Why Do Teachers Leave High-Poverty Urban Schools?
|
By Liam Goldrick, Director of Policy
On his Education Week blog, Classroom Q&A, Sacramento educator Larry Ferlazzo this month asks why teachers leave high-poverty urban schools at higher rates. My published response focuses on the fact that the root causes of educators' reluctance to stay in these challenging environments typically go unaddressed by our public policies.
Education policy du jour -- including school and teacher accountability -- is typically aimed at upping school and educator performance rather than transforming the underlying cultures of those schools. When education policymakers ask educators for ideas to strengthen urban schools, they get a very different set of proposed solutions.
Firstly, supportive teaching conditions top the list of educators' recommendations. Pioneered by North Carolina, since 2008, NTC has received completed surveys from more than 1 million educators in 15 states and 23 individual school districts across the United States. Teachers consistently cite a culture of trust and mutual respect, supportive school leadership, and collaborative time with peers as the most critical elements of a supportive school community. For many reasons -- including inexperienced principals, overwhelmed colleagues, inconsistent support and resource constraints -- these conditions are less likely to be present in urban schools. NTC's Teaching Empowering Leading and Learning (TELL) surveys can help to prioritize these issues and inform school improvement planning by providing school- and district-specific data on questions related to time, facilities and resources, community support and involvement, managing student conduct, teacher leadership, school leadership, professional development, instructional practices and support, and new teacher support. 
As a result of the challenging conditions and high teacher turnover in urban schools, the teaching force tends to be younger and less experienced-and, on average, less effective. Beginning teachers have a steeper learning curve and would benefit from high-quality, individualized professional learning opportunities such as those afforded by induction programs that feature assistance from carefully selected, well-trained mentors. All teachers -- early career and veteran alike -- want such on-the-job opportunities to learn and improve their practice. But too few American schools provide dedicated time for such teacher learning amidst other pressing school priorities, heavy teaching loads, and funding constraints.
Here again, a solution exists. Research-based induction programs and effective instructional coaching approaches have been shown to accelerate teacher development, advance teaching effectiveness and increase student learning while reducing teacher attrition and building a stronger sense of collective mission. NTC is proud to be working with school districts across the nation -- such as Hillsborough County (Florida) and the Santa Cruz/Silicon Valley New Teacher Project (California) -- and in states, such as Hawaii and Rhode Island to assist beginning teachers.
Policymakers and school leaders should focus on building supportive school cultures to attract and retain teachers in our urban schools. Strengthening the settings in which teachers work day in and day out is more likely to reduce attrition rates than monetary incentives. Improving school leadership and professional supports in urban school systems is more likely to achieve our shared goals of greater student learning and school success than a more punitive focus that simply demands better results within the same context. At the same time, we must not squander the potential benefits that an investment in teacher professional development, especially teacher induction programs, can bring to urban districts.
We can improve public education by developing effective teachers and shaping school cultures that enable great teaching. The answers are there in front of us. The solutions are unfolding in innovative states and districts across our nation. It all starts by listening more closely to our teachers.
|
|
i3 Validation Grant Fosters NTC's Continuous Learning
|
The U.S. Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement recently featured a blog post authored by NTC's senior vice president for induction programs Cynthia Brunswick and chief external affairs officer Eric Hirsch. It discusses the New Teacher Center's experience in being awarded an Investing in Innovation (i3) Validation grant to support new teachers in Chicago Public Schools, Broward County Public Schools, and Grant Wood Area Education Agency, a consortium of Iowa school districts.
"Applying for and receiving an i3 grant fits well into our organization's learning culture," write Brunswick and Hirsch. "We are an organization that helps teachers learn, and we ourselves view this research as an opportunity to learn and improve. It is catalyzing and accelerating our learning in ways we hadn't known were possible."
The key to this learning has been working with an external evaluation (SRI International) on a randomized controlled trial (RCT) design. The RCT process forced NTC to be introspective and to clarify exactly what the fundamental components of our induction model are.
Read more on the U.S. Department of Education's edblog.
|
|
Common Core State Standards: Raising The Bar For Students and Teachers
| |
NTC's 16th National Symposium featured four major topical areas, one of which was Common Core State Standards (CCSS). NTC Associate Director of Policy Dalia Zabala offers some takeaways about the intersection between Common Core and teacher induction.
"I chose to participate in the CCSS track for two reasons," writes Zabala. "One, properly implementing the CCSS requires instruction strategies and techniques that are not necessarily taught in teacher prep programs, beginning teachers will need guidance and support in helping students learn and achieve these standards. Two, because they are in the process of honing their instructional practices, beginning teachers are uniquely open to learning the strategies and techniques to help students achieve the expectations set forth by the CCSS."
