Recruiting, Supporting, and Retaining New Teachers: A Retrospective Look at Programs in the District of Columbia Public Schools

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Attempts to give new teachers a positive start in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) have included a wide variety of programs and strategies since the 1960s. Driven largely by federal funding cycles, most DCPS efforts to recruit, prepare, and retain teachers mirrored national reforms. However, the initiatives were not institutionalized within the school system and thus faded after only afew years. This article takes a retrospective look at these programs, concluding that the DCPS experience illustrates both the often too-short lifespan of such reforms and the tendency not to learn much from either their successes or failures. Most U.S. teachers start their careers in disadvantaged schools where turnover is highest, are assigned the most educationally needy students whom no one else wants to teach, are given the most demanding teaching loads with the greatest number of extra duties, and receive few curriculum materials and no mentoring. After this hazing, many leave. Others learn merely to cope rather than to teach well. (Darling-Hammond, 1998, p. 324) NEw TEACHER SUPPORT AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT DURING THE 1960s AND 1970s In 1963, Bennetta Washington, wife of former District of Columbia Mayor Walter Washington, launched the Cardozo Project in Urban Teaching. Initially funded by a grant from the President's Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, this program served as the model for the National Teacher Corps. Federal funding for the Cardozo Project was continued under the Office of Economic Opportunity in 1965. A year later, federal legislation for the National Teacher Corps was introduced, passed by both houses, and signed by President Johnson. Although federal funding for the Cardozo Project ended in 1967, the District of Columbia picked up the program that year and continued funding it until 1971. The Cardozo Project, aimed primarily at recruiting and preparing new teachers, attracted many young people to teaching in the nation's capital. Many of these young people had bachelor's degrees but no teaching credentials. Few knew much about or had the professional backgrounds required for formal teacher certification. Several were Peace Corps returnees, fresh from their experiences teaching students in Third World countries, or former VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) personnel. Others were young men who saw the program as a way to avoid the draft by performing community service, particularly after 1966 when the Vietnam War expanded and the national draft was instituted. However, according to Larry Cuban, former director of the Cardozo Project and currently a professor of education at Stanford University: The aim [of the Project] was to develop a new role for urban teachers: teach kids, develop curriculum, and work in the community. It was a tripartite role that demanded a great deal from individuals. We believed that folks coming out of regular teacher ed. programs would be poor candidates for such a complex role. (personal communication, February 22, 2000) By the late 1960s, after the Cardozo Project has been adopted by the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to attract new teachers to that system, it was renamed the Urban Teacher Corps (UTC). Built on an internship model, the UTC was supportive, personalized, and effective. At the secondary school level, each intern was paid a small stipend for teaching and assigned to a five-member team led by a veteran teacher at the intern's school site. Interns taught two classes in the morning each day and spent their afternoons in seminars organized and guided by their team leaders. These seminars became required courses for all new teachers seeking certification in the District's schools. They were designed not only to cover essential subject-matter content but also to address any problems team leaders observed in the interns' classrooms. For example, one seminar, entitled Methods of Teaching Social Studies at the Secondary Level, directed team leaders to focus on interns' classroom questioning techniques. …