The support gap: New teachers' early experiences in high-income and low-income schools

In this article, the authors consider three sources of support for new teachers—hiring practices, relationships with colleagues, and curriculum—all found in earlier research to influence new teachers’ satisfaction with their work, their sense of success with students, and their eventual retention in their job. They find that a "support gap" exists: new teachers in low-income schools are less likely than their counterparts in high-income schools to experience timely and information-rich hiring, to benefit from mentoring and support by experienced colleagues, and to have a curriculum that is complete and aligned with state standards, yet flexible for use in the classroom. Such patterns of difference between high-income and lowincome schools warrant careful consideration because they reveal broad patterns of inequity, which can have severe consequences for low-income students. Survey data for this study were collected from random samples of teachers in five states. One survey, focusing on hiring practices and teachers’ relationships with colleagues, was administered to 374 first-year and secondyear teachers in Florida, Massachusetts, and Michigan. A second survey, focusing on curriculum, was administered to 295 second-year elementary school teachers in Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Washington. The inequitable patterns of support for teachers reported here have important implications for the work of state policymakers, school district administrators, and principals. The authors describe these and offer recommendations for policy and practice in the conclusion

Johnson, Susan M, Jill Harrisonberg, and Morgaen L. Donaldson, Curriculum, Standards, and Accountability, pp. 59-66 in their Who Stays In Teaching and Why: A Review of the Literature on Teacher Retention. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Graduate School of Education, 2005.

Reports a summary of research studies dealing with teachers\u27 access to curriculum and its alignment with state standards, with their responses to scripted curricula, and with their responses to the use of stardarized tests; suggests needed research

Creating High Leverage Policies: A New Framework to Support Policy Development

In this paper we describe the development and application of a research-based model for understanding the formulation and implementation of education policy. We draw upon research on policy implementation across a variety of contexts to create what we call the “high leverage policy” (HLP) framework. The HLP framework identifies three specific areas policy makers should attend to: the policy-to-practice lever, design features of the policy, and contingencies for implementation. These three elements are connected by an explicit theory-of-action that describes the policy’s intentions and how it will play out in practice. We illustrate the application of the HLP framework using an example of state policy development and execution in Rhode Island. Finally, we conclude by discussing the framework’s potential utility to policy makers

Educational policy analysis archives

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