Why Finding And Keeping Quality Teachers Matters So Much

This issue is timely for two reasons. First of all, the specter of impending teacher shortages, particularly in the areas of mathematics, science, foreign language, English as a Second Language (ESOL), and special education, means that schools will need to work harder to find and hire teachers in these areas, and will have to pay more attention to keeping the teachers they have. Secondly, the evidence that points to a direct connection between quality teachers and high student achievement is so compelling that schools should be putting more and more effort into making sure they find and keep the highest quality teachers.

 

The Process

 

The process of maintaining a quality staff has three distinct parts, and different strategies are necessary for each. The first part of the process is finding and hiring new high-quality teachers, the second part is keeping those new teachers, and the third part is keeping high-quality veteran teachers.

 

Finding New Teachers

 

Part of the recruitment process requires laying the appropriate foundation. Each school district should have a system that works toward making teacher selection efficient and reliable. This system should:

 

- identify the attitudes, behaviors, and skills that characterize the kind of teachers the district wants in the classroom;

- screen for those characteristics at every stage of recruitment;

- ensure that the hiring process complies with federal, state, and local laws;

- eliminate unproductive paperwork so that the best candidates have faith in the competence of the system recruiting them;

- reserve labor-intensive personal evaluation for only the most promising candidates; and

- validate the selection process to ensure that it predicts excellence in classroom and professional performance.

 

In addition to traditional recruiting at local job fairs, administrators should take full advantage of other recruitment tools, including collaborating with careers centers and schools or departments of teacher education at local universities, travelling to job fairs in other districts, and recruiting teachers from other states and countries.

 

Another, more long-term, solution is to recruit internally by encouraging substitute teachers and paraprofessionals to complete the training necessary to be a certified teacher. For some, this may mean attending a local community college, then completing the program at a college or university. Tuition funding, even if only partial, may enable some school staff members to become certified teachers.

 

Keeping New Teachers

 

It's hard to overestimate the importance of support for new teachers. Although the first few years may always be the hardest, school leaders can put in place programs to help new teachers feel less stress and alienation.

 

These programs include the following:

 

- Providing early and effective back-to-school orientation. This orientation should include a workshop on classroom management, specific information about school and district policies, and get-acquainted activities among the new teachers.

- Holding support seminars for new teachers. These seminars may work best if release time is given for new teachers to attend them. The seminar topics should be developed based on the needs of the teachers at different times during the year. For example, before the first parent open house, have a seminar on communicating with parents, colleagues, and administrators.

- Creating a mentoring program. Mentors help to increase the new teacher's competence and self-confidence by being available to answer questions, discuss problems, and model good practice.

 

Mentors can also help teachers find materials and supplies, and can provide examples of realistic classroom management plans.

 

Keeping Veteran Teachers

 

Although teacher retention in the first few years is crucial, paying attention to long-term teacher retention is also important. There are various measures that can help veteran teachers continue to feel challenged and rewarded by the teaching profession. These measures include:

 

- creating enhanced salary schedules for teachers who earn master's, specialist, and doctoral degrees, or adding merit pay or performance pay bonuses;

- encouraging teachers to become mentors or work with student teachers;

- providing opportunities for teachers to take on leadership responsibilities (on curriculum committees, for example); and

- designing and providing staff development with the experienced teacher in mind.

 

Improve The Quality Of The Teacher Labor Force

 

It seems like a simple and direct way to improve student learning and one now required on a vast scale by federal law. Each state must also have a plan for achieving annual increases in the percentage of highly qualified teachers, to ensure that all teachers of core academic subjects are fully licensed or certified.

 

But the practical implementation of the commonsense idea of hiring and retaining excellent teachers is not as simple as its theoretical base. Research links teacher effectiveness to a wide range of variables, from quantifiable measures, such as standardized test scores and college quality, to less-tangible measures, such as public speaking ability and enthusiasm.

 

To date, however, school boards, administrators, teachers, researchers, and state and national policymakers have been unable to reach consensus on a clear, consistent definition of high quality for teachers. Even if we manage to reach agreement on characteristics of high-quality teachers, policymakers at all levels likely will continue to debate the best means of enhancing those characteristics.

 

Finally, many districts have found it difficult to attract and retain enough qualified teachers, especially in particular fields such as special education or science — or in schools serving high percentages of low-income students who are most in need of good teaching.

 

Yet this is the job at hand. If we are to make significant progress in educating our youth, we must develop the skills of the existing teacher labor force and recruit high quality teachers for all of our students.

