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General Disclaimer: The scope of work for the Consortium for Educational Research and Evaluation–North Carolina’s (CERE–NC’s) evaluation of the North Carolina Teacher Corps (NCTC) includes a provision for evaluating the Race to the Top-funded expansion of Teach for America-Eastern North Carolina (TFA-ENC) as well. As a result, some reports generated for this evaluation include information about TFA-ENC. In addition to expansion data, a limited amount of other TFA-ENC data has been incorporated into the reports as part of CERE–NC’s efforts to provide information relevant to the formative development of NCTC and to CERE–NC’s approach to its evaluation. By including these additional components, CERE–NC does not intend to establish (a) a formal connection between any findings related to TFA-ENC and expected outcomes for NCTC, (b) guidelines for the direction of the development of NCTC, or (c) changes in the overall structure of the evaluation. All evaluation work will continue to be guided by the Scope of Work for the NCTC and TFA-ENC evaluations as approved by NCDPI in June 2011.

NCTC Year One Implementation November 2013

Consortium for Educational Research and Evaluation–North Carolina

Table of Contents

Executive Summary .........................................................................................................................3 Introduction ......................................................................................................................................8

Context......................................................................................................................................... 8 Descriptions of the Programs ...................................................................................................... 9

North Carolina Teacher Corps ................................................................................................. 9 Teach for America .................................................................................................................. 10

Purpose of the Report ................................................................................................................ 10 Relevant Overall Research Questions for Teacher and Leader Supply and Distribution ...... 11 Questions Specific to the NCTC and TFA-ENC Evaluation ................................................. 11

Structure of the Report .............................................................................................................. 12 Data and Methods ..........................................................................................................................13

Data ............................................................................................................................................ 13 NCTC Recruitment Observation Data ................................................................................... 13 NCTC and TFA-ENC Corps Member Surveys ..................................................................... 13 Corps Member and Non-Corps Member Novice Teacher Focus Groups; Host Principal Interviews ............................................................................................................................... 14

Methods ..................................................................................................................................... 14 NCTC Recruitment Observation Analysis ............................................................................. 14 Survey Analysis ..................................................................................................................... 15 Focus Group and Interview Data Analysis ............................................................................ 15

Updated Observations and Findings: North Carolina Teacher Corps Recruitment, Training, and Employment ............................................................................................................................17

Recruitment ............................................................................................................................... 17 Face-to Face Recruitment Events ........................................................................................... 17 Recruitment Results: Cohort Sizes ......................................................................................... 20 Recruitment Results: Selectivity ............................................................................................ 21

Summer Institute Training ......................................................................................................... 23 General Description of the NCTC Summer Institute ............................................................. 24 Building Corps Member Knowledge and Experience: Summer Institute Orientation........... 25 Preparation for the Classroom ................................................................................................ 25 Resources and Ongoing Support ............................................................................................ 28

Employment, Distribution, and Retention of Corps Members .................................................. 30 Inaugural Cohort Retention .................................................................................................... 31


Consortium for Educational Research and Evaluation–North Carolina 2

Second Cohort Employment .................................................................................................. 32 Corps Member Feedback about the Employment Process ..................................................... 35

Initial Learnings: Reflections on the Inaugural Cohort Experience ..............................................36 Isolation ..................................................................................................................................... 36

Professional Isolation ............................................................................................................. 36 Geographic Isolation .............................................................................................................. 37 Corps Member Reflections on Reducing Feelings of Isolation ............................................. 38

Integration .................................................................................................................................. 39 School Integration .................................................................................................................. 39 Community Integration .......................................................................................................... 41

Teacher Quality ......................................................................................................................... 42 Classroom Management ......................................................................................................... 43 Delivery of Instruction ........................................................................................................... 44

Retention .................................................................................................................................... 45 NCTC Program Feedback from Participating Principals .......................................................... 48

Program Accomplishments and Recommendations ......................................................................50 Program Accomplishments........................................................................................................ 50 Recruitment ............................................................................................................................... 50 Summer Institute and Ongoing Training ................................................................................... 52 Employment .............................................................................................................................. 53 In-School Support and Retention .............................................................................................. 54

Next Steps ......................................................................................................................................56 School Year 2013-14 Tentative NCTC Evaluation Schedule ................................................... 56 A Note Regarding Collection of TFA-ENC Survey Data ......................................................... 56

References ......................................................................................................................................57 Appendix A. NCTC Recruitment Observation Protocol ...............................................................58 Appendix B. North Carolina Teacher Corps Member Survey Items and Initial Results ...............60 Appendix C. Technical Notes: North Carolina Teacher Corps Member Survey ..........................62 Appendix D. Focus Group and Interview Protocols, Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 .........................66 Appendix E. Coding Scheme for Focus Group Results .................................................................69 Appendix F. NCTC Recruitment and Pre-Training Calendar, 2012-13 ........................................71 Appendix G. NCTC Recruitment Materials ..................................................................................72 Appendix H. NCTC 2013 Summer Institute Modules ...................................................................75 Appendix I. Formative Recommendations from the First Report .................................................76



NORTH CAROLINA TEACHER CORPS: YEAR ONE IMPLEMENTATION REPORT

Executive Summary

One of the most important goals of North Carolina’s Race to the Top (RttT) proposal is to increase the access of students in the state’s most challenging and lowest-achieving schools to effective teachers. The Consortium for Educational Research and Evaluation–North Carolina is evaluating North Carolina’s use of RttT funds to develop a North Carolina Teacher Corps (NCTC) and to expand the presence of Teach for America (TFA) in the state. The evaluation’s goals are to assess the extent to which these programs contribute to an increase in the presence of effective teachers in the high-need schools and Local Education Agencies (LEAs—North Carolina’s term for traditional school districts and charter schools) targeted in the RttT proposal. This second report includes an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data gathered during the first year of the NCTC initiative and provides formative feedback to NCTC in support of its growth and improvement. Data related to the RttT-supported expansion of TFA in eastern North Carolina for school year 2012-13 were included in the previous report, and TFA data for school year 2013-14 will be included in the final report.

Updated Observations and Findings: North Carolina Teacher Corps Recruitment, Training, and Employment

Recruitment

In 2013, 1,010 people expressed interest in NCTC (up from 481 in 2012), and 226 submitted applications (up from 113). Of those 226, 108 were accepted (up from 42).

Of the 108 selected, 84 completed the summer training and were eligible for employment—up from the 2012 total of 30 eligible for employment. Including five corps members enrolled mid-year (in Spring 2013, in between the 2012 and 2013 Summer Institutes), the total number of corps members for 2013-14 who were not in the original cohort is 89.

Though recruitment numbers were up for the second cohort, NCTC still fell short of the stated goal in the revised North Carolina RttT scope of work to place 150 new teachers in high-need public schools by the start of the 2013-14 academic year.

