April 2003 — Features
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Redesigning Schools to Meet 21st Century Learning Needs
Editors' Note: The National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) is a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing every child with competent, caring, qualified teachers in schools organized for success. In its latest report, "No Dream Denied: A Pledge to America's Children," NCTAF found that high teacher turnover and attrition have become a national crisis, which is undermining teaching quality in too many of our nation's schools.
The conventional wisdom has been that we cannot find enough teachers to staff America's schools. But, in fact, the conventional wisdom is wrong. The real problem is more complex: we cannot keep enough good teachers in our schools. Currently, teacher turnover and attrition are the greatest threats to teaching quality. Decades of research confirm what we know from experience: At the heart of every high-performing school, we find high-quality teaching. Good teachers are the most important factor in the quality of a child's education. Investing in high-quality teaching is the most important action America's leaders can take to put our children's dreams within reach and prepare our nation for the future.
If we know that quality teaching is important, why isn't every child in the nation taught by a qualified educator? It is not because of a teacher shortage, as many would suggest. Our inability to support high-quality teaching in our schools is driven instead by a staggering teacher attrition rate. It is particularly troubling to see how many new teachers do not stay long enough to become "seasoned" educators: after one year, 14% of new teachers leave teaching, a third have left by the end of their third year, and almost half (46%) are gone by the end of their fifth year of teaching.
Good teachers, who enter teaching full of idealism and dreams that they can make a difference in children's lives, are ground down by bad policies and poor teaching conditions in too many of our schools. Novice teachers are not given the critical help they need during their early years, and those who were not well prepared for the challenges of teaching are overwhelmed. The problem is particularly severe in low-income communities and rural areas where inexperienced teachers are concentrated in schools that are structured for failure rather than success.
Teaching quality and student achievement in these settings suffer, because conditions for the educators who remain in these classrooms decline as their schools are caught in a downward spiral. Despite their dreams and best aspirations, the remaining teachers lack the leadership and collegial opportunity they need to develop a strong professional community that might otherwise support their efforts to improve student achievement in these "beleaguered" schools.
The costs to students most in need of quality teaching are unacceptable; the cycle of school failure is continued from one generation to the next. The commission's report describes three strategies to break this cycle:
