Access to Excellent Teachers

1. Access to Excellent Teachers Committee on Evidence-Based Policymaking Diane Atkinson, Board Member June 27, 2018

2. Articles Reviewed • Learning Policy Institute: Solving the Teacher Shortage How to Attract and Retain Excellent Teachers (September 2016) Anne Podolsky, Tara Kini, Joseph Bishop, and Linda Darling-Hammond • Learning Policy Institute: Teacher Turnover: Why It Maters and What We Can Do About It (August 2017) Desiree Carver-Thomas and Linda Darling-Hammond

3. General Facts RE: Attrition • Teacher attrition remains at a high level: Nationally it is 8% annually. That is 2x’s higher than countries like Finland and Singapore • Much of the demand for teachers is caused by attrition. Recently, it has accounted for more than 95% of demand, and in years to come, it will continue to account for at least 85% of annual demand • About 1/3 of teacher attrition is due to retirement. Pre-retirement attrition accounts for the largest share of turnover • Another 8% of teachers shift to different schools each year, bringing the total turnover rate—the combination of those who move schools or leave the profession—closer to 16% of the total teacher workforce • If the attrition rate could be reduced from 8% to 4%, closer to where it is in some other countries, U.S. hiring needs would decrease by around 130,000 teachers annually, cutting annual demand by nearly half and teacher shortages would be eliminated • It would allow for increased selectivity in hiring, boost the quality of teachers in the nation’s classrooms, and significantly reduce the substantial costs for replacing teachers who leave

4. Impact of Teacher Attrition • In fall of 2015 tens of thousands of teachers were hired on emergency or temporary credentials to meet these needs, and the same pattern emerged in 2016. These individuals are not fully prepared to teach • Options for schools facing shortages: • increase class sizes, • cancel classes, • use short-term substitutes, • or assign teachers from other fields to fill vacancies. • All of these stopgap solutions undermine the quality of education, especially for the students who most need effective schools.

5. Where is it More Prevalent? • Teachers are more likely to leave schools that have lower salaries and less-desirable working conditions. • Too often, these conditions exist in schools with more students of color and more student from low-income households. • Turnover rates are 70% higher for teachers in schools serving the largest concentrations of students of color and nearly 50% higher for teachers in Title I schools, which serve more low-income families. • Turnover rates in these schools are even higher in key shortage fields, such as mathematics, science, and special education. Turnover rates for mathematics and science teachers are nearly 70% greater in Title I schools than in non-Title I schools. Mathematics and science teacher turnover is 90% greater in the top quartile of schools serving students of color than in the bottom quartile. • Turnover rates are also extremely high for alternatively certified teachers in schools serving the greatest concentration of students of color; 20% of teachers in these schools leave annually.

6. Where is it More Prevalent? (continued -1) • About one in four of the first-year teachers surveyed—and about 15% of all teachers surveyed—had entered teaching through an alternative pathway, which typically requires that teachers train on the job while they are teaching, often with little or no opportunity for student teaching prior to entry. • Most of these teachers work in the quartile of schools serving the most students of color, and they are 150% more likely to leave these schools than those teachers in schools with the fewest students of color. Note: All in all, students in schools with mostly students from low-income households and students of color are more likely to experience a revolving door of underprepared and less experienced teachers.

7. Where is it More Prevalent? (continued -2) • Teachers of color, who made up 18% of the public school workforce in 2012 are twice as likely to enter teaching through an alternative pathway and have higher turnover rates than White teachers overall. • This difference is substantially due to the high-need schools in which they work. Three in four teachers of color teach in the quartile of schools with the most students of color, which are often under-resourced and contend with challenging teaching conditions. When teachers of color and White teachers work in schools with the same proportion of students of color, their turnover rates are comparable.

8. What is Affected? • Student Achievement⎯ High teacher turnover negatively affects student achievement, and the detrimental effects extend to all of the students in a school, not just those students in a new teacher’s classroom. • Hard to staff schools⎯ High teacher turnover results in disproportionate number of inexperienced teachers. This undermines student achievement as a function of teacher inexperience, under preparation, and overall instability. • Schools⎯ suffer from diminished collegial relationships, a lack of institutional knowledge, and the expense of training new teachers who, oftentimes, will not stay. NOTE: Research shows that stability, coupled with shared planning and collaboration, helps teachers to improve their effectiveness,and that teachers improve more rapidly in supportive and collegial working environments.

9. Factors Influencing Teacher Recruitment and Retention • Compensation • Preparation ⎯ growing body of evidence indicates that attrition is unusually high for those who lack preparation for teaching. Teachers who receive little pedagogical training are two to three times more likely to leave teaching after their first year. • Mentoring and Induction—Well-designed mentoring programs improve retention rates for new teachers, as well as their attitudes, feelings of efficacy, and instructional skills. • Teaching Conditions • class sizes and salaries • unhappiness with administrative practices • policy issues

10. Workplace Conditions Associated with Teachers’ Decisions to Stay or Leave • the quality of instructional leadership, • school culture, • collegial relationships, • time for collaboration and planning, • teachers’ decision-making power, • experiences with professional development, • facilities, • parental support, and • resources

11. Possible Policy Recommendations: • Create competitive, equitable compensation packages that allow teachers to make a reasonable living across all kinds of communities. • Leverage more competitive and equitable salaries by providing district incentives to raise teacher salaries, increasing statewide salary schedules, and/or using weighted student funding formulas that direct resources to districts in relation to the students they serve • Create incentives that make living as a teacher more affordable by offering other financial incentives, including: • mortgage guarantees, down payment assistance, or other housing support, in exchange for service commitments; • child care supports; and • opportunities to continue teaching and mentoring after retirement, while maintaining retirement benefits.

12. Possible Policy Recommendations: (continued – 1) • Enhance the supply of qualified teachers into high-need fields and locations through targeted training subsidies and high-retention pathways. In critical shortage fields—mathematics, science, special education, and bilingual/ESL education, and in urban and rural areas with perennial shortages • Offer forgivable loans and service scholarships. • Create career pathways and “Grow Your Own” programs. • Establish teacher residency models in hard-to-staff districts. Urban and rural residency programs place candidates who will eventually teach in shortage fields in high-need urban and rural schools into paid, yearlong apprenticeships with expert mentor teachers, while the candidates complete tightly linked credential and master’s degree coursework with partnering universities. In exchange, candidates pledge to teach in the district for 3–5 years.

13. Possible Policy Recommendations: (continued – 2) • Improve teacher retention, especially in hard-to-staff schools, through improved mentoring, induction, working conditions, and career development. • Develop strong, universally available mentoring and induction programs. • mentoring by a trained mentor in the same teaching field, • learning opportunities for beginners in key areas of need, • classroom visits, • a reduced teaching load, and • joint planning time. • Create productive school environments. • reduce class sizes, • purchase much-needed materials and supplies, and • provide time for professional development and joint teacher planning.

14. Possible Policy Recommendations: (continued – 3) • School leadership —Effective leadership drives high-quality support for new teachers, improves teaching conditions, and increases teacher retention. • To enhance principals’ knowledge about how to create strong learning communities for students and teachers, policymakers can develop rigorous accreditation and licensure standards for principal training programs. • Policymakers can also fund residencies for principal training and can create state leadership academies. These academies, in turn, can coordinate mentoring and professional learning to enable leaders to create school settings that encourage teacher learning and retention • Policymakers can create systems and resources for developing robust leadership pipelines within districts. These pipelines should fill positions districtwide and target those schools in greatest need.