Training and Ongoing Professional Development

Summer Institute training events about which Corps members were most positive included the in-class teaching experiences and small-group breakout sessions.

Corps members recommended four changes for Summer Institute: (a) increasing the entire training period; (b) providing some in-class experiences ahead of the information-driven segments of their training, to provide context; (c) placing corps members in more challenging classrooms during training; and (d) including a segment on interviewing for teaching jobs.

Non-corps member teachers and principals in employing schools generally were positive about the preparation levels of the corps members.



Corps members unequivocally agreed that the ongoing support provided by NCTC leadership after they found employment was strong and responsive. In particular, they highlighted leadership’s constructive feedback, resource provision, dedication, motivation, and overall positive attitude.

Interviewed principals noted that several avenues of school-based support also are available for corps members, but corps member feedback about these support systems was mixed.

Employment, Distribution, and Retention of Corps Members

Eleven of the 30 inaugural cohort corps members left the program either before securing employment or before completing their first year of teaching; however, five new corps members were brought on mid-year, and NCTC responded to the early departures with several new retention procedures.

The number of eligible LEAs has grown from 17 to 30, and for 2013-14, 96 corps members (23 second-year and 73 first-year) are employed in 80 schools across 23 LEAs.1

Initial Learnings: Reflections on the Inaugural Cohort Experience

Isolation

The rural and remote setting of some employing schools contributed to some corps members’ feelings of isolation. Several corps members—as well as some early-career non-corps members—commuted so that they could live in less rural areas and/or closer to family.

Corps members in smaller schools had fewer mentoring options, which left them feeling isolated and without support.

Corps members in LEAs that employed more than one corps member indicated that such clustering helped reduce feelings of isolation and supported collaboration; one caveat, though, is that evidence from TFA experiences with clustering in eastern North Carolina (detailed in the first report) suggest that large school-level clusters (e.g., more than five corps members in the same school) may reduce corps member efforts to integrate.

Integration

Several veteran teachers worked actively to support corps members’ success in their schools, serving as mentors and providing both moral and teaching support.

Several corps members connected easily with peers, students, and parents; however, a few were their schools’ last hires, limiting opportunities to integrate into the school and community.

Some corps members indicated that another challenging aspect of school integration was finding receptive audiences as new, lateral entry teachers for their ideas about teaching, particularly among veteran teachers.

1 Figures updated through September 30, 2013; additional Cohort II corps members may have found employment for School Year 2013-14 after that date. Four of the LEAs in which corps members are employed for school year 2013-14 are not on NCTC’s official eligibility list (Alleghany, Henderson, Lexington City, and Northampton).



Teacher Quality

Principals from NCTC host schools generally agreed that classroom management was the most challenging aspect of instruction for corps members. Corps members concurred; they contended that their difficulties with behavior management were compounded by teaching in high-need schools and the complexities of incorporating differentiated teaching strategies. Early-career non-corps teachers in the same schools noted that the corps members with the most behavior management success were those who established highly-organized work environments.

Most principals were hesitant to assess formally their corps members’ instructional improvement across the year relative to the improvement of other beginning teachers, noting that it was still too early in their careers to provide accurate assessments. Many principals and non-corps teachers did note, however, that they were impressed by corps members’ knowledge and their improvement in areas such as instructional strategies and delivery.

Retention

Qualitative data suggest that one critical element for retention is a system of formal support networks. Specifically, corps members identified (a) employment in schools with encouraging and supportive environments and (b) the support and encouragement provided by NCTC staff as important components of this network.

Several corps members indicated that the financial support NCTC provides corps members to complete their licensure programs also served as retention incentives.

A few cohort members emphasized that ongoing uncertainly about their contracts and job security could negatively influence their decisions to stay.2

Recommendations and Suggested Best Practices for North Carolina Teacher Corps

Analysis of data from NCTC’s first year suggests that several recommendations from the first report (Appendix I, main text) remain valid as NCTC enters its second year. This report includes extensions of and updates to those formative recommendations.

Recruitment

Make data-based refinements to the recruitment process:

o Develop a stronger web-based presence. For the second cohort, by far the largest group of employable corps members came from candidates who learned about NCTC via the Internet. NCTC should seek out ways to increase traffic to its web page—whether through creation of parallel social media websites, efforts to optimize search engine results for terms related to NCTC, or other means.

o Dedicate more resources to follow-ups with all who express interest. The greatest drop-off in the recruitment process is between the group that expresses interest in the program

2 Per NCGS 115c-325, all probationary teachers (teachers without three years of experience and local school board designation as a career-status teacher)—not just alternative licensure teachers—are subject to contract non-renewal.



and the group that eventually applies (Table 4, main text). Identifying ways to interact multiple times and through multiple media with those expressing interest may help improve the conversion of interest into applications.

o Further refine the recruitment event site list. Only 12 recruitment sites produced more than one employable corps member across two years (Table 1, main text). NCTC may want to consider significantly reducing the number of on-site recruitment events it attends in order to shift some of those resources to the most productive venues.

o Revise strategies for low-yield but highly-selective schools. The reduction suggested above should not be based solely on raw numbers, however; equally as important will be considerations of other NCTC goals, such as recruitment of the highest-caliber candidates. For example, NCTC may want to refine its approach at events with low yields but higher-caliber candidates by experimenting with new ways to improve yield at those events, rather than dropping the events altogether.

Incorporate current corps members into more of the recruitment process. NCTC’s efforts to convert interest into applications may be buoyed by providing more opportunities for interested candidates to interact with current corps members, both in person and virtually. The enthusiasm those corps members have for the program and for the NCTC staff’s support has the potential to sway candidates who might otherwise have decided against submitting an application based on the information provided by staff and in recruitment materials alone. In addition to bringing current corps members to some recruitment events, when feasible, NCTC also could consider arranging for interested recruits to visit current corps member classrooms.

Digitize the application process. Consider providing laptops or tablets at each recruitment event so that candidates can submit at least some of their registration information on-site. This added strategy also could help recruiters manage the occasional overflow of interested candidates—individuals with whom the recruiter is unable to engage can access the registration form and the NCTC website to review additional information.

Provide more information to recruits. Consider enhancing the program’s website and the paper materials provided at each event by including more detailed program information (such as the full list of participating LEAs and the employment locations of active corps members).

Expand recruitment staff. To support these recommendations, consider hiring a dedicated recruitment specialist. This staff person can be responsible for maintaining the NCTC website, managing recruitment and cohort databases, supporting NCTC retention efforts, exploring ways to expand recruitment year-round, and improving recruitment targeting.

Summer Institute and Ongoing Training

Seek sponsors for summer stipends. Pursue sponsorship for stipends or paid internships for corps members to help defray corps member income lost as a result of participation in the institute. Such support also might enhance the possibility of extending Summer Institute, as recommended in the first report.

