An Alternate Route to Urban Mathematics Teaching: The NYC Teaching Fellows Program

The NYC Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) program, as the nation’s largest alternative certification program, aims to provide high-needs NYC public schools with highly qualified teachers in such hard-to-staff areas as math, science, and special education. Reports of NYCTF teacher retention are mixed; The New...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Cooley, Laurel A.
Other Authors: HTW Dresden, Informatik, Mathematik
Format: Others
Language:English
Published: Saechsische Landesbibliothek- Staats- und Universitaetsbibliothek Dresden 2012
Subjects:
Online Access:http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-79604
http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bsz:14-qucosa-79604
http://www.qucosa.de/fileadmin/data/qucosa/documents/7960/Proceedings-636pages-Dresden2009_120-123.pdf
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Summary:The NYC Teaching Fellows (NYCTF) program, as the nation’s largest alternative certification program, aims to provide high-needs NYC public schools with highly qualified teachers in such hard-to-staff areas as math, science, and special education. Reports of NYCTF teacher retention are mixed; The New Teacher Project (TNTP) claims high retention rates, but other research indicates that fellow recruits have lower retention rates than other teachers in similar NYC schools – only Teach for America (TFA) exhibits higher attrition (Boyd et al., 2006). After scrutinizing these contrary claims, this paper examines the retention of a recent cohort of approximately 300 Mathematics Teaching Fellows (MTFs) in the NYCTF program, examining MTF’s early attrition, movements from school to school in the NYC system, and professional plans for the future. We also include findings on teacher induction, school leadership, and school context that affect MTF retention.