 

The Shifting Landscape

 

Recent changes in the demographics of student and teacher populations, as well as some recently enacted educational policies, are greatly complicating the national effort to improve teacher quality:

 

- Schools districts must cope with the realities of a rapidly aging teacher labor force. School districts will need innovative strategies to attract high-quality new teachers as teachers around the country approach retirement and withdraw from the labor force en masse.

 

- Teacher staffing problems are exacerbated by contemporary educational reform initiatives such as class size reduction. As a result, school districts have had to recruit additional teachers.

 

- Recent state and federal attention on educational outputs is changing the teaching profession. The standards and accountability movement has attempted to hold teachers responsible for changes in student achievement. These pressures may have transformed teaching into a less-attractive profession, making the recruitment of additional teachers even more difficult.

A New Wave of Teacher Compensation Reform

 

Reflecting the national pressure to increase student learning, policymakers at the state, local, and federal levels recently adopted a flurry of programs intended to attract new teachers and to improve the quality of existing teachers.

 

For example, a number of local school districts have instituted recruitment bonus policies for prospective teachers. Discussion and action have also taken place at the federal level, resulting in a number of initiatives designed to recruit additional high-quality teachers into the profession through housing and loan-forgiveness incentives.

 

Instead of augmenting starting salary, some local school districts and state governments have instituted merit pay plans to more radically change the way that teachers are compensated. These compensation plans link salaries to student achievement measures.

 

Another set of programs designed to recruit and retain high-quality teachers is composed of bonus plans enacted at the state level that reward entire schools rather than individual teachers for meeting or exceeding certain goals.

 

In a third set of initiatives, some state-level policymakers are focusing on improving teacher skills and eliciting greater effort in the classroom. For example, some policies encourage teachers to demonstrate additional knowledge and skills through credentialing organizations such as the National Board for Professional and Teaching Standards (NBPTS). In its National Board Certification program, teachers are evaluated on classroom effectiveness and rigorous standardized exams.

 

The Teacher Labor Market

 

Most education policy initiatives ultimately are crafted to produce conditions that result in higher levels of student learning — some through transforming teaching into a more attractive profession. Yet many have been developed without considering the significance of teacher labor market forces.

 

 

As a result, these policies may affect teacher quality in unintended and undesirable ways. For example, recent research shows that the decline in teacher quality has been greater for schools serving low-income or minority students.

 

Policy distortions such as this can be prevented with a more comprehensive approach to recruiting, retaining, and developing high-quality teachers. This requires an understanding of schools as institutions — and teachers as actors in those institutions — in the framework of the teacher labor market. An important piece of that framework is teacher compensation.

 

Teachers are fundamentally different from other school resources. Unlike textbooks, computers, and classroom facilities, teachers have preferences about whether to teach, what subject areas to teach, and the conditions in which they want to teach.

 

The character of the teacher labor market ultimately depends on the choices of current and potential teachers, the hiring decisions made by school officials, and the interactions between these two groups.

 

Teachers' preferences begin with the courses they select as college students and extend through their decision about when to leave the labor force through retirement.

 

All of the complex choices made during a teacher's career depend on a variety of factors such as work conditions and the relative wages of alternative occupations.

 

National, state, and local policymakers must understand how both teacher compensation and other labor market factors influence teachers' choices, or they risk implementing policies that may not achieve their intended purpose.

 

Therefore, to determine the efficacy of the current compensation policies on the table—merit pay, school-level bonuses, and competency and contingency pay — it is imperative that we discuss teacher compensation within the analytical framework of the teacher labor market.

 

This perspective will provide policymakers with a greater understanding of existing programs and help ensure that new strategies will serve the purpose of increased student learning through higher-quality teachers.  

 

Jeff C. Palmer is a teacher, success coach, trainer, Certified Master of Web Copywriting and founder of https://Ebookschoice.com. Jeff is a prolific writer, Senior Research Associate and Infopreneur having written many eBooks, articles and special reports.

 

Source: https://ebookschoice.com/why-finding-and-keeping-quality-teachers-matters-so-much/

Good Judgement And Shared Commitment To Long-range Educational Objectives

College and university leaders may recognize that realistic solutions will require an end to "business as usual," and may be reluctant to explore options that will be painful and disruptive on campus. And yet, the growing numbers of young people wanting and needing higher education are (and will be) there, and it is foolish to think that denial is an effective long-run strategy. The ideas advanced later in this paper may ultimately be easier for an outsider to propose than for those enmeshed in the system.

 

A case can be made for increased student fees in public institutions that enroll large numbers of students from high-income families, provided the higher fees are accompanied by increased need-based aid directed to students from low-income families. This policy calls for the state to redirect some of the savings achieved from reduced institutional appropriations into student financial aid.

