Kathy had to decide quickly. After receiving an outstanding rating from her year-long teaching internship in the Cincinnati Public Schools' Professional Practice School, she had three job offers: one offer from a private school, one offer to continue teaching in the city, and one offer from the marketing firm where she had worked before. Her mentor, Mary Pat, had a final card to play: the Career-in-Teaching program.
Mary Pat talked with Kathy about how the program created a system for continuous professional growth and teacher leadership. Kathy was relieved to hear about the induction program for new teachers and was enticed by the opportunities for career teachers, such as designing curriculum or teaching at the University of Cincinnati. She could move up the salary scale quickly on the basis of her performance in the classroom, not on the number of years that she spent in it. She signed with Cincinnati Public Schools the next day.
It's no secret that city schools struggle to recruit and retain quality teachers. With the pool of beginning teachers evaporating to a puddle, and attrition rates by the fifth year of teaching hovering at 50 percent (Darling-Hammond, 1998), urban districts need a new way of hiring and keeping talented teachers like Kathy. Although many districts have implemented recruiting programs, alternate routes to certification, and signing bonuses, these are stopgap measures. Districts have given little attention to ongoing professional development and creative compensation structures. A systemic approach to a career in teaching not only fills vacancies, but also develops dynamic teachers who are well trained and well paid and who have opportunities for advancement. Cincinnati Public Schools has created such a system.
A Career Ladder in Teaching
Teaching remains one of the few professions where novices have the same responsibilities as 25-year veterans. This situation poses problems on two fronts. Prospective and beginning teachers are overwhelmed by the challenges of working with students, and experienced teachers have only one option if they want broader professional responsibilities and substantially higher salaries: to leave the classroom for administrative positions (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996). The Cincinnati Career-in-Teaching program addresses these problems in a systemic way. The career continuum begins with a part-time internship, moves to an intensive induction to support beginning teachers, and then provides options for multiple professional roles as teachers gain and demonstrate growing expertise. The career steps—intern, apprentice, novice, career, advanced, and accomplished—support teacher learning, teacher assessment, and salary incentives. Each step requires successively higher quality teaching performance.
Beginning Before the Beginning
We recruit new teachers at the beginning of teacher education—in their second year of college. Faculty from the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Public Schools, and the Cincinnati Federation of Teachers overhauled the standard model of preparation to provide graduates a deep understanding of both content and children, as well as field-based training for teaching diverse students. The five-year program involves two degrees, one in the teacher's discipline and one in education; a full-year internship that combines half-time teaching with university study; and the Professional Practice Schools, where university and school faculty mentor interns. Second-career candidates with a content degree can complete the program in two years, and teaching aides are encouraged to pursue certification.
Candidates work extensively in the city schools, getting to know students and parents, collaborating with mentor teachers, and learning how to teach effectively in a multicultural environment. First, they work as tutors and observe classrooms; in their fourth year, they student-teach; and in their fifth year, they are assigned and paid as half-time intern teachers with the support of university and school mentors. This extensive field work in urban education encourages and equips interns to continue working in city schools. Superintendent Steven Adamowski added an additional recruitment strategy by creating a direct pipeline to full employment—outstanding performers are offered early contracts in March.
Results of this strategy are encouraging. Ohio districts hire 85 percent of teachers trained in this program upon graduation, compared to 45 percent of other newly certified teachers in the state. Within Cincinnati Public Schools, our graduates receive significantly higher evaluations than do other new teachers (Hendricks-Lee, Keiffer-Barone, & Rosselot-Durbin, 1999).
Peer Assistance
When a district hires teachers, the teachers shouldn't have to go it alone, whether they are beginners or veterans. New teachers who have the support of a mentoring program are more likely to stay in the profession and to get beyond initial management concerns to concerns about student learning (Gold, 1996). The Peer Assistance and Evaluation program assigns all new hires to consulting teachers—advanced or accomplished teachers in the same subject area and grade level—who are released from classroom duties to work with up to 14 teachers. Consulting teachers orient inductees to the district schools, assist them with curriculum and content, and mentor their teaching skills. Experienced teachers who exhibit serious teaching deficiencies may also be assigned to a consulting teacher.
Consulting teachers collaborate in planning lessons, team-teach, and hold monthly group seminars on such issues as managing diverse classrooms, teaching toward the district's standards for student learning, and creating multiple forms of assessment. In this way, new and intervention teachers receive support from both the consulting teacher and their colleagues. Consulting teachers also observe the teachers and evaluate their performance, screening unsatisfactory practices and identifying quality teaching. This approach points to the underlying philosophy of the program—teachers in the district receive the support and mentoring necessary for improvement, but they are also held accountable to high standards.
Only 3 percent of our beginning teachers have resigned over the past five years, a phenomenal rate for urban systems—in the United States, 9 percent of all new teachers leave before completing the first year of public school teaching (Fideler & Haskelkorn, 1999). Ninety-three percent of intervention teachers reached satisfactory performance levels and were retained, a plus for both staffing levels and the students in their care.
