Esther entered teaching after a long career as an engineer. Her vast scientific knowledge and professional experience made her a unique asset in the low-income, racially diverse urban vocational high school where she taught.
But Esther found the working conditions intolerable. In her view, student discipline was nonexistent throughout the building. Teachers fought among themselves and openly mocked the principal, who never observed them in their classrooms or provided any form of curricular or instructional leadership. Esther found the school disorderly and unsupportive of good teaching, and she left after only one year. She moved to a suburban school near her home that had strong administrators, supportive colleagues, and an orderly, respectful environment. Looking back at her first job, Esther says, "Maybe if I were a better teacher, more experienced . . . maybe I could [have succeeded there]."
But did the responsibility
really lie
with Esther? Are inexperienced teachers—regardless of their talents and subject-area expertise—simply not "good" enough to succeed in urban schools? Or is there something more to be learned from Esther and the thousands of people like her, new teachers who leave their first schools after only a year or two?
Several recent studies have drawn new attention to the problem of novice teacher turnover. Esther was one of 50 new teachers interviewed as part of a multiyear Harvard Graduate School of Education study. Researchers from the school's Project on the Next Generation of Teachers spoke with novice Massachusetts teachers in 1999, then followed up with them in ensuing years to evaluate the teachers' reasons for staying in their schools, moving to new schools, or leaving teaching altogether. As of June 2003, four years after accepting their first positions, well over half were no longer in the schools where they'd started their careers: 16 had moved to new schools and 17 had left public school teaching altogether.
Do these people see their first teaching jobs as stepping-stones to work in other schools or other fields? The evidence suggests the contrary. According to a 2000 Public Agenda study, new teachers actually feel
more fulfilled and satisfied than college graduates of the same age working in other jobs. But across the country, one out of five leaves the classroom altogether within three years, and almost 40 percent leave within five years. So what happens? How does enthusiasm turn to disillusionment so soon?
Despite the common scapegoat—low salaries—researchers from the Harvard project say that most teachers leave for other reasons. "When people enter teaching, they typically know what the salaries are," explains project co-investigator Sarah Birkeland. "But I think many people are surprised by the poor working conditions in our public schools, particularly mid-career entrants to teaching who have been working in other settings."
Stopping the Downward Spiral
As Esther's story illustrates, urban schools are particularly affected by new teacher turnover. According to the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, in some cities as many as 50 percent of new teachers leave within three years, with many of the most promising educators departing for higher paying suburban districts. Ever greater numbers of less qualified teachers are then left to instruct urban students, many of whom are English-language learners or students from low-income families whose need for highly skilled teachers may, in some ways, be even greater than their peers'.
The result can be a downward spiral that is difficult to interrupt. Research has suggested that the best teachers can improve student achievement by as much as an extra grade level over the course of a year. (See
"Landing the 'Highly Qualified Teacher,'" Harvard Education Letter, January/February 2004.) As outstanding educators leave urban schools, achievement gaps often expand, tensions rise, and working conditions become more dire, leading still more teachers to seek other employment. As Kati Haycock, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Education Trust, pointed out in her 2000 article "No More Settling for Less," many urban schools "are essentially dumping grounds for unqualified teachers, just as they are dumping grounds for the children they serve."
In addition, researchers Eric Hanushek, John Kain, and Steven Rivkin, working with the University of Texas at Dallas' Texas Schools Project, recently found that low student achievement, a problem that plagues urban schools in disproportionate numbers, is strongly associated with high teacher turnover. To most educators, these findings come as no surprise. Though many high-achieving schools in urban districts have been identified through the years, they've long been outnumbered in many cities by their low-performing counterparts-schools that also have trouble keeping the best teachers. But is this problem inevitable? How can today's urban districts stem the flow of effective teachers out of their low-performing schools?
Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin also looked at the role larger salaries might play in the retention of new teachers in urban settings, and their findings suggest that money—at least in sufficient amounts—may make a difference. According to the Texas study, the average non-minority, female teacher in an urban school would need to be paid 25 percent more than her suburban counterpart to stay on the job. And, the required salary differential rises to 40 percent when the teacher has three to five years of experience, the researchers estimate. (The study also found such differentials to be a factor in the retention of male and minority urban teachers but at lower percentages, suggesting that these educators might be more inclined to stay in urban schools despite the lack of a substantial difference in pay.)
However, the authors are quick to note that their salary calculations do not address the important underlying concern of teacher quality. "Any salary adjustments designed to reduce teacher turnover will affect both high-quality teachers and low-quality teachers, tending to increase the retention of both," they explain. "Spending the substantial sums implied by our estimates solely to reduce turnover, without explicitly considering the much more important issue of quality, would make for bad policy."