 

The patterns are consistent with short-run decision making under financial duress, not guided by an overarching policy. While "muddling through" might suffice for a few years with limited damage to student access and institutional quality, it is a recipe for disaster if continued, given the demographic tidal wave about to wash over the states. The time has clearly come for a longer view, before what remains of the promise imbedded in the master plan is lost.

 

Clearly, we face a budget crisis - not a transitory problem that likely economic growth or the usual policy changes can address, but a fundamental and long-term change in the options we can choose from. A small set of essentially fixed demands will soon consume virtually all of the state's unrestricted income. Only a few basic options seem to present themselves, and none appears attractive.

 

The most one can say about economic projections is that they are subject to considerable uncertainty, and thus the course of wisdom lies in not fixing a policy based on any single estimate of funds likely to be available in future years. The sensitivity analyses of the technical report and the research demonstrate convincingly, however, that higher education is not going to be able to meet its obligations to the next generation of students through increased state support.

 

Although it would be easy to criticize the actions (or lack thereof) of state and university leaders over the past ten years, there is no point in such a negative exercise. Given human fallibility, several years' experience may have been necessary before the enduring nature of the financial crisis facing higher education could truly sink in. College and university leaders reacted to the events of the last five years defensively and protectively, seeking to preserve educational quality and minimize damage to the institutions. Had the financial crisis proved to be short-term, similar to those experienced periodically, that would have been a sensible response. Similarly, one can understand why political leaders, faced with multiple problems caused by the recession - together with other physical and social upheavals - would have failed to develop long-term educational policies aligned to the new fiscal reality. But there can be no excuse for the continuation of such behavior. The realities sketched in the preceding page are now obvious to all in responsible positions. The citizens have inherited a fabulous resource in its system of higher education, as well as a legacy of providing educational opportunity for all who seek it. To squander those assets and that legacy through a failure to face facts and to develop new and imaginative policies would rightly subject political and educational leaders to contempt.

 

As a contribution to this essential discussion, in what follows I will sketch three policy approaches that might be adopted, and assess the social costs and benefits, and the political feasibility of each approach. For purposes of clarity, I will refer to these options as: 1) status quo; 2) radical reform; and 3) state of emergency of indefinite duration. I will discuss each in turn, and make it clear why I prefer the third. Mine is only one voice in what must be a far broader conversation, but that conversation must begin. It must be undertaken in full recognition of the crisis confronting higher education, and lead directly to vigorous new policies and actions at both state and institutional levels.

 

Political interference in colleges and universities is nothing new. But it comes and goes, and now its intensity is increasing. Because higher education in America is the door to everywhere, because it is what virtually everyone wants or needs, it is no wonder that factions want to control it. They want it to be responsive to their perceptions of what needs to be done.

 

Those responsible for colleges and universities have an obligation to listen respectfully, to meet changing needs as best they can, and to decline to be controlled.

 

It is unfortunate that we seem to have entered into another phase of overt political interference with higher education, because it distracts colleges and universities from important changes they need to make. Primarily, they need to adjust what they do and how they relate to other social institutions, particularly businesses. We are deciding how to prepare the women and men who will sustain the kind of society we want to live in. Partisan political agendas, ideology, and even the political maneuvering occasioned by expansive institutional ambitions, divert attention form the truly important issues of the day.

 

What we need now are governing boards that exemplify the defining values we are trying to protect as higher education changes to meet the needs of an advanced technology-based economy. We want a society whose citizens are involved, enlightened, tolerant, and willing to negotiate differences of opinion. We want them to be productively engaged in satisfactory work. But these two objectives now are in tension within higher education because the nature of work is changing so dramatically.

 

Faculties across the nation are trying to adapt curricula to give students the high levels of technical skill and knowledge they need to meet the expectations of business, while at the same time trying to hold on to the defining values that characterize education in a democratic society. Of course, higher education is under stress!

 

Higher education is related administratively, whether public or private, through laws and regulations governing various programs and funding mechanisms. The private institutions must comply with various rules in order for their students to receive tuition assistance grants. Public institutions are subject to a plethora of laws and regulations that dictate the administrative processes they must follow, the hoops through which they must jump in getting anything done.

 

On a second level, colleges and universities have an independent appeal to a large, generally middle-class constituency of supporters: alumni, financial backers and parents, to name only three. These supporters are part of the best networks in any state, and they influence political action with their votes and their checks.

