Initiative, summarizing the findings from the first evaluation of the Foundation's $75 million Principal Initiative. It details how six urban districts are beginning to build larger pools of strong principal candidates. They include Hillsborough County Public Schools in Florida where NTC is providing training and support for Area Leadership Directors as they shift from their role of managing principals to developing principals. 

The Institute for the Study of Knowledge and Management in Education published two articles written by NTC staff. In How to Help Every Teacher Build Students' Language Skills, NTC literacy coordinator Lisa Mount describes her work with new history, social studies, and science teachers to help them incorporate the Common Core Literacy Standards into their content areas. Mount has been leading this work for NTC in California and has guided teachers in using the Literacy Design Collaborative system for secondary teachers, and NTC's Oral Language Development website for elementary teachers. Mount will soon begin to work with history, social studies, and science teacher nationwide through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) -- a free online course -- from NTC available through Coursera. 

 

In Set Math Teachers Up to Succeed with Common Core, NTC induction program consultant Kevin Drinkard discusses how Common Core requires a different approach to teaching. It asks students to be "computationally fluent, to master math concepts conceptually, and to develop problem-solving processes that serve them beyond the classroom." Drinkard talks about a recent pilot project he led to help beginning teachers grapple with these challenges and the implications for their classroom teaching practices. 

Oregon System Supports Educators' Professional Learning 

Federal Education Policy and Partisanship

A New York Times story ("Education Overhaul Faces a Test of Partisanship," July 23, 2013) looks at how polarization in Congress has prevented the long-overdue reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. The article suggests that some teachers believe "the entire debate about federal policy is focused on the wrong things." Josh Stumpenhorst, the 2012 Illinois State Teacher of the Year, would like to see federal policy mandating better teacher training and more mentorship for struggling teachers. "The less effective teachers exist because they came out of college not prepared and they're in a system where there isn't a mentor that is able to improve them," Mr. Stumpenhorst said. "Bad teachers typically exist because they've never seen another way of doing it."

 

We agree with Mr. Stumpenhorst that mentoring is essential and that policy needs to focus on developing and improving teaching practice as much as it focuses on evaluating teachers.

The Center for American Progress published the first of a series of reports looking at professional learning - what states and districts are doing that is working and what policies are in place to support effective teacher training. High-Quality Professional Development for Teachers: Supporting Teacher Training to Improve Student Learning states that it takes sustained investment of time in teacher training to change instruction and improve classroom outcomes. Furthermore, the report describes professional development as the link between the design and implementation of education reform and the ultimate success of reform efforts such as evaluation to determine educator effectiveness and the Common Core State Standards.   

Colorado State Policy on Teacher Induction 

NTC News Updates