New Findings on the Retention of Novice Teachers From Teaching Residency Programs
This brief is based on a study of residency programs that received funding from the U.S. Department of Education's Teacher Quality Partnership program. Residency programs are a model of teacher preparation in which prospective teachers complete graduate-level coursework alongside a year-long fieldwork experience in the district in which the prospective teacher will be hired.
The brief examines two cohorts of teachers trained through residency programs (TRPs)—those who were in their first year of teaching and those who were in their second year of teaching as of spring 2012. It looks at the rates at which the TRP teachers were retained in the same district and the same school as of fall 2013, thereby tracking two successive cohorts of teachers into their third or fourth year as a teacher of record. The brief updates earlier study findings (Silva et al. 2014) which examined retention as of fall 2012. For context, like the earlier report, the brief also includes retention findings based on a representative sample of teachers with similar experience and teaching in the same districts as the residency teachers, but who were trained through other (non-TRP) programs.
Teachers trained through residency programs were more likely than other teachers to remain in their districts. Eighty-two percent of residency teachers and 72 percent of other teachers remained in the same district from spring 2012 to fall 2013. Residency program teachers and other teachers remained in their schools at similar rates, with approximately 61% of teachers in both groups remaining in the same school from spring 2012 to fall 2013. Residency program teachers who changed schools tended to join ones where a similar proportion of students were from low-income families, a lower percentage were black, and achievement was higher.
