North Central Regional Educational Laboratory
May 2001
It's become a mantra for education reporters: during the next decade, American schools will need to hire over two million new teachers to cope with rising enrollments, staff retirements, and the exodus of younger teachers from the classroom. Policymakers therefore need good information about effective ways to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. To assist them, the federally funded North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL) surveyed superintendents in seven Midwestern states to identify which programs had been adopted with what degree of success. On the recruitment side, urban and suburban districts report success with manipulating salary schedules to better compensate teachers whose skills are in high demand, as well as partnering with higher ed institutions to give students and graduates on-the-ground training in the classroom. Rural schools have found recruiting within the community to be effective. To retain instructors, urban and suburban school districts are establishing and beefing up support programs for new teachers, with one-on-one mentoring and mandatory program participation the hallmarks of the most successful initiatives. Other strategies include involving teachers more in decision making, implementing team-teaching, and allowing common planning time for teachers. Based on the survey, authors Debra Hare and James Heap compiled a list of mostly common-sense - and mostly inside-the-box - recommendations for state and local policymakers. The most noteworthy: "respond to the market if possible" and "implement policies that result in more small learning environments in the district." But don't expect to find here any bold proposals for alternative certification or the like. For a free copy of the report - and its copious state-level data - contact Gina Burkhardt, Executive Director, North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1120 East Diehl Road, Suite 200, Naperville, IL 60563; phone 630-649-6500 or 800-356-2735; fax 630-649-6700; email [email protected]. The report is also online at http://www.ncrel.org/policy/pubs/html/strategy
