New Public School Mentoring Program Could Save Millions

School districts throughout Texas are finding that there may be a better way to address a problem that has been costing Texas taxpayers more than $300 million a year.

The problem--beginning teachers who don't return to the classroom. The solution--a new Novice Teacher Induction Program that is being funded by a $5 million grant from Houston Endowment--a relatively cheap fix that seems to be working.

The Novice Teacher Induction Program is in its second year of testing by universities of The Texas State University System. One of those, Sam Houston State University, is working with the Aldine, Conroe, Huntsville, Montgomery, Magnolia, and Spring school districts.

Overall in Texas there were 300 teachers in the program in 54 different school districts, in Alpine, Beaumont, San Angelo and San Marcos. While figures are not complete on the entire state, in the SHSU portion of program there were 68 teachers, and 65 of them are teaching again this year in Texas.

"The reason we feel that this is so important is because as a profession we lose almost 50 percent of our new teachers before they finish their fifth year of teaching," said Kenneth Craycraft, the system's vice chancellor.

Estimates are that last year new teachers left the classroom at a statewide rate of 18.5 percent. The Texas Center for Educational Research concluded in a 2000 report that novice teacher loss costs the state a "conservative" $329 million a year.

But compare last year's statewide rate of 18.5 percent teacher dropouts to the 4.4 percent among teachers who participated in the Sam Houston State University program, and they seem to be on to something.

And of the three teachers in the SHSU group who did not return, one moved to Arizona with her husband who is in the military, and she now teaches there, and another is teaching this year in Iowa.

"We're now in the second year of the program," said Sam Sullivan, NTIP campus coordinator at Sam Houston State. "First year results were awesome."

Sullivan explained that mentoring, or having a more experienced teacher work with a new teacher, is not a new approach. What makes the NTIP mentoring program work better seems to be its system of hiring former teachers and administrators to return to campus as mentors.

NTIP mentors are retired public school veterans who come into the schools two full days each week, helping with teaching strategies, supplies, and emotional support.

"The value of that is that the mentor is not distracted by their own set of children or their own responsibilities as an administrator," said Janet Addair, former associate principal at Westfield High School and now principal at New Caney High School.

"They're not having to worry about office referrals, lunch duty, 'Oh, I've got cheerleading practice this afternoon.' So they can focus in on that new teacher and all their issues and that becomes the mentor's priority."

Some new teachers who may not want to reveal what they perceive as teaching inadequacies to another teacher in their school are more likely to open up to a mentor from the outside.

"Sometimes they just need to vent," said Eren Johnson, a SHSU faculty member who works with the program. "They know it's not going to go anywhere else."

"A lot of times you don't want to tell your team leader, 'I'm having a problem and I really don't know what to do about it'," said Rose Dupuis, one of last year's new teachers now back for her second year in the Spring School District.

Among problems mentioned by the teachers and mentors were having to "fly by the seat of your pants," "having to stay later than I expected," "a lot of different things being thrown at you at once," and the students being "not really the captive audience that they thought they might be."

Discipline is often a problem for new teachers, and the NTIP process helps in this area said Addair.
"If they have a very strong classroom management system in place they're not going to have the discipline problems," she said.

Another feature of NTIP is it gets the new teaches back into a college classroom immediately. The program pays all expenses for the first-year teachers to begin advanced study of up to six hours, and requires that they attend two evening graduate seminars each month.

"It's a great support system, especially after you've had a bad day, and you get some great ideas from other schools," said Tara Inscore, an elementary teacher in the Spring district.

The mentors themselves were impressed.

"I wish I had something like this when I began my teaching career," said Sue Murray, a retired principal in the Aldine school district.

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SHSU Media Contact: Frank Krystyniak
Dec. 10, 2003
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