College of Education and Human Development

Why Investing in Good Teachers Is Important

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a record 49.6 million students entered the nation's schools in 2003. Demographers speculate this increase is the result of birth rates among children of baby boomers and an increase in the number of immigrant families moving to the United States. These children are now in third grade, and most will remain in the public school system for nine more years.

It is well documented that the demographics of the teaching force do not mirror the student populations in terms of race and gender. In the 1950s, approximately 80 percent of children entering school were non-Hispanic whites, whereas in 2003, 60 percent of students were white, 18 percent Hispanic, 16 percent black, and 4 percent Asian.

Although there are more minority teachers today than in 1950, the teaching force remains more than 85 percent white and more than 80 percent female. Moreover, teachers are graying. Nationally, more than 40 percent of teachers are over 50 years old and nearly a third of teachers with more than 30 years of experience are men. Thus, at a time when a significant portion of the teaching force is nearing retirement, there is a need for more teachers from a variety of backgrounds.

Finding teachers to meet the needs of school systems is a complex problem that often has been addressed with simplistic—and unsuccessful—policy solutions. In part, this is because decision makers have not fully considered the unique supply and demand characteristics of the public school teacher market: K-12 teaching is a large enterprise representing roughly 2.7 percent of the U.S. workforce; it is directly affected by increases or decreases in the school age population; workers are primarily white and female; the demand for teachers is a function of state or local rather than national needs; an increased supply of new teachers in one part of the country is not likely to relieve shortages in another geographic area; teachers must be qualified in each subject they expect to teach and as such their preparation programs are sometimes more different than similar; content and pedagogical preparation programs are influenced by state laws, which also account for a measure of difference among teachers; teachers tend to seek jobs in communities similar to and near where they grew up; the majority of hiring decisions are made during a four-month period from late spring to September; and the market is segmented by teaching field because of state licensure policies.

A review of education policies to recruit and keep excellent teachers reveals a series of policy miscues. There is an assumption embedded in federal and some state actions that teacher retention policy can actually serve as a recruitment tool. This is wrong-headed because finding and hiring someone to take a teaching job is essentially an employment issue, while teacher retention is an investment issue. There is an intuitive appeal for such programs as loan forgiveness and signing bonuses to attract individuals into teaching, yet there is little empirical evidence that they work.

Although some of these programs have been studied, few have undergone rigorous external evaluations. Moreover, studies of these incentive programs omit two key questions: (1) Did people who received a loan or signing bonus intend to go into teaching anyway? and (2) Do people who take signing bonuses and loan-forgiveness opportunities tend to stay in teaching longer than those who do not? Essentially, do these policies merely pay people to do what they planned to do anyway? If that is the case, they are helpful for those who intend to teach, but have minimal if any impact on the size of the workforce.

College of Education and Human Development Spring/Summer 2007 13 Decision makers need to disentangle teacher recruitment and retention. Strategies to find and hire good teachers require a form of employment policy, whereas keeping excellent teachers is best supported by investment policies. Employment policy and investment policy are different. Employment policy needs to be nimble; it needs to allow hiring agencies to respond quickly. In the market for teachers, quickly does not mean six months or even three months, but rather, it could mean three days. There is no other field where almost all new employees are hired within a period of four months or less. The school districts that can offer the first contracts or are such attractive places to work get the pick of available teachers. Obviously, this works to the advantage of wealthy school districts. If it is late August and a principal doesn't have a teacher for a classroom, long-term strategies such as loan forgiveness are not the answer.

Employment policy is targeted. That is, it involves negotiation between an individual teaching candidate and a school. Therefore, it needs to be highly individualized and short term. What is an effective employment policy tool one year may not work in subsequent years. Policy tools to enable employment policies to work might involve federal and state funds to build the capacity of localities to offer the kinds of incentives that will attract strong candidates to their schools. If employment policies are going to be supported by federal and state funds—and as such have state or national impact—they will need to be targeted to the school districts with the greatest financial need rather than to affluent school districts.

By comparison, investment policy needs a measured, longterm response. Investment policy would support loan forgiveness for teachers if strong evaluations of these programs showed their merit. It would include support for teacher education programs, K-16 partnerships, and teacher mentoring and induction. The essence of investment policy is that public funds are directed to strengthen the professional infrastructure of teaching. Not all teachers who are new to a school are new to teaching. In fact, most teachers are transfers from other schools or communities or are individuals returning to their schools after stepping out for a year or so. These teachers need and expect different types of supports than individuals who are newly minted teachers. Thus, like employment policy, investment policy needs to be targeted, but in this case it is targeted to the needs of the individual, the school, the preparation program, and the school district.

Investment in teacher retention programs must be universally available, not just found in prosperous school districts. This suggests the need for statewide funding, but local flexibility in terms of how a particular retention program is operated at the school itself. By reframing policies related to preparing, hiring, and keeping good teachers as either nimble employment policies or long-term investment policies, a different picture of how governments should structure incentives emerges.

In addition, this framework suggests different evaluation strategies to determine the success of the programs. Employment policy can be studied using economic models and lends itself to quantitative methods that analyze the cost and success of various hiring incentives for teachers. Investment policy could also draw on quantitative tools, but would also need a qualitative component. This might include case studies of individual teachers to find out what influenced their decision to enter and remain in teaching. It could include studies of school climate and the characteristics of schools with low turnover.

It is short-sighted to ignore the need to invest in existing teachers and focus primarily on strategies to find new ones. The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the cost of replacing an employee is at least one-third of the individual's salary. In the Commonwealth of Virginia in 2004, this amounted to $147,106,125. Investing $3,000 to $4,000 per new teacher for two years is wiser fiscal policy than expending $20,000 or $30,000 to replace a teacher. As a result, savings from wise investment policy can be used to support employment strategies to help Virginia's school divisions hire the top teachers they need and families expect.

-Penelope Earley