Climbing the Ladder
The development of accomplished teachers doesn't end with induction. Although many states and districts have adopted mentoring programs to assist and retain beginning teachers, there is no consensus on how to develop teachers' careers after those early years (Fideler & Haselkorn, 1999). The Career-in-Teaching program promotes professional development and expanded roles for teachers during their entire careers.
The program has recently instituted a new way of evaluating teachers for advancement. Movement up the ladder is decided not on the basis of seniority, but on what matters most to student learning: classroom performance.
In 1999, a task force of teachers and administrators developed a standards-based teacher evaluation system. The task force began by answering the question, What is good teaching? It studied current research on effective teaching and reviewed work by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, the Interstate New Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium, and Charlotte Danielson's (1996) Enhancing Professional Practice: A Framework for Teaching. The framework, based on Danielson's work, consists of four domains: Planning and Preparing for Student Learning; Creating an Environment for Learning; Teaching for Learning; and Professionalism. In 16 standards of accomplished teaching within these four domains, the district articulated what skills and responsibilities quality teaching entails on a four-level rubric: unsatisfactory, basic, proficient, and distinguished.
- Intern. Interns complete the program, receiving part-time pay, and meet university requirements for coursework and performance.
- Apprentice. Teachers in their first year of full employment have the support of the teacher induction program. In their evaluations, those teachers who score a basic or better qualify to become novices.
- Novice. Novice teachers take core courses with salary increments for their successful completion. Course areas include classroom management, cooperative learning, standards for student learning, and developmentally appropriate practices. Teachers may elect to be evaluated in their third, fourth, or fifth year to discern their level of teaching. On the basis of this evaluation, novices can move to the career level, and outstanding performers may jump directly to the advanced or accomplished categories. In this way, excellent young teachers can move up the salary scale and career ladder quickly, which gives them an incentive to stay with the city schools.
- Career. To reach the career level, teachers must receive proficient or better in all domain scores. Teachers have a variety of professional development opportunities, including working toward National Board certification. After one year as career teachers, they may elect to be evaluated to reach higher levels.
- Advanced and accomplished. Advanced teachers need distinguished ratings in the teaching for learning domain and one other domain and proficient in the other two domains. Accomplished teachers need distinguished in all domains. Teachers who demonstrate this high quality of teaching may apply to become lead teachers in the district and assume additional responsibilities with incentive pay.
Lead teachers serve in a variety of leadership capacities, such as curriculum committee chairs, heads of interdisciplinary teams or school programs, mentors for interns, consulting teachers for beginning and struggling teachers, and evaluators for the career ladder in the district. In this way, teachers are true partners in the improvement of teaching and learning in the district, a crucial aspect of teacher retention (National Commission on Teaching and America's Future, 1996). The attrition rate for all Cincinnati teachers has been less than 10 percent per year over the past five years (Fideler & Haselkorn, 1999).
Putting Money Where the Teaching Is
The stakes are high in our teacher evaluation system. The composite score that teachers achieve determines their rung on the career ladder, which will be the basis of their compensation beginning in 2002. Each level—from apprentice to accomplished teacher—has a base pay range, from $30,000 per year for an apprentice teacher to $62,500 for an accomplished teacher. Teachers receive additional pay for a master's degree in the content area, a doctorate in the content area or in education, dual certification, and National Board certification.
Ours is the first change from the traditional "time and degree" model salary schedule used in the United States since 1922. The traditional salary schedule assumes that teachers improve each year that they teach. Our compensation plan rewards teachers financially for the skills and knowledge that they demonstrate at any point in their careers.
The program also provides incentive-pay increases in addition to base pay. Teachers receive one-time payments for completing skill blocks and assuming additional lead-teacher roles, such as curriculum council chair or consulting teacher. Teachers in a school that meets 75 percent or more of its targets for increases in student achievement receive a bonus of $1,400.
This new way of compensating teachers is an incentive for high performers to stay in the city and to improve their teaching practices. New and veteran teachers will not have to wait decades to be at the top of the salary schedule. As the new system creates accountability and rewards performance, it also provides teachers with the support and professional development necessary to meet the standards of quality teaching and to grow professionally. In addition to taking professional development courses available through Cincinnati Public Schools and the University of Cincinnati, teachers can join a teacher learning team to receive continuing education credits. Comprehensive evaluation has a voluntary support component, where teachers meet monthly to discuss and view videos of quality teaching and work together on their portfolios to document effective practices. These opportunities to collaborate with other teachers lessen isolation and provide vehicles to share effective practices that improve student learning.
Commitment to Careers
At the end of her first year, Kathy received a basic in preparing for teaching, and proficients in creating an environment for learning, teaching for learning, and professionalism. Pleased with the support that she received from her consulting teacher, she moved into the novice category. She will take novice skill blocks over the next several years and looks forward to advancing to a higher category.
By changing our thinking about recruitment and retention—from isolated programs to a systemwide commitment to teacher career development—we are creating a school district that attracts and maintains a cadre of high quality professionals who increase student learning. Focused preparation and support for new teachers, continued professional development, and performance-based compensation are the hallmarks of our systemic approach to grow and keep great teachers.
