Considerations for Policymakers

From a policymaker's standpoint, providing adequate support for new teachers is important for several reasons. To begin with, there is significant public interest in programs to improve school and teacher effectiveness (Halford, 1999). According to a 1998 poll conducted by Recruiting New Teachers, Inc., more than 90 percent of Americans support "establishing special programs for new teachers in which able, veteran teachers would serve as mentors to newly hired teachers" (Lenhardt, 2000, p. 27). Other factors that have led to policymakers' increased focus on new teachers include the following:

Student achievement: Student learning and school performance are directly related to teacher effectiveness (Geringer, 2000). Although teacher ability is certainly not the only factor that plays into students' success in school, studies have shown that students with more experienced and better-trained teachers tend to score better on standardized tests. In one study of teacher effectiveness, researchers found that "students of effective teachers showed impressive gains, regardless of prior achievement" while students taught by a series of ineffective teachers, "including students with high previous levels of achievement, failed to show appropriate academic growth" (Goodwin, 1999, p. 1).
School quality: If schools are to meet the high standards outlined by state and federal governments, they must be able to attract, support, and retain quality teachers. Districts staffed by a steady stream of less experienced educators struggle to implement school reform efforts and generally score lower on measures of school effectiveness (Geringer, 2000).
Cost: The more beginners that leave the field, the more money that must be spent on recruiting, hiring, and training their replacements. Funding quality teacher induction programs — up to $5,000 per new teacher per year in some district — has proven to be more cost-effective than the alternative (Halford, 1999; Moir, n.d.).
Teacher shortages: U.S. schools will need to fill approximately two million vacancies in the next decade, with the highest demands in "perennially hard-to-staff" urban schools, and in subject areas such as bilingual education, special education, math, and science (Geringer, 2000; Lenhardt, 2000; Weiss & Weiss, 1999). By 2005, more than 35,900 new teachers will be needed in the five Northwest states alone (Lenhardt, 2000).

In a report released by the Education Commission of the States in July 2000, Wyoming Governor Jim Geringer identifies beginning teacher support and induction programs as an important piece of legislative strategies aimed at retaining teachers and increasing teacher quality. State-mandated multi-year teacher induction programs have already been developed in several states, including Missouri and Colorado (Goodwin, 1999). In other states, such as Washington and Nebraska, state leaders provide incentives and varying levels of support for districts that develop programs for beginners, but don't require all districts to participate.

To be sure, mandating school districts to implement teacher induction programs will ensure that something is done for new teachers. However, making new teacher induction a funding priority, and then providing incentives for schools to develop strong programs, would be a less-coercive and more locally responsive means of achieving the same ends.