Bulletin Boards |Shopping & Classifieds |Calendar |About Us

Front page

Behavior Management

Conflict Resolution

Early Intervention

For Educators

For Families

Internet & Assistive Technology

Recreation & Sports

Specific Disabilities

State By State

Transition

Washington Watch

Site Map

SPECIAL ED TEACHER MENTORING PROGRAMS TO GET STRUCTURAL ASSISTANCE

September 21, 1999

Special education teachers who survive their first year on the job with a measure of success are far more likely to return to that classroom next year. With such a simple cause and effect equation backed by a variety of research studies, educational organizations are now focusing on strategies to make those first year experiences more rewarding than trying. East Carolina University, the Council for Administrators in Special Education and the Teacher Educator Division of the Council for Exceptional Children launched the Mentoring Induction Project last month to develop a uniform structure schools across the country can use to develop mentoring programs for special education teachers.

The project, backed by a $600,000 federal grant, will take three years and will rely heavily on input from CASE, the CEC, first year teachers and experts in mentoring, induction and educational reform, according to project chief Dr. Marlene White, a professor at East Carolina.

"Special Education attrition is considered to be the most troublesome issue facing the field of special education today," White says in an outline of the project on the National Clearinghouse on Careers and Professions in Special Education web site. Twice as many special educators drop out of teaching as their general ed. counterparts, with some school districts reporting turnover rates as high as 50 percent.

While the reasons special ed. teachers leave are as varied as general ed. teachers' reasons, White notes many are related to the level of support and organizational help they get from their schools. Access to resources, caseload manageability, scheduling and behavior management of students are some of the key factors new special ed. teachers cite for getting off to a good start at a new school. The teachers at greatest risk of leaving special education tend to be less than 35 years old, with less than five years of teaching experience, according to White. They primarily are teaching at the elementary level and are working with students with speech-language, hearing or vision impairments or emotional disabilities. Many "at risk" special ed. teachers have master's degrees, but they may not be trained for special ed., instead operating with provisional or emergency certification issued by a school district in dire need of special ed. staff.

Both research and educator feedback show "at risk" teachers are also those most likely to find mentoring programs beneficial, White says. "Educators have voiced widespread support for programs to help beginning teachers become more confident and skilled during their crucial first year, and a mentor or induction program is the most frequently suggested solution," she says. As reported, both the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers - the nation's major teachers' unions - endorse mentoring or other induction programs for inexperienced teachers. In addition, White says, 19 states have made mentoring programs mandatory. That does not mean, however, schools in those states have made significant progress toward establishing effective mentoring programs. In many areas, White told Special Education News, such programs are underfunded and generally disorganized. The Mentoring Induction Project will strive to provide data on the effectiveness of mentoring programs and outline so-called "best practices" schools should follow when developing their programs.

FRIENDLY FACES, SUPPORT WOULD MAKE SPECIAL ED TEACHERS STICK AROUND August 20, 1999

Under the project, five school districts that are putting mentoring programs in place will test the project's guidelines before they are released to the nation at large. The Mentoring Induction Project will also create online services to support schools as they implement their own programs. For example, the CEC will add a "mentoring" section to the National Clearinghouse web site it operates. The project will also include a cost comparison of its model with other mentoring programs to give states and school districts an understanding of the resources they will need. In addition, a "Mentoring Induction Guide for School Districts" will outline budgeting and administrative issues.

The Mentoring Induction Program does not plan to specifically investigate mentoring methods for paraeducators or set guidelines for mentoring them, White said. The group will stress the need for and the importance of well trained, well supported paraeducators "as a peripheral component" in its report, she said, but not enough data is available on attrition rates of paraeducators.

It is clear from anecdotal evidence, White said, that paraeducators can be a significant source of either easing or increasing tension for special ed. teachers. Further investigation of how best to support qualified paraeducators and keep them on the job may well be worth looking into at a later date, she added.

A paraeducator's effectiveness as support for special ed. teachers depends on effective training but also on effective communication between the teacher and the aide. "I've always felt that the teacher and the paraeducator should be a team, with very clear demarcations of what each one's responsibility is," White said. "So if you believe in that kind of model, then [through that relationship] if the teacher is being mentored, in a sense so is the paraeducator."8