Growing Great Teachers: New Strategies to Support New Teachers
How school system leaders can use existing resources to better develop, support, and retain new teachers.
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Every year, school districts welcome—and then lose—thousands of promising new teachers. For too many, the job is overwhelming, which can lead to teacher shortage in schools.
How can we improve instruction and reduce teacher turnover and teacher shortage—especially with limited resources, in our highest-needs schools?
In the Growing Great Teachers report, we use research-based “impact modeling” to show how a strategic approach to recruiting and supporting rookie teachers could yield as much as 4.2 extra months of student learning.
We provide 5 recommendations for school systems to leverage their investment in structures that provide rookie teachers with both shelter and development.
1. Work with a portfolio of high-quality teacher preparation providers.
2. Place well-supported rookies in otherwise hard-to-staff positions.
3. Create multi-year retention incentives.
4. Reallocate and target school- and system-level investments.
5. Design schools to support rookie teachers.
Armed with models for supporting rookie teachers and strategies for sustainably funding these models, school and system leaders can radically increase both teacher effectiveness and student performance in their most challenged schools.
Next Steps:
The Growing Great Teachers Toolkit provides practical resources to help your school system envision, plan, and implement new models to support new teachers and prevent teacher shortage.
Interested in more ways that districts can support rookie teachers? Learn how to develop and retain rookie teachers or dive into our work to reimagine the teaching job.