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Teacher retention and its impact on academic performance
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During the past fifteen years the attrition rate has grown to over 50% with the turnover rate at almost 17% per year nationally (Teaching and America’s Future, 2007). Finding teachers isn’t always the problem, especially in today’s economy with high quality teachers easier to find than in years past. The problem isn’t finding the teachers, but rather keeping them in our schools. It is especially difficult to keep them in schools that are high-poverty, high-minority, and low-performing schools. We can’t close the student achievement gap due to the inability to close the teacher quality gap (2007).
Novice teachers, or those in their first five years of teaching, have an exceptionally high turnover rate. Ingersoll found that half of all teachers leave within their first five years of service (2003). It is over this span of time that teachers learn the most about the art of teaching (Ingersoll, 2003). Districts many times spend the most money on teachers during this five year phase. Those teachers that aren’t able to create a sense of success with students are less likely to find teaching a rewarding profession and have a higher rate of turnover (Johnson & Birkeland, 2003). While the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future (NCTAF) has created a cost calculator to estimate the actual teacher turnover costs to schools and districts, the calculator doesn’t include the largest cost which is lost teacher quality and effectiveness (2007).
Within the local district, retaining teachers is and has been a very difficult endeavor. Over 10% of the teaching staff leaves the district each year and many are novice teachers. This does not include the number of staff that moves between buildings. There is not only a cost to hire new st...
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...d State University, Blacksburg, VA, 2005). http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/theses/available/etd-11152005-172907/unrestricted/final.pdf
Ingersoll, R. (2003). Is there really a teacher shortage? Seattle, WA: Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy.
Johnson, S. M., & Birkeland, S. (2003). Pursuing a “sense of success”: New teachers explain their career decisions. American Educational Research Journal, 40(3), 581-617.
Mertens, D. M. (2005). Research and evaluation in education and psychology: Integrating diversity with quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, (2007). The high cost of teacher turnover. Retrieved May 5, 2011, from http://www.nctaf.org.html
Trochim, M. K. (2002). Research methods knowledge base. Retrieved May 6, 2011 from http://www.trochim.human.cornell.edu/kb/.html
In 1969, Donald H. Meichenbaum, Kenneth S. Bowers, and Robert R. Ross replicated a study of the remarkable Expectancy Effect study from Robert Rosenthal. Rosenthal had conducted numerous studies with a hypothesis of confirming that one person’s expectations affect another’s behavior, which is also referred as the self-fulfilling prophecy. This hypothesis was also used by Meichenbaum, Bowers, and Ross in their experiment. Under the Behavioral Analysis of Teacher Expectancy Effect study, 14 adolescent female offenders were examined over a period of a month. Six were chosen to be identified as “late bloomers” to their four teachers. During the study, the late bloomers improved significantly higher on objective exams, but not in subjective. However, their behavior in class improved as well. The observations of the teacher-pupil interactions during the 2 week expectancy period revealed that the instructions affected significantly and increased on the positive interactions among the late bloomers. The study conducted by Meichenbaum, Bowers, and Ross has several differences than Rosenthal’s study. Firstly, they created a different study with only 14 female adolescent offenders that were institutionalized in a training school. Secondly, the training school had limited time of two weeks under expectancy effect. Therefore they were graded based on objective test, subjective tests, and measures in their behavior instead of IQ change. Thirdly, the teachers had known the students prior to the study and had created their own expectancies of the girls’ intellectual capabilities. The study may have several differences, but the general aspects of examining the behavior of teacher expectancy and the effect of the academic performance on the adolesc...
The author states in “A New Deal for Teachers” that in America, especially in poorer school districts, teacher quality is lacking. In urban districts, out of the new teachers hired in the next three years, about half of them will quit (usually the quality ones). The recruitment of better teachers is, as the author says, the biggest problem in our education system. He states that he’s been told by urban teachers that many of their colleagues are incompetent. Contributing to this is that state requirements are very low, which allows poor quality teachers into schools. Miller explains that smart and competent people who want to be teachers, are getting more and more difficult to find. This is true mainly because there are fields of work that those
As Malcolm Gladwell expresses, America must be critical and selective when hiring teachers. By hiring a seemingly good candidate, it is inconclusive if he or she will fit the standards of an adequate teacher. In Gladwell’s article, “Most Likely To Succeed,” he reiterates which traits and actions an advanced teacher should employ, compared to a below average teacher. A candidate may fit the job requirements, but may lack an important skill once they are hired, such as using effective communication skills to teach students in a positive manner. Even if a student is bright enough to do well in a class, they may not reach their full potential due to being taught by a poor teacher. Evidently, this is an inconvenience to students and creates an
Data proves that America does not have enough African American males teaching in today’s schools. As a matter of fact, only 2% of America’s nearly five million teachers are black men (Bryan 1). In our American society, more and more African American females are fiercely taking over both public and private classrooms. Although this might be a great accomplishment, school officials believes that if more black males teach, it would reduce the numbers of minority achievement gaps and dropout rates. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 44% of students nationwide are minorities, but nearly 90% of teachers are white. Polls and surveys further read that if there were more African American male teachers, the dropout rate would decrease while the graduation rate increases. In urban societies most African American teens would be more likely to succeed if there were more black males instructing secondary classrooms.