Continue to enhance the summer practicum experience. Continue to adjust the Summer Institute practicum experience so that it more closely reflects the school environments in which most corps members will find employment. In addition to recommendations included



in the first report, NCTC also should consider: incorporating during-practicum sessions that extend instruction on topics of particular importance to corps members and their potential employers, such as techniques for better classroom management and for meeting the needs of students with special needs; and pairing new corps members with veteran corps members for at least some portion of their summer practicum experience.

Establish an online community. As an extension of the recommendations in the first report related to the development of a larger online presence, create an online forum to support corps member interaction, resource-sharing, and reflection. The forum could provide a low-cost option for enhancing corps members’ capacity development through provision of an e-community of practice, reduction of feelings of isolation, enhancement of corps member cohesion, and closer monitoring of corps member progress and needs.

Employment

Data from the first year of implementation suggest that several recommendations from the first report—(1) de-emphasizing corps members’ preferences with respect to the LEAs in which they would prefer to teach, (2) consulting with programs with goals similar to those of NCTC to identify additional employment strategies, and (3) targeting schools and LEAs that demonstrate a capacity for supporting corps members and their development (Appendix I, main text)—continue to apply.

In-School Support

Increase support staff. As the size of the cohorts increases each year, NCTC will need a staff large enough to provide coverage and support during each phase of the program. Staff expansion can help ensure that corps members continue to receive the level of support so highly valued by members of the first cohort.

Expand site visits. In addition to helping NCTC to establish a stronger presence at each school and to develop more school-level relationships that increase program support, extended visits also may help NCTC leverage more direct administrative and peer teacher support for corps members and increase the chances that NCTC can identify warning signs that corps members are considering leaving the program and leaving their schools.

Support corps member school and LEA integration. NCTC should experiment with ways to help encourage corps member development of on-site peer relations. One option may be to provide strategies and opportunities that can help them learn how to integrate quickly into their new school communities, such as staff facilitation of in-depth school and LEA visits for groups of new corps members who have found employment in the same area. Finding opportunities for successful first cohort corps members to share their experiences may be particularly helpful as well.

Plan for 2014. Begin to prepare for the end of the first cohort’s second year by identifying strategies to encourage corps members to stay for a third year of teaching, whether at their current schools, somewhere else in their current LEAs, or even somewhere else in the state that can benefit from the presence of an NCTC teacher in the classroom.



Introduction

This report is the second of three planned reports for the evaluation of North Carolina’s Race top the Top-funded North Carolina Teacher Corps initiative and Teacher for America expansion in Eastern North Carolina. The first report, released in October 2012, is available online.3

Context

Education experts and researchers agree that effective teachers are critical to the academic success of students, but all too often, students who struggle the most do not have access to them. Concern about the uneven access of low-performing, poor, and minority students to effective teachers is a foundational motivation for the United States Department of Education’s Race to the Top (RttT) program, which encouraged applicants to propose ways in which states could work to counter this persistent trend. In response, North Carolina’s proposal offered several state-level initiatives for achieving a more equitable distribution of effective teachers statewide, including:

Strengthening the development of novice teachers in the lowest-performing schools (New Teacher Support Program);

Making further use of blended classes for students in an attempt to expand curriculum offerings and provide effective instruction when effective teachers for a subject are not available locally (Virtual Public School Blended Learning);

Employing strategic staffing approaches to optimize the distribution of available human capital (State and Local Strategic Staffing Initiatives); and

Increasing the number of highly-qualified teachers in low-income rural areas and high-need urban schools. (North Carolina Teacher Corps and expansion of Teach for America in eastern North Carolina)

For these last initiatives, North Carolina’s RttT proposal included support for two separate but related staffing approaches: (1) development of a North Carolina Teacher Corps (NCTC), a program that recruits and trains in-state talent for employment in teaching positions in high-need schools not served by Teach for America (TFA); and (2) expansion of the TFA chapter in eastern North Carolina (TFA-ENC).

The 2012-13 school year marked an important turning point in the state’s support of TFA and the still very early history of NCTC. In July 2012, the North Carolina General Assembly formally recognized the establishment of NCTC4, but in July 2013, the General Assembly passed legislation that transferred operation of the organization to TFA.5 Passage of these laws has pointed up the fragile nature of the program’s existence in a political atmosphere in which teacher licensure has become a contentious issue. To the extent possible, in the final report, the evaluation of both NCTC and the expansion of TFA will acknowledge the impact of these and any other pertinent legislative changes.

3 http://cerenc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NCTC_PreliminaryReport_10-29-2012.pdf 4 SL 2012-142; http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2011/Bills/House/HTML/H950v7.html 5 SL 2013-360; http://ncleg.net/Sessions/2013/Bills/Senate/HTML/S402v7.html



Descriptions of the Programs

North Carolina Teacher Corps

Mission and goals. The mission of NCTC is to recruit and develop successful recent graduates of North Carolina colleges and universities, as well as mid-career professionals, to serve as teachers in high-need6 schools. NCTC teachers—or “corps members”—enter the profession as lateral entry teachers and serve in high-need schools across the state, primarily in the subject areas of science, mathematics, and special education. Corps members are asked to make a minimum two-year commitment to their NCTC partner schools.

Eligibility and employment. To be eligible for participation in NCTC, participants must either (a) hold a bachelor’s degree in, or (b) have 24 semester hours of credit in, or (c) pass the Praxis II teacher licensing examination in the subject area of her or his potential teaching assignment. Participants also must meet North Carolina’s minimum academic proficiency requirements for lateral entry licensure.7 Eligible candidates are invited to become corps members after successful completion of a multi-step screening process. They are then provided with a list of eligible partner Local Education Agencies (LEAs—North Carolina’s term for traditional school districts and charter schools) to which they can apply. Corps members seek their own employment opportunities with support from the program.

Training and ongoing support. For its inaugural cohort (2012-13), NCTC provided new corps members with a three-day mid-summer training session, followed by an eleven-day in-school teaching practicum and a final all-day training session. For the 2013-14 cohort, based on feedback from the first cohort, NCTC expanded the training by introducing some of the topics covered in the mid-summer training (introduction to the program, provision of teacher orientation information and materials [e.g., information on North Carolina’s Common Core and Essential Standards, lesson planning, and classroom management strategies]) during a one-day early-summer kick-off event that also included a new topic: interviewing for teaching positions.

Ongoing support includes: teacher licensure coursework; a series of periodic professional development sessions tailored to candidate needs; instructional coaching site visits once to twice per month; face-to-face and online mentoring; an online information portal (the NCTC Wiki); and access to professional learning communities (both subject-area based and proximity-based).

Expected outcomes. The state’s current Detailed Scope of Work for RttT activities (August 2012) outlines the list of expected activities and outcomes associated with the NCTC initiative:

6 Broadly defined; “high-need” can refer to schools formally identified via a federal or state program (such as District and School Transformation), but it also can refer to schools identified as high-need relative to other schools in an LEA, regardless of raw performance or other outcome measures. 7 General lateral entry academic achievement requirements: Either an overall GPA of 2.5, or a minimum passing score on the Praxis I plus a GPA of 3.0 in her or his major or in her or his senior year, or five years of relevant experience in the chosen subject area (http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/licensure/lateralentry.pdf).



