Rates of Beginning Teachers: Examining One Indicator of School Quality in an Equity Context

ABSTRACT

The authors use national data to examine variation in the proportion of beginning teachers in school districts across the United States by poverty, race, and urbanicity. In addition to being a proxy for teacher quality, the proportion of beginning teachers in a district also speaks to teacher turnover and therefore broader school quality issues. Findings suggest that districts with high-poverty levels; greater proportions of Black, Hispanic, and American Indian populations; and located in rural areas tend to have high percentages of novice teachers. This research provides insight into the persistent disparities in opportunity that confront children of poverty, color, and rural environments.

Keywords:

• beginning teachers
• equity
• poverty
• school quality
• urbanicity

Notes

1. This difficulty has, in part, led to the increased use of teacher value-added modeling scores in teacher evaluations. This bypasses teacher quality completely, as it seeks to measure the direct impact a teacher has on student test scores. There exists a substantial body of literature that urges caution in this practice; this is not a focus of this article.

2. Value-added modeling estimates the impact that teachers have on student growth in standardized assessments after controlling for other factors that influence academic trajectories.

3. This assumes that the total number of teachers in public schools remained the same—which it did, roughly: the total number of teachers increased by less than 1% between 2008 and 2009, from 3.20 to 3.23 million teachers (U.S. Census Bureau, 2012). The U.S. Census Bureau also reported that 8.0% of public school teachers left the profession in the 2008–2009 school year—these vacated positions likely represent a large proportion of the positions that first year teachers filled the following year.

4. Barnes and Crowe (2007) conducted a pilot study of the cost of teacher turnover in five districts and found that costs vary widely but are generally substantial: a turnover in Chicago Public Schools costs nearly $18,000 (although the expense to some other districts was less than half of that). Such analyses do not take into account the long-term economic costs that result when students are prepared by less effective teachers—which recent research suggests is meaningful (Chetty et al., 2011).

5. This is a control for age, not experience, to account for those teachers who leave due to retirement.

6. In 2009–2010 there were 13,629 school districts in the United States (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_091.asp).

7. Poverty threshold definitions may be found at http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/threshld/

8. These categories are defined as follows: Large city: Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principle city with a population of 250,000 or more. Examples include Buffalo, New York, and Seattle, Washington. Midsize–small city: Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principle city with a population less than 250,000. Examples include Lawrence, Kansas, and Worcester, Massachusetts. Suburb: Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area. Examples include Garden Grove, California, and Dover, New Hampshire. Fringe–distant town: Territory inside an urban cluster that is located less than or equal to 35 miles from an urbanized area. Examples include Spartanburg, South Carolina, and Los Alamos, New Mexico.Remote town: Territory inside an urban cluster that is located more than 35 miles from an urbanized area. Examples include Glades, Florida, and Nome, Alaska. Rural: Territory outside an urban cluster or urbanized area. Examples include Sangre de Cristo, Colorado, and Paw Paw, Michigan.

9. Because the data are left and right censored, Tobit regression was also conducted. This yielded estimates nearly identical to those presented in this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported in part by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and anonymous donors.

Notes on contributors

Douglas J. Gagnon

Douglas J. Gagnon is a recent PhD recipient in the Department of Education and a Research Assistant at the Carsey School of Public Policy at the University of New Hampshire.

Marybeth J. Mattingly

Marybeth J. Mattingly is the Director of Research on Vulnerable Families at the Carsey School of Public Policy and a Research Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of New Hampshire.