An official website of the United States government
We use a novel database of student teaching placements in Washington State to investigate teachers’ transitions from student teaching classrooms to first job classrooms and the implications for student achievement. We find first-year teachers are more effective when they teach in the same or an adjacent grade, in the same school type, or in a classroom with student demographics similar to their student teaching classroom. We document that only 27% of first-year teachers are teaching the same grade they student taught, and that first-year teachers tend to begin their careers in higher poverty classrooms than their student teaching placements. This suggests that better aligning student teacher placements with first-year teacher hiring could be a policy lever for improving early-career teacher effectiveness.
more »
« less
Lost to the System? A Descriptive Exploration of Teacher Candidates’ Career Paths
We use data on over 14,000 teacher candidates in Washington state, merged with employment data from the state’s public schools and Unemployment Insurance system, to investigate the career paths of recently certified teacher candidates in the state. About two thirds of these candidates are observed as public school teachers at some point within 5 years after completing student teaching, many of whom transition from nonteaching education positions into public school teaching positions within a few years of student teaching. We also find that candidates with STEM endorsements and candidates who graduated after the Great Recession are far more likely to be employed in public K–12 teaching positions within the first several years after student teaching.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1660948
- PAR ID:
- 10547594
- Publisher / Repository:
- DOI PREFIX: 10.3102
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Educational Researcher
- Volume:
- 51
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 0013-189X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X Size: p. 255-264
- Size(s):
- p. 255-264
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
Knowing how policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention will significantly advance our understanding of how resources matter for K–12 student learning. This study sheds light on this issue by estimating how legislative funding changes in Washington state in 2018–2019—induced by the McCleary court-ordered reform—affected teacher salaries and labor market outcomes. By embedding a simulated instrumental variables approach in a mixed-methods design, we observed that local collective bargaining negotiations directed new state funding allocations to substantially increase certificated base salaries, particularly for senior teachers with 16 years or more of teaching experience. Variability in political power, priorities, and interests of both districts and unions led to greater heterogeneity in teacher salary schedules. Suggestive evidence shows that state average teacher turnover rate was significantly reduced in the first year of reform. The McCleary-induced salary increase particularly reduces mid-career teachers’ (8–15 years of teaching experience) mobility rate and late-career teachers’ (23+ years of teaching experience) leaving rate. The McCleary-induced base salary increase has mostly null effects on teacher hiring in the first 2 years of implementation.more » « less
-
Varela, Daniella G (Ed.)The transition from an undergraduate STEM student to a successful STEM teacher who persists for more than 5 years teaching in a high needs school is a tenuous journey. Only one third of STEM teachers persist in teaching for more than 5 years, and in rural areas the number of STEM teachers who leave each year is even higher. The goal of the Noyce Scholarship program is to increase the number of effective STEM teachers in the public-school classroom. For most undergraduate STEM majors, their challenges in coursework, certification, and personal issues are highly individualized and need specific intervention. This qualitative case study examines the journey of one STEM undergraduate, how the Noyce program responded to the participant’s individual challenges, and the success and persistence of that Noyce recipient in the STEM classroom. Case studies such as this can provide critical information to EPP’s and STEM scholarship programs about the challenges and needs of STEM undergraduates and teachers, so that key changes can be made in those programs to better support and increase the number of effective STEM teachers who will stay in the classroom.more » « less
-
U.S. charter schools are publicly funded through state school finance formulas that often mirror the traditional public school finance systems. While charter school advocates and critics disagree over whether charters receive an equitable share of funding, few discussions are based on rigorous analyses of funding and expenditures. Most prior analyses, especially those presented in policy briefs or white papers, examine average funding differences without exploring underlying cost factors between the two sectors. Our purpose is to demonstrate how careful analysis of charter school funding with appropriate methodological approaches can shed light on disagreements about charter school finance policy. Using detailed school finance data from Texas as a case study, we find that after accounting for differences in accounting structures and cost factors, charter schools receive significantly more state and local funding compared to traditional public schools with similar structural characteristics and student demographics. However, many small charter schools are actually underfunded relative to their traditional public school counterparts. Policy simulations demonstrate that on average, each student who transfers to a charter school increases the cost to the state by $1,500. We discuss the implications of these findings for both school finance policy in Texas and nationally.more » « less
-
Cohen, J; Solano, G (Ed.)From teaching with technology to teaching through technology: this is an important shift that educator preparation programs must embrace as we continue to develop teachers who can facilitate meaningful learning experiences across a variety of delivery modalities. Drawing on the data from our three-year mixed methods research, the authors describe a programmatic model for preparing teacher candidates to implement digital pedagogy while ensuring that learning opportunities are equitable, accessible, and inclusive of all learners. This paper first identifies the Essential Elements of our critical digital pedagogy model for facilitating learning in hybrid, hyflex, and online environments. Second, we describe how we have integrated these Essential elements across the three phases of our teacher preparation programs, with a particular focus on the two asynchronous online workshops we have integrated into students’ clinical experiences. Third, we identify a set of indicators used to provide feedback to preservice teachers as they demonstrate their critical digital pedagogy during their student teaching semester. We present the research findings that examine how this programmatic approach impacts teacher candidates’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions for transforming teaching and learning through technology. We conclude with a discussion of how the programmatic model and research findings may impact the broader field of teacher education.more » « less