Develop a program to recruit in-state talent for high-need schools not served by TFA8:

o Plan and recruit during the 2011-12 school year;

o Train and secure employment for 100 participants in the first cohort for the 2012-13 school year; and

o Expand the program for the 2013-14 school year by adding 150 new participants.

Teach for America

TFA operations in North Carolina are supported by several funding sources other than RttT; the only RttT-supported element of TFA is its continuing expansion in eastern North Carolina. Due to timing and data availability, this second report does not include updated information about that expansion; that information will be included as part of the final report. Programmatic information about TFA is included in the first report.

Expected outcomes. The state’s Detailed Scope of Work for RttT activities outlines the expected activities and outcomes associated with the TFA-ENC expansion initiative:

Expand the Teach for America presence in North Carolina by 340 corps members between 2010-11 and 2013-14:

o Expansion targets: Increase by 20 corps members in 2010-11, increase by 90 corps members in 2011-12, increase by 115 corps members in 2012-13, and increase by 115 corps members in 2013-14.

Purpose of the Report

The Consortium for Educational Research and Evaluation–North Carolina (CERE–NC)9 is conducting the evaluation of North Carolina’s RttT initiatives. The roles of the RttT Evaluation Team are to (1) document the activities of the RttT initiatives; (2) provide timely, formative data, analyses, and recommendations to help the initiative teams improve their ongoing work; and (3) provide summative evaluation results toward the end of the grant period to determine whether the RttT initiatives met their goals and to inform future policy and program decisions to sustain, modify, or discontinue initiatives after the grant-funded period.

An overriding goal of the evaluation of the development of NCTC and of the expansion of TFA-ENC will be to determine whether and to what extent they collectively or individually contribute to an increase in the presence of effective teachers in target schools and LEAs. This report continues the process of examining these plans by assessing quantitative and qualitative data gathered during the 2012-13 school year on NCTC’s first year of implementation; updated results of TFA-ENC expansion will be included in the final report.

8 An exception was made in 2012-13 to allow NCTC corps member placement in Durham County, which is served by TFA, but only at one school. 9 CERE–NC is a partnership of the Carolina Institute for Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation at North Carolina State University, and the SERVE Center at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.



Relevant Overall Research Questions for Teacher and Leader Supply and Distribution

The NCTC and TFA-ENC evaluation is one of several included in the larger evaluation of the initiatives designed to impact the supply and distribution of effective teachers and leaders (listed above). There are four overarching questions that guide all of the evaluations of these initiatives:

What is the nature and quality of the experience: a) for students and b) for participating teachers?

Are students affected by these programs better off than similar students in similar schools and districts not served by these programs?

Are these initiatives cost-effective and sustainable?

To what extent do the initiatives meet critical needs for teachers and principals and improve equitable access to higher-quality teachers and leaders in targeted geographic and content areas?

Questions Specific to the NCTC and TFA-ENC Evaluation

In addition, there are specific evaluation questions that govern the evaluations of the NCTC and TFA-ENC initiatives. They include:

Capacity

1. Do TFA-ENC and NCTC meet demand for beginning teachers in high-need schools?

2. What does operating the TFA-ENC program and the NCTC program cost? Specifically, are either or both programs cost-effective, relative to the alternatives?

Preparation Quality

3. What is the quality of the NCTC Summer Institute experience? Specifically, how do teachers prepared by NCTC rate their experience, in terms of the preparation it provides them for their teaching assignments?

4. Has overall corps member quality changed as a result of TFA-ENC’s expansion and/or the advent of NCTC recruitment efforts?

Initiative Effectiveness

5. Are NCTC teachers more likely than a) other new teachers in general and b) TFA corps members in particular to remain in teaching beyond their original commitment?

6. What role does recruitment of NC students have on retention of non-traditional, selectively-chosen teacher candidates?

7. What role does grouping teachers together in high-need schools10 have on retention of NCTC and TFA-ENC teachers?

10 The first report referred to these groupings as “teaching pods”; in this report and the final report, the Evaluation Team refers to these groupings as “clusters.” The “pod” or “cluster” concept refers to the idea of intentionally



Teacher Effectiveness

8. Are TFA and NCTC teachers more effective than traditionally-prepared teachers? Specifically, how do outcomes of students served by TFA and NCTC students compare to students who took similar courses in the same schools with teachers who entered the profession via other portals?

It is important to note that, because TFA-ENC’s contracted use of RttT funds only applies to increasing the number of corps members serving in Eastern North Carolina, the evaluation questions with TFA components focus only on issues directly related to that expansion. The effectiveness of TFA corps members in terms of their estimated impact on student achievement has been one of the foci of a separate series of reports completed annually by one of the three CERE-NC partners, the Carolina Institute for Public Policy (CIPP).11 CERE-NC will continue to rely on that series and other related work on North Carolina teacher effectiveness to provide estimations of TFA corps member effectiveness; NCTC corps member effectiveness will be incorporable into future teacher effectiveness reports as well, once the number of corps members in tested subject areas reaches a minimum number required for meaningful quantitative analysis.

Structure of the Report

The focus of this second report is on providing updated data and evidence from the first year of NCTC implementation to address some of the evaluation questions explored in the first report (Questions 1, 3, 5, and 6; findings related to Question 4, addressed in the first report, will be updated in the next report), along with preliminary findings related to Question 7. Because the bulk of the data gathered for this report is related to first-year, in-school initiative implementation, the report focuses almost exclusively on aspects of the in-school experience (the employment process; school-year support systems for corps members; feelings of isolation and integration; early evidence of teacher quality; and retention). Information gathered for this report included less data directly relevant to analyses of recruitment and summer training efforts, but when possible, findings from the first report related to those topics are updated as well. The report ends with formative recommendations for NCTC based on observations of the first year of implementation, as well as a preview of the next stages in the evaluation of these initiatives.

As a follow-up to work completed for the first report, the Evaluation Team once again conducted fall 2012 and spring 2013 fieldwork in one of the TFA-ENC schools visited during the 2011-12 school year. As in the previous report, while the purpose of this fieldwork was not to generate direct comparisons between NCTC and TFA, these data are used to supplement the discussion of the findings related to NCTC, when appropriate. As noted above, an update of the first report’s analysis of TFA expansion data will be included in the final report. placing corps members in groups at individual schools or LEAs, which, though not required as part of North Carolina’s RttT plan, has informed TFA placement in recent years and is an option for NCTC as it grows. The Team has learned that the school-level cluster concept also informs some RttT-funded LEA-level local strategic staffing plans (see, for instance, descriptions of Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools’ and Pitt County Schools’ strategic staffing plans in this report: http://cerenc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Strategic-staffing_1stYear-Report_-FINAL-09-24-2012.pdf); data allowing, the final report will consider lessons learned from those experiments in conjunction with lessons learned from NCTC’s and TFA’s experiences with cluster placement. 11 The most recent of these reports (February 2012) can be found at: http://publicpolicy.unc.edu/research/PortalsEffectivenessReport.pdf/view.



