Variation in Mentoring Practices and Retention across New Teacher Demographic Characteristics under a Large Urban District's New Teacher Mentoring Program

A large urban school district wanted to understand how its first-year teacher mentoring program might better support the district goals of increasing retention and maintaining a diverse workforce. This study investigated new teachers' participation in that program; how participation varied across teacher characteristics, especially how participation varied by the racial/ethnic makeup of new teacher-mentor pairs; and how participation in various aspects of the program was related to new teacher retention after the first year. The study found that over 40 percent of new teachers spent at least 10 hours a month meeting with their mentor but that more than 25 percent spent less than half that much time in mentoring meetings. There were also large differences by race/ethnicity in the proportions of new teachers who reported spending time on specific topics: White new teachers were almost twice as likely as Black new teachers to report spending substantial time on classroom management. New teacher retention was related to the amount of time new teachers spent meeting with their mentor, to whether new teachers reported spending substantial time with their mentor addressing classroom management, and to the racial/ethnic alignment of new teacher-mentor pairs.