In the April edition if Educational Leadership, there is an article called Mission Possible which focuses on recruiting and retaining teachers in a North Carolina school district. As we discussed in class, one of the reasons that so many people leave teaching is because they do not have the support that they need to succeed. This article confirms these ideas. Although these problems are true in all kinds of school districts, they are especially true in urban districts and, unfortunately, in the districts that need the most help and consistency. When the researchers who wrote this article asked other teachers in the state what it would take for them to teach in these challenging schools, they said they would want:
1. A great principal
2. Incentives
3. Compensation for results
4. High-quality professional development
5. Instructional Coaches
6. Small class sizes
Although in this article, the district was able to provide monetary rewards for student performance or incentives for recruitment and retention, it is unrealistic to think that this can happen everywhere. What can happen, however, are districts can develop thought out and meaningful professional development to help create a feeling of security for new teachers in all types of school districts. One of the lessons that the district involved in this study learned was that, "a one-size-fits-all approach [to professional development] will never work. Teachers will engage in the improvement process if they help to create it."
I really feel that this is what we are focusing on in our New Teacher Development UbD groups. In my group, we are working on using professional development such as critical friends groups and peer coaching and in both of these approaches teachers are submerged in the process rather than just being presented to and sent back to the classroom.
Although the North Carolina district is still in the midst if the Mission Possible program, they have noticed positive results (only 10% of the new faculty members left after their first year and many of the new teachers improved their teaching skills and received monetary rewards. Creating meaningful professional development is something that every school district needs to do to support their teachers and I intend to share our UbD group information with my school district when out project is complete.
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3 comments:
Your groups idea for using critical friends is great. I think it not only helps to get feedback from peers but also to spark ideas for yourself. By looking at everyones project last week I thought that it was very helpful to see what direction and ideas other groups came up with. There were some great ideas and we also received some good feedback to make some minor changes that can sometimes only come from those who are not involved in your project.
Compensation for results in education would be interesting. On one hand, I could see a lot of teachers concentrating more on the state testing (which is how I'd assume would be the factor in determining the results. I think it could be an effective way to weed out the "burn outs" in education, the ones who are just there for the paycheck and the extended vacation time but don't really do much teaching at all. Could be an effective way to retain teachers...and rid it of the ones who should have left a long time ago!
Incentive pay would be a hard formula to come up with. How would you judge a teacher who has students on a significantly lower level than another teacher. The one teacher's students may all pass the state test and get A's, but the other teacher students do not but have made a lot more progress. This would be hard to judge. I agree having a great administration, smaller class sizes and better professional development would help. Great post. After reading it I read the article.
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