Data and Methods

Data

NCTC Recruitment Observation Data

Between fall 2012 and spring 2013, Evaluation Team members observed three of the 50 NCTC recruitment events and completed an approved observation protocol form (Appendix A). The events were held at university-sponsored career fairs located on campuses in the Eastern and Piedmont regions of the state. NCTC staff present at each event included the Executive Director, the Director, or both.

NCTC and TFA-ENC Corps Member Surveys

A pre/post survey for NCTC and TFA-ENC corps members was designed in early spring 2011 and, based on field tests (i.e., fall 2011 and spring 2012 administration to TFA-ENC corps members only), was expanded in summer 2012.12 The revised version of the survey was administered online to NCTC corps members in fall 2012 and again in spring 2013.

Per negotiations with TFA-ENC, the revised survey was to be added to a longer survey administered by TFA-ENC in fall 2012 and spring 2013; however, coordinated efforts to ensure the two surveys were merged ahead of TFA-ENC’s fall survey administration date were unsuccessful. TFA-ENC then agreed to administer the survey during its early November teaching summit—an event that convened the majority of the TFA-ENC corps members in one location. Surveys were made available to TFA-ENC prior to the summit, but event staff encountered difficulties coordinating the distribution and collection of the survey in conjunction with other summit activities. As a result, fall 2012 TFA survey data are unavailable. To support better data collection in the spring, the online version of the survey was shared with the TFA-ENC managing director of teacher leadership development in late April to disseminate to corps members. At this time, no corps members have completed the online survey; this report includes a recommendation for improving this component of the evaluation’s data collection in the Next Steps section at the end of the report.

Items on the survey (Appendix B)—which were designed to elicit reflections from corps members about changes in their perceptions across a school year of such topics as advantages and disadvantages of being a part of a larger group, or “cluster,” of corps members, feelings of isolation, likelihood of remaining in teaching beyond the two-year commitment—were the same in the fall and the spring. Results from the fall 2012 survey and spring 2013 NCTC survey are included in Appendix B, and technical notes are included in Appendix C.

12 The original TFA-ENC survey (2011-12) included only eight of the current ten survey items.



Corps Member and Non-Corps Member Novice Teacher Focus Groups; Host Principal Interviews

In Summer 2012, as NCTC was completing school placement of its first-year corps members across participating LEAs,13 the Evaluation Team reviewed corps member distribution across those LEAs and schools and identified three LEAs in which more than two corps members found employment. The three sites selected included:

One mid-size urban LEA with a moderately high proportion of students eligible for free and reduced-priced lunch (51%), a graduation rate (81%) similar to the state average, and a moderate teacher turnover rate (16%);

One large urban LEA with a moderately high proportion of students eligible for free and reduced-priced lunch (55%), a graduation rate (81%) similar to the state average, and a moderate teacher turnover rate (14%); and

One urbanizing rural LEA with a moderately low proportion of students eligible for free and reduced-priced lunch (36%), a high graduation rate (90%), and a moderate-to-low teacher turnover rate (11%).

Evaluation Team members scheduled fall 2012 and spring 2013 focus groups with first-year NCTC corps members in each of these three LEAs and also, when possible, separate focus groups with early-career non-corps members (teachers at the same schools with less than three full years of teaching experience, typically trained in traditional teacher preparation programs). Non-corps members who were willing to participate were identified in two of the three LEAs in the fall and all three LEAs in the spring. In addition, the Team conducted telephone interviews with principals at participating schools in those three LEAs. The focus group and interview protocols are included in Appendix D.

In addition to these NCTC focus groups and interviews, the Evaluation Team returned to one of the four schools visited in fall 2011 and spring 2012 to interview TFA-ENC corps members, in order to conduct follow-up focus groups with those teachers and their non-TFA-ENC colleagues. The primary focus of this evaluation (NCTC) and the evaluation’s funding level prevented follow-up sessions in all four of the schools originally identified for the TFA-ENC component of the evaluation, so the Evaluation Team elected to return to the school in which the largest cluster of corps members had been placed originally in fall 2011, with the hope of following up on the longer-term impact of cluster placement at a school.

Methods

NCTC Recruitment Observation Analysis

Three Evaluation Team members attended and observed three NCTC recruitment sessions (one in the fall and two in the spring). After completion of all observations, the attending Team members debriefed with each other as well as other members of the team. Observation narratives

13 Corps members originally were placed in nine LEAs at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year; however, as inaugural members left the program and new members were recruited and employed, overall corps member placement expanded to eleven LEAs.



were combined and organized to reflect the three main components of the recruitment process, as identified by the Team: event logistics, organization and structure, and recruitment strategies.

Survey Analysis

The survey was developed in fall 2011. A preliminary review of the eight scaled survey items14 suggested that Items 1 through 6 were indicators of a common factor: Sense of Community, and that Items 7 and 8 were indicators of a different, but related, common factor: Strength of Community. To supplement this preliminary review, two types of factor analysis were conducted using Mplus statistical software to identify (via exploratory factor analysis) and confirm (via confirmatory factor analysis) the underlying factor structure of the survey items. The factor analysis conducted on the fall 2011 survey data provided initial support for the theoretically predetermined two-factor structure, and the items loaded onto their respective factors as predicted by the preliminary review. Additional support for the two-factor structure was provided by the confirmatory factor analysis conducted on the spring 2012 survey data.

Because the sample sizes were too small for the fall 2012 and spring 2013 NCTC administrations, factor analysis was not conducted again. The analytical strategy consisted instead of examining descriptive statistics, conducting reliability analysis, and calculating correlations among the two factors. The factors were deemed theoretically and empirically distinct, and therefore descriptive statistics analysis and reliability analysis was conducted separately for each factor for both the fall 2012 and spring 2013 surveys. A rational review and empirical analysis provided evidence of both reliability and validity, and thus suggested that the NCTC member survey performed as intended. Specifically, Team members with expertise in the survey topics conducted a rational review of the survey as a whole and of the individual items, the results of which provided evidence of content validity. Descriptive statistics (e.g., arithmetic means and standard deviations of each item) and distributional properties were appropriate and aligned with expectations. Reliability analysis provided evidence of internal consistency. Further, factor analysis from fall 2011 and spring 2012 (using TFA-ENC data) provided evidence of internal validity. (See Appendix C for additional technical notes about survey results.)

