Teacher Retention Strategies for Title I Schools
Brian Schueler, Director, Research Development
Engaged principals, opportunities for collaboration, and extensive coaching and mentoring serve as three hallmarks to improve teacher retention at profiled schools. Though specific initiatives and efforts to retain and engage teachers at profiled schools vary, the efforts feature three common themes. Contacts at all profiled schools highlight the importance of the school principal for retaining teachers. School leaders incorporate opportunities for collaboration and connections between teachers into schedules and operating procedures. Administrators at profiled schools also offer intensive professional development training, provide mentors to new or struggling teachers, and employ instructional experts to coach teachers on curriculum delivery.
Coaching and professional development opportunities help teachers adapt to changes, continue to grow, and respond to challenging environments. Most profiled schools provide teachers with instructional coaches who offer assistance in a low-pressure, non-evaluative setting. These coaches provide a resource for teachers and help guide curriculum and instructional strategies. Profiled schools also offer ample support and guidance in the form of professional development. Schools tailor professional development around curriculum changes to help teachers adapt to new strategies and standards.
Teacher retention trends
While teacher turnover rates vary widely state to state and even district to district, schools with larger populations of poor students tend to experience higher rates of teacher turnover. The Learning Policy Institute’s 2017 report details that the teacher turnover rate in Title I schools is nearly 50% greater than in non-Title I schools.
Contacts at profiled schools describe multiple initiatives and efforts that increase teacher retention in their schools. These efforts typically feature three common themes.
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Engaged Principals and Administrators
Contacts at all profiled schools highlight the importance of the school principal for retaining teachers. Leaders at School A argue that the number one factor that teachers seek in a work environment is a supportive principal and administration. Research by the Learning Policy Institute supports this assertion. When teachers strongly disagree that their administration is supportive, they are more than twice as likely to move schools or leave teaching than when they strongly agree that their administration is supportive.
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Collaborative Teaching Culture
School leaders at School B emphasize that a collaborative teaching culture allows teachers to support each other. All profiled schools organize teachers into grade-level professional learning communities. These groups meet frequently to plan lessons and evaluate student performance. In addition to professional learning communities, school leaders also structure other opportunities for collaboration and connections between teachers.
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Extensive Coaching and Mentorship
Frequent coaching and mentorship opportunities help teachers feel supported and empowered to make a difference in the classroom. Profiled schools offer intensive professional development training, provide mentors to new or struggling teachers, and employ instructional experts to coach teachers on curriculum delivery. Administrators at District D help connect new teachers at School D with experienced teachers to serve as mentors for their first three years in the school.
Principals’ role in teacher retention
Contacts at all profiled schools emphasize that school principals play a crucial role in teacher retention efforts. Contacts at School A explain that contrary to misconceptions, many teachers are willing to work with more challenging student populations and may even prefer to work with children who need greater academic and behavioral assistance. When weighing work opportunities, teachers focus more on the work environment and school culture. School principals play a key role in setting the professional environments of their schools. Teachers who feel supported by their administrators are less likely to leave their schools or the profession.
Research by the Learning Policy Institute indicates that teacher perceptions of administrative support have a strong impact on teacher retention after controlling for student and teacher characteristics.
When teachers strongly disagree that their administration is supportive, they are more than twice as likely to move schools or leave teaching than when they strongly agree that their administration is supportive.
Collaborative culture
Contacts at School C explain professional learning communities serve as one of the core agents of change in struggling schools. These teams of grade-level teachers work together to plan lessons, assess student performance, and devise strategies to help struggling students catch-up while continuing into new units of the curriculum. As part of school turnaround and teacher retention efforts, the principal of School C grouped teachers into these professional learning communities aligned by grade level.
Educational researcher and former school principal Richard DuFour is widely credited with developing strategies for creating professional learning communities in K-12 schools. DuFour’s article “What is a ‘Professional Learning Community’” outlines three big ideas that define these groups.
3 big ideas of professional learning communities
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1. Ensuring students learn
A professional learning community holds responsibility for ensuring that students learn. As a group, teachers identify what each student should learn, how teachers will know if a student has learned it, and how teachers should respond if students experience difficulty learning.
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2. A culture of collaboration
A professional learning community should promote a collaborative culture. Teachers work as a team to analyze and improve their classroom practices. The team engages in discussions focused on teaching goals, strategies, materials, pacing, questions, concerns, and student results.
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3. A focus on results
Professional learning communities judge their effectiveness on the basis of results. Instead of simply collecting data, teachers work as a group to analyze and compare data on student learning.
Coaching and mentorship
Providing new teachers with mentors helps increase teacher retention. A longitudinal study on public school teacher attrition conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics followed over 1,900 public school teachers starting as first-year teachers in the 2007-2008 academic year. Over the following four years, 14.5% of the initial cohort who were assigned a mentor during their first year of teaching left the profession compared to 28.6% of those not assigned a mentor.
School A, School B, and School C all employ instructional coaches to provide assistance and guidance on instruction and curriculum. Contacts at School B explain that while principals and administrators should also be able to provide coaching and guidance on instruction, teachers may be reluctant to seek their advice for fear of affecting future performance reviews.
Because instructional coaches operate outside of normal management lines, they can offer teachers assistance and observe teaching in low-pressure, non-evaluative settings.
Struggling teachers feel more comfortable approaching instructional coaches for help and instructional coaches can spend more time helping address teacher needs than building administrators. As a result, these coaches can help reduce teacher turnover.
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