Some urban districts have nonetheless begun to view this type of "combat pay" incentive as the best way to keep their most effective educators. The Chattanooga, Tenn., public schools, for example, experienced success with a program that moved some of the district's best teachers into its lowest-performing schools via financial incentives. With a $5 million grant from a local philanthropy, the district offered free graduate school tuition and annual bonuses of $5,000 to move instructors who had consistently increased student test scores above the expected trajectory. Overall district test scores went up and teacher turnover declined as a result. The 2003-04 school year began with only two vacancies (one for a new position), compared to more than 30 in previous years, and many high-quality teachers no longer view the targeted schools as undesirable places to work.
Improving Conditions
In an era of tight city budgets and limited resources, large-scale pay raises or incentive programs are often impossible—except in districts like Chattanooga that are lucky enough to secure private funding. Fortunately, several recent studies have suggested that other approaches—those aimed at improving working conditions, particularly for newer teachers who are at the highest risk of leaving the profession—can also be effective.
Mentoring and Instructional Support: Inexperienced teachers learning for the first time about classroom management, curriculum, and district paperwork are commonly overwhelmed by a full load of classes. When researchers from the Public Education Network (PEN, a national association of local education funds and community groups) recently interviewed more than 200 novice instructors about their experiences on the job, the new teachers pointed to mentoring—being paired with experienced instructors—as the most effective form of assistance and support in their first years.
Administrators cannot, however, simply assign a new teacher to a veteran or mentoring team without providing a coherent structure for the partnership. The most successful programs, the PEN survey suggests, regularly schedule common meeting times and partner teachers according to subject-area and grade-level expertise.
Also, the new teachers who participated in the PEN study noted that not all good teachers make good mentors. The most successful ones have good interpersonal skills, knowledge of how the school and district operate, and credibility with administrators.
Structured Discipline Policies: Although problems with student behavior play a role in many new teachers' decisions to leave their jobs, both the Harvard and PEN studies suggest that most educators fault the school structure rather than the students themselves for breakdowns in student discipline. Other teachers cite the importance of having an accessible and supportive principal. New teachers were thankful, and sometimes surprised, when school leaders publicly supported their decisions in discipline matters. Several studies therefore recommend that schools adopt carefully designed discipline codes, rules of behavior, and safety protocols to support teachers, especially novice ones.
"I think [a lot of] new teachers get turned off from teaching because they realize that too much of their time is spent disciplining students," says Jennie Diefendorf, a first-year teacher at Boston's Academy of the Pacific Rim, a public charter school. "Students [at the Academy] are immersed in this discipline code from the first day they enter the building, and there are tangible consequences spelled out for violations of the code."
At the Academy, students must be on time, prepared, and respectful. If they are not, they go home. There are no exceptions. This system is well-known and endorsed by students, parents, and teachers throughout the system. And, while such a "zero tolerance" policy might be more difficult to implement at a large, traditionally organized urban school, research suggests that this kind of schoolwide clarification of discipline codes and expectations might help more new teachers stay in the profession.
Differentiated Roles and Career Ladders: Most young college graduates do not believe teachers have good opportunities for advancement and leadership, according to several recent studies. Despite their initial enthusiasm, talented and creative young instructors are often unwilling to remain in a job many view as unchanging. Unlike previous generations of teachers, today's classroom leaders see their peers earning promotions and recognition in such fields as technology and consulting, while they exhaustingly crawl along a uniform salary scale. With a growing variety of other professional options for today's graduates, top teachers may be less likely than their predecessors to stay in one job for their entire career, especially if they see limited opportunities for growth.
In response, researchers recommend that the best teachers be shifted into alternate roles for additional pay, working as staff developers and curriculum coordinators or conducting grant-funded projects and research at the school. Others suggest a more formal professional career ladder that includes levels such as "intern," "resident," and "master instructor." These reforms would enhance the reputation of the profession and attract high-quality candidates to teaching, experts say. (See
"Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Teachers,"Harvard Education Letter, September/October 2003.)
"New teachers may want to focus intently on their teaching for the first several years," Harvard's Birkeland says. "But many also want to know that other challenges are ahead once they begin to feel comfortable in the classroom."
No "No-Cost" Solutions
As the research suggests, retaining high-quality teachers may be an even bigger challenge in the coming years than recruiting them, particularly in the low-performing schools that need good teachers the most. Virtually any efforts to improve working conditions for new teachers, even those not directly tied to financial incentives, come with a price tag. It requires human resource reallocation, for example, to allow a veteran teacher to serve as a mentor or to promote an effective teacher up a career ladder to curriculum leader.
Research and experience also suggest, however, that inaction can be costly. School districts annually spend vast amounts of resources to recruit, replace, and retrain staff, and students pay every time a strong teacher leaves a school community and is replaced by a less skilled or less invested educator. Given the alternative of high teacher turnover—especially in urban schools—taking care of new teachers may well be a district's best bargain.