Focus Group and Interview Data Analysis

Each of the audio-recorded focus group sessions and interviews was transcribed. The coding themes identified for the TFA-ENC focus group data analysis completed for the previous report were utilized in the analyses of the NCTC transcripts. Before applying those themes to the NCTC data, the Team engaged in a reflective process guided by focus group protocols and visit perceptions to confirm the utility of the previously-identified themes for application to the new focus group data. The Team retained the seven original themes, adjusted them as needed in response to differences in the content of the NCTC data, and then further split them into subcategories. To provide a space in which to report on principals’ early impressions of the initiative overall, the Team added an eighth theme. The eight themes include: recruitment; placement; professional development (including informal support structures); teacher quality; integration; isolation; retention; and program feedback from participating principals. 14 The ninth and tenth items were a conditional-response item (“Are you the only NCTC/TFA teacher at your school?) and an open-ended response item (“Factors that will influence my decision to continue teaching or to leave the classroom after my two-year commitment include (list all that apply):”).



Code definitions are included in Appendix E. Qualitative analysis software (Atlas.ti) was utilized in the management and coding of the transcripts. Each research team member coded at least one transcript in its entirety. After all of the data were coded by theme and subtheme, each researcher analyzed one of the seven thematic areas.



Updated Observations and Findings: North Carolina Teacher Corps Recruitment, Training, and Employment

Recruitment

The evaluation questions that guide this section are:

1. Do TFA-ENC and NCTC meet unmet demand for beginning teachers?

6. What role does recruitment of NC students have on retention of non-traditional, selectively-chosen teacher candidates?

While the findings reported in this section do not directly address either question, they (along with the findings from the first report) will help inform assessment of both of these questions in the final report. Standards for assessing NCTC recruitment:

NCTC’s recruitment strategy is: (a) efficient; and (b) comprehensive (e.g., it provides recruits with necessary information, it allows staff to engage with all interested candidates).

Results meet or exceed: (a) targets; and (b) cohort quality standards of comparable programs.

Recruits respond positively to recruitment efforts (e.g., recruits submit personal information and/or apply; recruits believe their concerns about participating in NCTC are addressed.)

Face-to Face Recruitment Events

Recruitment of NCTC’s second cohort took place between September 2012 and June 2013; in addition, NCTC reached out to 60 other potential candidates from the first round of recruitment who had been identified for possible inclusion in the 2013-14 cohort. NCTC accepted candidates for the second cohort over two periods—once in December 2012 and again between April and the end of May 2013. The revised NCTC recruitment calendar is included in Appendix F.

Approach to recruitment of the second cohort. NCTC modified its approach to recruitment of its second cohort with a goal of improving retention of potential candidates (of the 481 potential candidates who expressed an interest during the first recruitment period, only 113 [23%] actually submitted an application). First, NCTC increased efforts to make potential candidates more aware early in the process of what would be expected of them before they begin teaching—namely, that they would need to meet requirements for lateral entry licensure (which for some candidates would include passing Praxis II) and that they would be required to attend a full-time pre-teaching Summer Institute for three weeks in the summer—to reduce the number of candidates who withdrew after acceptance for logistical reasons. Second, NCTC attempted to reach more candidates by providing information sessions at colleges and universities that do not host or participate in job fairs, and it established a presence on the career websites of every college and university in the state that has such a website. Evidence of the impact of the effort to reach more potential candidates is presented in Table 1 (following page); recommendations related to the relative yields of different events and different types of recruitment (e.g., face-to-face events versus web-based recruitment) are included in the Program Accomplishments and Recommendations section at the end of the report.



Table 1. Recruitment Event Participants Expressing Interest in NCTC, by Event, 2012-2013^

Event/Information Session

Interested Participants Employable Corps Member Yield

(2012, 2013, Total [Total %])Spring 2012

Fall 2012 & Spring 2013

Western Region Appalachian State University* 9 43 0, 0, 0 [0%] CIAA College Career Expo (Charlotte) 32 22 0, 1, 1 [2%] Davidson College --- 12 -, 1, 1 [8%] Johnson C Smith University --- 12 -, 0, 0 [0%] Mars Hill 6 --- 0, -, 0 [0%] Metrolina (Charlotte Area) 25 17 0, 1, 1 [2%] UNC-Charlotte* 12 43 4, 0, 4 [7%] Western Carolina 7 --- 1, -, 1 [14%]

Piedmont Region Central Piedmont Community College --- 50 -, 1, 1 [2%] Coast-to-Coast Career Fair (Raleigh) 14 --- 1, -, 1 [7%] Duke University* 23 15 0, 0, 0 [0%] Elon University* 2 17 0, 1, 1 [5%] Fayetteville State University* 13 11 1, 1, 2 [8%] Forsyth Technical Community College --- 26 -, 0, 0 [0%] High Point University 12 --- 1, -, 1 [8%] Meredith College* --- 16 -, 3, 3 [19%] National Career Fair 61 --- 3, -, 3 [5%] NC A&T* 39 101 0, 5, 5 [4%] NC Career Consortium (Greensboro) --- 12 -, 0, 0 [0%] NC Central University* --- 21 -, 0, 0 [0%] NC State University/Alumni Recruitment* 5 33 3, 4, 7 [18%] Peace College* --- 13 -, 2, 2 [15%] Salem College --- 10 -, 0, 0 [0%] Shaw University --- 2 -, 0, 0 [0%] St. Augustine’s College --- 10 -, 0, 0 [0%] UNC-Chapel Hill/Alumni Career Fair* 52 56 1, 3, 4 [4%] UNC-Greensboro* 0 41 0, 3, 3 [7%] Wake Forest University* 6 19 0, 2, 2 [8%] Winston-Salem State University* 18 25 0, 0, 0 [0%]

Eastern Region Chowan University --- 3 -, 0, 0 [0%] East Carolina University* 60 26 3, 3, 6 [7%] Eastern North Carolina Career Alliance Fair 17 33 0, 4, 4 [8%] Fort Bragg 2 --- 0, -, 0 [0%] UNC-Wilmington* 18 9 0, 0, 0 [0%] UNC-Pembroke* 8 7 0, 3, 3 [20%]

Other (Internet, Referral, or Other)~ 40 305 12, 46, 58 [17%] Total 481 1,010 30, 84, 114 [8%]

^ Does not include five corps members who enrolled mid-year (Spring 2013) *NCTC staff attended more than one event at this location during fall 2012/spring 2013 recruitment ~ Of the 58 employable corps members in this group: 28 found NCTC via the web (at NCTC’s website, at a link on a college career website, or via direct email); the rest were referrals or applicants from similar programs (like TFA).



Between September 2012 and June 2013, NCTC participated in 50 recruitment events across the state (about twice the number of events attended the previous year), most of which took place at colleges and universities. NCTC attracted a total of 1,010 interested students (as measured by the number of people who submitted personal information and requested NCTC follow-up) and followed up with each of them via email or telephone. NCTC received 226 complete applications—both of which were increases on the previous year’s totals of 481 and 113, respectively.

