An estimated 17% to 30% of new teachers in the U.S. leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching. Some challenges that prompt new teachers to leave the field include stress, lack of appropriate support, and feeling unprepared to handle behavioral and academic issues among their students. Research supports the finding that teachers…

State and local education agencies across the country face challenges related to understanding and managing their teaching staff to best help students learn. Statewide longitudinal data systems (SLDSs) offer valuable information about teacher labor markets that can be used to analyze supply and demand, inform budget and staffing decisions, and…

Improving teacher preparation is critical to long-term improvement in teacher quality. More than 200,000 new teachers enter classrooms each year. Increasing student enrollment, the retirement of baby boom generation teachers, and high attrition in their first five years (between 40 and 50 percent of new teachers leave the profession) have…

As support and professional-development opportunities for teachers begin to move from conference rooms to chat rooms, a burgeoning number of states and districts are drawing on features from course-management software and popular social-networking sites to establish online networks connecting teachers to peers who may live dozens or even hundreds…

This paper presents the Ohio edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's 2008 "State Teacher Policy Yearbook". The 2008 "Yearbook" focuses on how state policies impact the retention of effective new teachers. This policy evaluation is broken down into three areas that encompass 15 goals. Broadly, these goals examine…

Summer is a time for teachers to recharge their pedagogical batteries. Here, three veteran English teachers write about professional development programs that energized them and their teaching.

This paper examines alternative teacher certification in the NCREL region (Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin), reviewing relevant literature, analyzing current Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) data, reviewing information on alternative certification programs in these states, and offering results from a survey of…

Goal-directed reflection (GDR) is a strategy that targets the contemplative examination of specific aspects of teaching. The GDR process can be used by a PETE program that uses a systematic approach to supervision. The process consists of identifying specific teaching behaviors, aligning these target behaviors with Praxis III/Pathwise domains,…

The purpose of this technical report is to summarize the research methodology of the Novice Teacher Study (NTS) strand of the Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) research. The Ohio TQP embarked on a series of research studies to learn more about the characteristics of effective teachers and to identify the patterns of teacher performance in both…

Although states have maintained a focus on recruiting and retaining teachers, many schools and districts still face daunting challenges in ensuring a qualified and competent teaching corps. It is particularly difficult for schools considered hard to staff-those with high concentrations of low-performing, low-income students; high teacher turnover;…

Discusses traditional approaches to assuring qualified teachers, newer trends that have appeared (mentoring and internships), and a licensure and residency approach being considered in Ohio. The article recommends restructuring the licensure system to focus on the competencies essential for successful beginning practice in schools in the process…

This 3-year project, part of an ongoing collaborative program development effort, is aimed at improvement of teacher education between Ohio State University and five Franklin County (Ohio) school districts. The project established a pilot program to help beginning teachers explore their own needs and classroom processes with the assistance of…

This article examines how novice teachers in Japan and in the United States, specifically in the state of Ohio, are assessed, evaluated, and supported as they enter the teaching profession. Comparison of practices and tools which characterize the two countries' approaches toward assessment and mentoring reveals that important differences exist in…

To prepare for state-mandated mentoring of beginning teachers, educators from North Royalton City School District (Ohio) and higher education faculty developed a graduate course for novice mentors. The Pathwise Performance Assessment provided a framework for discussing teacher behaviors. Mentors learned cognitive coaching skills to implement the…