Read this related CCSS blog post by our NTC colleague Amy Lizst as well.
|
|
NTC Presents at NASDTEC Conference
| |
NTC Director of Policy Liam Goldrick spoke to education leaders at the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification's 1st Annual Ted Andrews Symposium last month. Goldrick's presentation was framed around the themes of talent, time and trust and made three main points:
- We need to extend the focus on teacher development into the early-career years through a strong focus on the induction period.
- Policymakers have shown much greater interest in designing teacher evaluation systems to measure performance than to inform professional growth.
- A "learner-ready teacher" is a contextual label. An individual educator prepared and experienced to teach in a particular type of school environment may be less successful when placed in a different setting.
|
| Illinois State Board Maintains Commitment to New Educator Induction | |
The Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) once again puts its money where its mouth is by proposing an investment of $6 million for new teacher and principal mentoring in the FY 2015 state budget. Funding for educator support has been absent in Illinois for the last four years, despite such support from ISBE.
|
| Oklahoma Task Force Calls On State to Restore Teacher Mentoring |
The Oklahoma Educator Workforce Shortage Task Force, convened by the state department of education, released its initial report in January. Among its recommendations to develop the teaching workforce was to "Reinstate the Teacher Residency Program, or offer a modified form of support, mentorship, and coaching for new teachers (including alternatively certified teachers)." The state suspended the Residency Program back in 2010 and it is no longer required of new teachers.
|
| Rhode Island Education Commissioner Hails Induction at Congressional Hearing |
In testimony before a U.S. House education subcommittee on February 27th, Rhode Island Education Commissioner Deborah Gist spoke of the "importance of providing support and guidance for new teachers as they enter the profession." She discussed Rhode Island's statewide induction program, operated in partnership with NTC, and funded through Rhode Island's Race to the Top initiative.
|
Study: Supportive Teaching Conditions Promote Educator Effectiveness
| |
Brown University researchers, in a new study published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, have found that supportive teaching conditions are critical to educators' ability to improve over time. Their analysis shows that teachers working in more supportive professional environments improve their effectiveness more over time than teachers working in less supportive contexts. "On average, teachers working in schools at the 75th percentile of professional environment ratings improved 38% more than teachers in schools at the 25th percentile after 10 years."
|
Helping Principals To Better Evaluate Teachers
| |
In Supporting Principals in Implementing Teacher Evaluation Systems, the National Association of Secondary School Principals tackles the challenging and time-consuming role of school building leaders in assessing and informing changes to teacher performance. The report offers specific recommendations, including:
- Requiring states and districts to spend at least 10% of ESEA Title II funds on high-quality professional development tied to new federal reforms that have changed school leadership roles and responsibilities.
- Providing high-quality training, credentialing, and ongoing professional development on teacher evaluation for principals.
- Reducing the number of observations required for teachers who demonstrate effectiveness and focusing their evaluation on professional growth plans to maximize the time for principals to engage in instructional coaching.
|
|
Support Teachers to Improve U.S. Students' Standing Worldwide
|
Dr. Matthew Lynch, in a recent Huffington Post column, suggests three ways for the United States to improve its international educational competitiveness. One of his proposed answers is to learn from more successful nations' focus on supporting teachers. "When new initiatives are handed down in the U.S., like the Common Core standards, teachers should have access to resources to help them reach goals," writes Lynch. "Teachers need more input in decisions, more access to continuing education resources and more faith from the administrators and families impacted by their classrooms."
|
|
|
NTC Policy News is a monthly publication by the New Teacher Center. It is produced with funding support from the Joyce Foundation. Based in Chicago, Illinois, the Joyce Foundation invests in initiatives to improve public education and works to close the achievement gap by improving the quality of teachers in schools that serve low-income and minority children.
 |
|
|
Newsletter Archive
| |
|
| 2013 NTC Annual Report | |
NTC's 2013 Annual Report outlines the organization's latest work and accomplishments as we continue our efforts to improve student learning by focusing on teachers. 
|
| Brock International Prize in Education | |
NTC Founder and CEO
Ellen Moir travels to Oklahoma on March 11th to accept the 2014 Brock International Prize in Education. 
|
|
NTC News Updates
| |
Read about NTC's latest news updates and media coverage here.
|
|
Job Openings
| |
NTC currently seeks qualified candidates for 12 positions:
How to Apply
|
|
About Us
| 
|
|
|
