Staffing High-Needs Schools: Insights from the Nation's Best Teachers

Abstract

RECRUITING and retaining teachers for high-needs schools may be the most vexing problem facing America's education policy makers. Study after study confirms that poor children and children of color are far less likely than their peers to be taught by teachers--no matter how good is defined. Teachers who are better trained, more experienced, and fully licensed in the subjects they teach are more likely to be teaching in low-poverty schools, serving more academically advantaged students. (1) The same holds true for teachers who generate higher student test scores and for those who earn National Board Certification, a credential granted by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). (2) As have many businesses, education has tried a range of incentives to entice people to tackle challenging assignments. As teacher shortages have escalated, states and school districts have launched a slew of such efforts. A few years ago, the Massachusetts Signing Bonus Program and the New York Teaching Fellows Program sought to recruit teachers for challenging schools. The former effort paid a $20,000 premium for talented individuals to teach in high-needs schools. Both encouraged recruits to bypass teacher education and move quickly to fill growing vacancies. More recently, Guilford County, North Carolina, launched Mission Possible--an incentive program that pays algebra teachers up to $14,000 in bonus money if they teach in high-needs schools and their students show solid progress on state exams. In nearby Charlotte, teachers can earn $3,000 for teaching in high-needs schools and another $2,500 if they are successful and stay. The U.S. Department of Education recently launched its $99-million Teacher Incentive Fund designed to recruit and retain teachers for high-needs schools and to pay them more for higher student performance. This federal program funded 34 state and school district programs in fiscal year 2007. In New York City, the teacher union and the administration have offered a 15% salary increase, coupled with other inducements, as a way to entice teachers with at least five years' experience to teach in the city's lowest-performing schools. Launched in 1999, the effort has not generated much evidence of effectiveness. Just recently, the district announced a $30-million pay-for-performance program targeting its 200 highest-need schools. Efforts such as these have, in retail parlance, a great deal of curb appeal for high-needs districts. But for incentive programs to be truly successful, policy makers must understand the multiple factors that influence teachers' decisions about where to teach. The issues are far from simple, and often a number of recruitment and retention myths get in the way of the facts. Four of the most pervasive myths include: * financial incentives alone are sufficient to entice talented teachers to high-needs schools; * effective teachers can get the job done no matter the school context; * incentives that entice some teachers will entice all teachers; and * individual accomplished teachers can fix high-needs schools. Granted, not many efforts to entice and keep high-quality teachers in high-needs schools have been formally studied or evaluated. (3) Some studies currently under way will be years in the making. In our own efforts at the Center for Teaching Quality to catalog and assess these recruitment and retention reforms, we found few programs that had management information systems and evaluation designs in place that could provide policy makers with the effectiveness data they need. More sound research is clearly needed. But in this article I take a different tack. By drawing on the wisdom of some of the nation's most accomplished teachers--those who are National Board Certified--I hope to bring more reality-based solutions into the policy debate. While policy makers do not necessarily ignore the opinions of accomplished teachers on purpose, they most often hear from policy gurus, union leaders, school administrators, labor economists, and educational researchers. …