Quality Educators Matter

Educator Attrition

Educator Supply

Cost of Losing Educators

Quality Educators Matter

Recent research confirms what educators have always known: educators matter. But there are growing challenges to staffing schools with top quality educators. Educator attrition through retirement or educators leaving the field, a shortage of new educators, and the changing nature of teaching. All of these conditions put a strain on the ability of New Hampshire's schools' to attract, hire and keep the kind of educators who make a difference for student achievement.

What we know from research:

• Curriculum, class size, district funding, family and community involvement, and other school-related factors all contribute to school improvement and student achievement, but the single most influential school-based factor is the teacher.  (Mackin, 2005)
  
  
• Teacher quality has been found to account for a larger portion of the variation in student test scores than all other characteristics of a school, excluding the socioeconomic composition of the student body. (D. Goldhaber, 2002)
  
  
• Teacher quality characteristics such as certification status and degree in the field to be taught are very significantly and positively correlated with student outcomes. (Darling-Hammond, 2006)
  
  
• U.S. students appear to perform least well in the fields in which U.S. teachers are least well prepared, and the states that repeatedly lead the nation in student achievement in mathematics and reading have among the most highly qualified teachers in the country. (Darling-Hammond, 2006)
  
  
• Experience has a positive effect on teacher effectiveness; specifically, the “learning by doing” effect is most obvious in the early years of teaching. (Rice, 2006)
  
  
• Disadvantaged students who have effective teachers for consecutive years are able to close achievement gaps. (Carey, 2004)

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