Document text
http:// --> Ashland, Oregon HOME Valley & State Sports Nation & World Opinion/Editorial Classifieds Business Columnists Local Issues Obituaries Weather Archive Revels Etcetera Backpage Hot Topics Most Viewed Forum Photo Galleries Video Readers Polls O-Zone Online Games Movie Preview Special Sections Real Estate Guide Menu Guide Shakespeare Subscribe Contact Us Rate Card Place an Ad Top Galleries: February 5, 2007 Oregon tries to hold onto its teachers By Julia Silverman The Associated Press BEAVERTON — States from Oregon to Georgia are considering pouring millions of dollars into mentoring programs for new teachers, aiming to stop many educators from spending just a few years in the classroom before leaving for greener, less taxing pastures. Researchers estimate that as many as 50 percent of teachers nationwide will leave the profession within their first five years on the job, fed up and frustrated. The constant classroom churn is hardest on kids, especially those in poorer, more urban schools that are prone to losing the most teachers. Consistently adjusting to the quirks of new teachers isn't easy, educators and students say, and inexperienced first-year teachers often find themselves just a few days ahead of their students in their textbooks or struggling to keep order in their classrooms. And it's expensive for taxpayers: The Washington, D.C.-based Alliance for Excellence in Education has pegged the national cost of annual teacher turnover at $2.2 billion, once human resources and recruitment costs have been factored in. Nearly every state already has some sort of mentor program, to pair new teachers with their veteran counterparts. But so far just a handful of states, led by Connecticut and California, have actually put aside significant money for such programs, said Jeanne Kaufman, a policy analyst at the Denver, Colo.-based Education Commission of the States. The surge of interest in such programs, she and others said, stems largely from a broad experiment with mentoring in California. In the 1990s, California began experimenting with a new teacher retention program, after losing about 50 percent of its new teachers every year. The program is now in place in every school district in California, said Liam Goldrick, director of policy for the New Teacher Center, based at the University of California in Santa Cruz. The retention rate has zoomed up to about 84 percent. Other states have taken notice. In Oregon, where only a handful of districts run such programs, Gov. Ted Kulongoski included $5 million to phase in a three-year mentoring program in his proposed budget, which legislators will consider in the coming months. Illinois is funding a pilot mentoring program in 10 school districts, Goldrick said, with an eye toward future expansion. In Georgia, an influential education advocacy group just released a report calling for lawmakers to approve a $50 million to $75 million program to start a two-year mentor program there. Many mentor programs pair a single, veteran teacher with up to a dozen new teachers. The veteran commonly acts as a sounding board, observing the new teachers in their classrooms, strategizing about what works and what doesn't. New teachers are also given the chance to observe their colleagues at work, and to bounce problems and advice off each other in regular meetings. Melissa Allen, 25, is just seven or so years older than most of the students in the language arts classes she teaches at Beaverton High School in a fast-growing Portland suburb, one of the few districts in Oregon that hasn't waited for state money to get its mentor program up and running. She said she spends much of her time negotiating a careful balance in her classroom, trying to land somewhere between friend and authority figure, sometimes finding herself pleading with her students to hand in their projects, and shushing them enough that they imitate her trademark "shh-shh-shh!" to her face. Having a mentor has helped her navigate everything from whether she's covering material quickly enough to what to do when she hears through the grapevine about a student's drinking problem, she said. "The safety net is huge," she said. "If I mess up, there's someone to say, OK, you did mess up, now how are you going to fix it?" Her mentor, David Nieslanik, a veteran social studies teacher in Beaverton, said this time of year is when he's needed most, when the newness of the job has worn off and the excitement of homecoming has died down, when testing data floods in and calls about failing grades have to be made to parents. He's seen the mentor program make a real difference at his school, he said — Beaverton High has lost only a handful of its rookies over the past few years, and those who have left did so because of family obligations. Still, mentor programs don't come cheap. For mentor programs to have an impact, Goldrick said, veteran teachers need time off from their own classrooms — Nieslanik, for example, only teaches part-time these days. That means paying other teachers to pick up that slack. Researchers also recommend that schools pay for professional development for teachers, and to test their teaching skills after their first two years on the job. Doing it right can cost between $3,500 to $5,500 per new teacher, Goldrick and others said. Some researchers caution that though such programs are proven to help with retention, the jury's still out on whether mentoring programs will help students actually learn more, as measured by their performance on standardized reading and math tests. There are no "solid, quantitative studies" that look at whether teachers who have participated in mentoring programs see their students' test scores improve, said Jeremey Ayers, a policy analyst at the Alliance for Excellent Education. But there is solid research showing that when teachers have at least five years of experience, students do better, he said. Dan Humphrey, associate director at the Center for Education Policy at SRI, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based nonprofit, said mentor programs are "certainly no magic bullet." Most schools don't track student testing scores as connected with their teachers' experience level or background, he said, leaving a dearth of solid data. And other factors — like whether teacher aides are present, tutors are available, if students are fluent in English or not — also affect students' testing performance, he said. And even with full funding, mentor programs can fall flat if principals and other school leaders don't prioritize the efforts, according to a recent survey of 1,700 rookie teachers by the University of Chicago's Consortium on Chicago School Research. Leave a Comment: Advertisement: Advertisement: Paid Advertising: Debt Help Inkjet Printers Payday Loans Free Ringtones Debt Consolidation Water Filter Security Systems Debt Relief Advertisement: Copyright © 2007 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers. All Rights Reserved. Del.icio.us