Gutting makes the claim that teaching applicants have inherently lackluster academic abilities, but he fails to prove that this negatively affects quality of instruction. He states that “For every other knowledge-based profession—law, medicine, university teaching—we recruit from the top 10-20 percent of our undergraduate students. Not so for K-12 teachers” (Gutting). Although this may seem true at fir...
Gay, L.R., Mills, G. E., & Airasian, P. W. (2009) Educational research: Competencies foranalysis and applications. (9th. Ed.) Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc. ISBN-10: 0135035015
Back in 2001, before the No Child Left Behind Act was proposed, the United State’s rank in educational performance was 16th. After the act was put into action, that rank moved up to where we now stand at 17th in the nation. Statistics also showed that because of America’s dropping education level, many teachers began to get discouraged in their professions. Although, America has not ever been able to hold the title ...
On average, minorities attend schools that have less-experienced, lower-paid teachers who are less likely to be certified, poor graduation records, and high poverty rates. Many studies suggest that racial diversity is the key to...
This is due to fewer instructional resources and less qualified teachers (Kim & Sunderman, 2004). Are these types of initiatives the key? Some ascertain that teacher quality and school resources are the key to combatting the ills of poverty and its effect on minority education. Teacher Training It is necessary that teachers are adequately trained and equipped to mentor and support underrepresented minorities from low-income neighborhoods. Requiring teacher preparation programs to provide overviews of poverty and how to work with the underrepresented student population as a prerequisite to graduating.
One factor is underperforming teachers. An ineffective teacher will cover only 50% of the learning material compared to 150% with an effective teacher (Birtel et al., 2010). If a teacher is not teaching a student successfully, why are they not being fired? Teacher tenure is a reason. Teachers who have tenure are guaranteed employment, thus making it hard to dismiss ineffective teachers (Birtel et al., 2010). To put this into perspective, “1 in 57 doctors lose their medical license and 1 in 97 attorneys lose their law license, but only 1 in 2,500 teachers lose their teaching credential” (Birtel et al., 2010). When a teacher does not effectively teach the learning material, their actions can negatively impact a student. Therefore, it may explain why the United States has a low
Some locations in the United States are trying to improve their education by adding quality teachers. A major reason why there is an achievement gap in education is because there exist a gap in teachers as well. Research has shown that teacher quality counts. Some states are seeking ways to keep quality teachers and ways to attract them. In New York City, the schools will not hire teachers that are not certified. Also, New York and California are adding some sort of incentive in public schools, to attract quality teaching to minority schools. Sometimes school add annual bonus up to $10,000 for qualify teacher to work in public school, with low achieving schools. Also, many state provide some sort of tuition assistance for teacher, but of all of the states only seven target the candidates to commit to the lower achieving schools (Olsen, 2003).
Peske, Heather G., and Kati Haycock. "Teaching Inequality: How Poor and Minority Students Are Shortchanged on Teacher Quality: A Report and Recommendations by the Education Trust." Education Trust. N.p., June 2006. Web. 12 Jan. 2014.
Around the nation, hundreds of schools are facing the common major issue of teacher shortages. The alarmingly low amount of teachers in the U.S. creates the debate of whether or not students are receiving a quality education. “‘It’s a crisis’ says Bill McDiarmed, dean of the University of North Carolina School of Education. ‘I don’t know who will be teaching kids in the future’” (DeNisco 1). Oklahoma has a plethora of teacher shortage areas, which could be part of the reason why Oklahoma is ranked 48th in National Education (Robson 1). Shortage areas in the sooner state range a large variety of subjects for the 2015-16 school year alone, including, but not limited to: art, elementary education, foreign language, math, music, physical education/health, science, social studies, and special education (Clement 125). Why do educators participate in early termination? How does the lack of teachers affect education quality? What is Oklahoma doing to recruit and replace empty positions? If Oklahoma does not fix its teacher shortage soon, education in the sooner state will continue to spiral downward into failure. This analysis of Oklahoma teacher shortages will evaluate the reasons teachers quit, the effect of their absence, and the various ways their positions are attempted to be filled.
Mir, S. (2011), Education woes: Shortage of teachers a threat to public schools, Tribune, 3 April.
Individuals who enter the field of education reply to the question why teach with various answers. There is beauty, joy, and fulfillment in this profession, and these spirit-lifting emotions are the result of watching annually as a new group of children enter to learn and leave with the knowledge to achieve. Richard Dufour (2000), author of Why Teach expressed his views on the profession first by stating that teaching is not the career for everyone. He goes on to say, that the education profession has the ability to present the “unique opportunity” for individuals to cast a positive influence upon others (Why Teach, 2000, p.1). The smiles received from a room full of students when as a whole their individual needs, both educational and personal have been catered to, prompts a burst of passion in every teacher.