RETENTION OF MINORITY MATHEMATICS
TEACHERS: A SURVIVAL ANALYSIS
Laurie Riggs
University of California-Riverside
Attrition and retention of teachers is of critical
importance within the educational community.
Some researchers indicate that high levels of teacher turnover are
disruptive to programs and correlate with decreases in student performance
(Bempah, 1994; Theobald, 1990).
The
number of minorities taking advanced mathematics needs to increase. National organizations have emphasized the
importance of role models for minority students. According to researchers there is a rather stark and troubling
mismatch between the diversity of the student population and the relative
homogeneity of the teaching force (Wilson, 1988). This disparity brings up issues of both recruitment and retention of minority teachers. There are programs in place aimed at recruiting minority
teachers, but are the minority teachers being retained?
The
purpose of this research is to examine attrition rates of minority mathematics
teachers. Using the techniques of
survival analysis and data from California Department of Education, this study
tracks the “class of 1986”. This group
of over 3,000 teachers is followed over an eleven-year period in order to
examine their attrition rates.
The results indicate that the survival rate is different depending on the ethnicity variable. Over the eleven-year period, the Black and American Indian teachers had the lowest survival rates. The literature supports high hazard rates the first year, but the rates depicted here approach 60 percent. First year rates, especially for some minority teachers, are disturbingly high. Awareness of the significant loss of these teachers is the first step in addressing the question of what can be done to reverse the exodus of minority teachers, especially in their first year.
Reference
Bempah, E. (1994). An econometric analysis of teacher mobility. Economics
of Education Review, 13(1), 69-77.
Theobald, N., (1990). An examination of the influence of personal, professional, and school district characteristics on public school teacher retention. Economics of Education Review. 9(3), 241-250.
Wilson, R. (1988). Recruiting and retaining minority teachers. The Journal of Negro Education. 57(2), 195-198.