As in the previous year, each recruitment event varied in size and scope but was generally designed to provide undergraduate students with exposure to internships, permanent employment, or other work experience options. The Evaluation Team observed three recruitment events, each of which hosted approximately 50 organizations, with more than 70 student participants at each session. NCTC staff estimate that other sessions hosted between 40 and 500 students. The following sections discuss changes in the recruitment strategies utilized by the NCTC staff, as well as results of their efforts. The analysis is supplemented by information obtained during corps member focus group sessions.

Recruitment event strategy. As was true during the 2012 recruitment interactions and exchanges observed by the Evaluation Team, in 2013, NCTC recruiters again consistently described the features of the program, its mission, and its goals to potential recruits. Recruiters initiated each conversation by gauging a potential recruit’s interest in teaching, then sharing the mission of NCTC and its focus on seeking college graduates who are interested in becoming licensed educators and serving high-need schools in North Carolina. NCTC staff consistently communicated program eligibility and the application process to potential recruits, using informational materials to facilitate the conversation. Much the same as the previous year, NCTC representatives and recruits frequently focused on program logistics, such as cost for relocation and job security. In addition, NCTC recruiters covered topics such as LEA placement potential and availability, summer training opportunities, and Praxis requirements and cost. One difference in the 2013 observed recruitment interactions was that more potential recruits appeared to have some baseline knowledge of the NCTC program and were prepared with detailed and specific questions about the program.

NCTC used visual displays and informational materials in the same manner as it did the previous year. Visual displays on the recruitment table provided information about several of the key components and benefits of the program. A seven-foot vertical banner, placed adjacent to the table, displayed the NCTC title and slogan, in addition to the URL.15 Folders with specific program information also were provided to potential recruits (examples are included in Appendix G). As was the case during the first recruitment cycle, common elements of the program that appeared to appeal to potential recruits included: the newness of the program; the opportunity to become certified teachers; the opportunity to teach in North Carolina schools; and the NCTC mission statement.

The NCTC staff’s interpersonal communication skills and knowledge of the program continue to be strengths in the recruitment process, but one area for improvement noted in the first report was more pronounced during second cohort recruitment: the need for alternative recruitment

15 http://www.ncpublicschools.org/recruitment/ncteachercorps/



venues (such as private recruitment events and online recruitment tools). Since NCTC staff covered twice as many recruitment events during the 2012-13 recruitment season as they did during the previous recruitment season, only one recruiter typically was available per event, in most cases. One limitation to having a single representative at a given event is the increased possibility of missing opportunities to engage a greater number of potential recruits; without multiple representatives present, the amount of traffic at the NCTC table often meant that some potential recruits had to wait for a conversation to end before they could talk to recruiters.

Corps member feedback about the recruitment process. NCTC corps members indicated that one of the most appealing aspects of the NCTC recruitment process was the emphasis placed on the support provided during the subsequent employment process. NCTC recruits felt that the program had a distinct advantage in this component of recruitment, especially relative to other alternative lateral programs. One cohort member who also considered other programs noted that for some of them “[y]ou had to go in blind,” without program support, when seeking teaching positions.

A second recruitment aspect highlighted by corps members was that NCTC provides financial support for pursuing licensure.16 One corps member also commented that she/he was attracted by the fact that the lateral entry structure allowed her/him to expedite the licensure process:

I love being a teacher, but the problem is . . . if I go into [a] program of education, it’ll take me three more years, and I already finished my degree. Why am I going to take three more years to get my education license? That makes no sense for me. So [NCTC] is a short way for me to get in.

Finally, cohort members and non-NCTC teachers alike expressed support for NCTC’s focus on North Carolina and on efforts to find employment for corps members in areas closer to their families (though some corps members noted that their eventual employment locations did not end up being as close to their families as they had hoped).

Interestingly, during spring 2013 focus groups, many corps members commented on the lack of selectivity of the recruitment process. Generally, those who commented felt that program administrators need to be more mindful of the qualifications of the candidates they are accepting. They suggested that administrators create stricter standards for selecting candidates and perhaps even set a quota for the number of accepted applicants; however, program administrators should weigh these suggestions against their potential impact on overall recruitment. The following sections include information about NCTC selectivity and the degree to which it reflects selectivity in a comparable program (TFA).

Recruitment Results: Cohort Sizes

North Carolina’s revised Detailed Scope of Work for its RttT initiatives (August 201217) includes targets for the growth of NCTC in North Carolina. For the 2012-13 school year, the target size for the inaugural cohort was 100 corps members; the actual cohort size for the 2012-

16 NCTC provides tuition and fee assistance for teacher licensure coursework. 17 http://www.ncpublicschools.org/docs/rttt/state/plan/state-dsw.xls



13 school year was 3018. The target for the 2013-14 school year was 150 new corps members, but the number of new corps members eligible for employment for 2013-14 at the conclusion of the 2013 Summer Institute was 8419 (see Employment, Distribution, and Retention of Corps Members, below, for more data related to corps member employment).

NCTC’s failure to meet its first-year target was due in part to a truncated recruitment window for the first cohort. Changes NCTC made to its approach to recruitment (detailed above) met with mixed results. While they did help to generate higher interest, efforts to improve the conversion of those interested candidates into actual applicants did not appear to have the desired effect. As noted above, of the 1,010 individuals who expressed interest in becoming corps members for 2013-14, 226 (22%) submitted applications, paralleling the first year’s interest-to-application yield (113:481, or about 23%). Of the second cohort applicants, 199 (88%) were eligible for acceptance into the program (i.e., they either were deemed to have met or to be able to meet requirements for alternative licensure)—a figure slightly higher than the figure for the first cohort (84%).

NCTC’s interview process further reduced the pool to 126. Of those 126, 108 “enrolled” (initially agreed to participate in the program), but 24 exited the program before or just after completing Summer Institute, resulting in a second cohort of 84 corps members, or about 8% of the total number of interested candidates—56% of the target number of 150 corps members.20

Recruitment Results: Selectivity

Because research on related programs like TFA and the North Carolina Teaching Fellows21 suggests that higher levels of achievement (as measured by variables such as GPA) are correlated with measures of effective teaching, the Evaluation Team analyzes such characteristics for each NCTC cohort and notes changes in these characteristics over time.

Grade Point Average (GPA). Table 2 (following page) shows the distribution of 2012 and 2013 employable NCTC corps member GPAs. After inclusion of data from the second cohort, NCTC corps members’ combined average undergraduate GPA rose slightly to 3.2, which, as noted in the previous report, is lower than the average GPA for comparable programs like TFA-ENC (see the Historical and Current Placements and Distribution of Teach for America Corps Members section in the previous report). Also, though these data only represent two cohorts, it is still perhaps worth noting that almost half of the corps members (44%) had GPAs in the lower end of the allowable range of GPAs (2.50-3.09; NCTC candidates must meet requirements for lateral entry licensure, which includes a minimum 2.5 GPA requirement). While such discrepancies may suggest the need to place more attention on recruits’ academic records, as noted above, the trade-off for such scrutiny in the early years of the program could be further reduction in an already-shallow recruitment pool. Furthermore, a notably smaller proportion of second cohort corps members had GPAs in the lowest range (19% in 2013 versus 30% in 2012).