 

On the third and most important level, colleges and universities are grounded on the bedrock of our democracy: on the Constitution and the intellectual traditions from which it grew. They are the institutions in which ideas are placed in the crucible and subjected to the most severe tests. Some ideas fail, others die for lack of interest. Some change our lives.

 

Political interference can occur at each level of relationship between higher education and government. It begins, of course, at the administrative level. In one state after another, governors have seized control of the systems office to install staff who share their political persuasion.

 

Systems boards probably are most vulnerable to political interference because they have no alumni, no prominent financial backers and no football teams. Taking them over can help to advance some agendas or to resist change. Playing on historic American distrust of the professional and managerial classes, board members at both the system and institutional levels may attempt to micromanage, producing a huge amount of friction that inhibits administrators, who actually run things, from getting their work done.

 

At the second level, higher education's popular support, rooted in its extensive networks of friends and alumni, can be eroded by diversionary attacks on colleges and universities as bloated and inefficient or as subversive of fundamental values. These attacks are often characterized by meanness associated with resistance to change, or with the certainty that some political ideology or another is absolutely right.

 

But it is difficult to force a political belief system upon colleges and universities because faculty can - and will - resist and subvert changes that are forced upon them, especially if they perceive the changes not to be in the best interest of their students and their own professional commitments. This insulates colleges and universities from political pressure but makes them vulnerable to criticism: People in other walks of life become impatient with higher education because it appears to make needed changes so slowly.

 

The third level of interference is in the intellectual lives of the colleges and universities: what is taught, by whom, and to whom. In most states, this interference has been absent or subtle; in a few, it has been heavy-handed.

 

A university chancellor who later was elected governor of his state appeared before the legislature some years ago to answer criticisms about what the faculty were teaching. "I know that half of what they teach probably is wrong," the chancellor said. "But I don't know which half."

 

Political interference in higher education is a symptom of a much larger fear that things seem out of our control. Some people react fearfully to change and seek to impose more rigid controls on institutions and processes. As the institutions in which new ideas are tested and taught, colleges and universities are particularly apt to come under attack by those who are distressed by change.

 

The charge that colleges and universities are subversive to established values and the principles of democracy finds fertile ground in the anti-intellectualism that historically has characterized Americans' ambivalent feelings about academic institutions. It leads to the conclusion that it is necessary to control who is allowed to teach, or to correct what is being taught.

 

Colleges and universities have, as I have noted, some of the best networks of friends and supporters in any state. Discrediting the institutions and those who work in them is one of the best ways to divert attention from inadequate financial support. And those from without who would suppress the rich ferment of collegiate life have allies within the academy.

 

Perceiving that resources are limited, some entrenched factions are trying to preserve their privileges while excluding newcomers. In higher education, this entails attacks on equal opportunity and affirmative action in some states, and the suggestion in some others that too many people are going to college. It is a "lifeboat mentality"; there are a limited number of places in the boat, so the rest have to stay in the water. And in the United States today most of the "rest" are people who are poor and not Caucasian.

 

Imperfect though they are, in the past 25 years colleges and universities have become the most important providers of equal opportunity in our society. They also are the most important sources of skilled workers and entrepreneurs, and of new products and technologies. And if they are true to their highest calling, they help students encounter ethical questions, whose answers will shape their lives. As a nation, we cannot afford to be unable to afford higher education for all citizens who can benefit from it.

 

The best defense of colleges and universities finally lies in the hands of the women and men who are appointed to govern them. Their good judgement and shared commitment to long-range educational objectives are essential.

 

Governing boards have different responsibilities now that the academy is closely involved with other social institutions and the body politic, rather than distant as it was until only a few decades ago. In addition to their fiduciary responsibilities, board members now should help senior administrators form essential collaborative relationships and understand the environment within which they are working.

 

Board members richer in conviction than in professional experience or maturity may threaten the freedom of inquiry that is the foundation of institutions of higher learning by attempting to impose their personal opinions upon the curriculum, the composition of the student body, or the services provided by the system and the institutions.

 

There is no easy way to ensure that the right kinds of people are appointed to boards. But alarm about what is happening in some states has caused the creation of review panels that would evaluate the credentials of possible board members and create lists of qualified candidates from which the appointing authorities can select their nominees. This would help to guard against excessive politicization and could prepare the way for a review panel at some time in the future.

 

Jeff C. Palmer is a teacher, success coach, trainer, Certified Master of Web Copywriting and founder of https://Ebookschoice.com. Jeff is a prolific writer, Senior Research Associate and Infopreneur having written many eBooks, articles and special reports.

 

Source: https://ebookschoice.com/good-judgement-and-shared-commitment-to-long-range-educational-objectives/