18 This figure is an update of the figure included in the first report, based on revised data provided by NCTC after last-minute changes to the original cohort’s size in fall 2012. 19 Figure does not include five corps members enrolled and employed in Spring 2013. 20 Table 4 in the Employment, Distribution, and Retention of Corps Members section below summarizes all of the recruitment, application, acceptance, and employment figures for the first and second cohorts. 21 E.g., D’Agostino & Powers (2009); Henry, Bastian, & Smith (2012)



Table 2. Distribution of NCTC Inaugural and Second Cohort GPA

GPA Categories

NCTC Corps Member Cohort Entry Year

2012 2013

4.0-3.7 n 5 15

Percent of Cohort

16.7% 17.9%

3.69-3.4 n 6 12

Percent of Cohort

20.0% 14.3%

3.39-3.1 n 3 20

Percent of Cohort

10.0% 23.8%

3.09-2.8 n 7 21

Percent of Cohort

23.3% 25.0%

2.79-2.5 n 9 16

Percent of Cohort

30.0% 19.0%

Total n 30 84

Note: Data in this table reflect original constitution of each cohort, before employment and subsequent early- and mid-year departures and replacements.

Post-secondary institution quality. Following the procedure established in the previous report, the Evaluation Team applied US News & World Report selectivity rankings to the colleges and universities from which most of the NCTC corps members were recruited,22 to gauge changes in one indicator of corps member quality. As noted in the previous report, the usefulness of using school selectivity as a predictor of individual teacher quality is still a matter of debate,23 but measurement of school selectivity, in conjunction with other quantitative and qualitative data points, can contribute to our understanding of the components that can contribute to teacher impact. In addition, tracking changes across time in the selectivity of the schools from which corps members come can help to demonstrate whether and how candidate interest in NCTC changes statewide as the program becomes better established.

After incorporation of data for the second cohort, the greatest proportions of current corps members attended schools that were identified as “More Selective” (17.3%), “Selective” (39.4%), or “Less Selective” (17.3%).24 Though these data indicate that NCTC is not as selective as a program like TFA (e.g., about 74% of TFA-ENC corps members come from “More Selective,” and “Most Selective” schools), it is worth noting that NCTC only recruits in-state, which limits the number of more selective schools from which the cohort might be assembled. As indicated in Table 3 (following page), relative to the first cohort, a larger proportion of the second cohort attended schools classified as “More Selective” or higher (36% versus 23%)

22 Some NCTC Corps Members are “second career” recruits. 23 E.g., Clotfelter, C. T., Ladd, H. F., and Vigdor, J. L. (2010); Kane, T. J., Rockoff, J. E., & Staiger, D. O. (2008) 24 Not including colleges and universities attended by corps members for which US News & World Report did not generate a selectivity rating; of those 10, eight were located in North Carolina.



Table 3. NCTC Inaugural and Second Cohort by College and University Selectivity

2012 2013

Selectivity n Percent of

Cohort

Percent of Cohort

(excluding “NR”*) n

Percent of

Cohort

Premiere 0 0% 0% 2 2.4% Most Selective 2 6.7% 10.0% 15 17.9% More Selective 5 16.7% 25.0% 13 15.5% Selective 10 33.3% 50.0% 31 36.9% Less Selective 3 10.0% 15.0% 15 17.9% Least Selective 0 0% 0% 8 9.5% Not Rated 10 33.3% --- --- ---

Total 30 84 Total excluding “NR” 20 *‟NR” = Not rated by USN&WR in 2012

Note: Data in this table reflect original constitution of the first cohort, before mid-year departures and replacements.

Leadership potential. Program staff charged an interview panel25 with evaluating potential NCTC candidates on the basis of several quantitative and qualitative indicators of candidate quality, including GPA, a writing sample, an estimation of each candidate’s commitment to working with youth, the panel’s impression of the candidate’s formal interview, and references. The panel also estimated the leadership potential of each candidate and assigned each candidate a leadership score ranging from 1 to 5, based on application information, information in the candidate’s résumé, and interview responses. For the inaugural NCTC cohort, the average leadership score was 3.42; the average leadership score for employable second cohort corps members was 2.95. Until additional outcome data (e.g., corps member value-added scores) are available, the Evaluation Team will not be able to assess whether the leadership score is a meaningful tool for projecting candidates’ future classroom successes. The final report will attempt to determine whether that information, combined with subsequent quantitative and qualitative measures of corps member effectiveness, is valid and reliable, and therefore useful for future corps member recruitment and selection.

Summer Institute Training

The evaluation question that guides this section is:

3. What is the quality of the NCTC Summer Institute experience? Specifically, how do teachers prepared by NCTC rate their experience, in terms of the preparation it provides them for their teaching assignments?

25 The interview panel consisted of 12 staff from NCTC, District and School Transformation (DST), Educator Recruitment and Development (ERD), Elon University, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. The panel assisted with the scoring process that informed NCTC staff’s final program acceptance decisions.



Standards for assessing NCTC Summer Institutes:

Training is: (a) relevant (e.g., it is directly related to corps member experiences teaching in target schools); (b) comprehensive (e.g., it addresses multiple preparation needs [employment, policies and procedures, pedagogy, classroom management]; (c) coordinated (e.g., individual modules and pre-service and ongoing training sessions complement each other); and (d) of high quality (e.g., corps members respond positively to the training, understand its relevance, and acknowledge its usefulness)

NCTC and contracted staff are: (a) professional; (b) supportive (e.g., interactions with corps members are positive and constructive); and (c) prepared.

This section updates findings presented in the first report on the quality of the inaugural Summer Institute. The findings in this update are based on data gathered during corps member focus groups conducted after the inaugural Summer Institute but before the start of the second Summer Institute. 26 As such, they represent corps member reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of the Summer Institute experience as seen through the lens of actual time spent in schools applying what they learned during the Institute. The final report will include an analysis of changes in the Summer Institute experience based on observations of and feedback about the second Summer Institute.

General Description of the NCTC Summer Institute

The inaugural North Carolina Teacher Corps Summer Institute training was conducted in Durham, North Carolina between July 16 and August 3, 2012. The institute consisted of an initial three-day orientation, followed by an eleven-day teaching practicum and a final all-day training session. NCTC also sponsored three after-hours Round Table sessions for corps members during the two-week teaching practicum.

The orientation period provided all corps members with an introduction to the roles and responsibilities of teachers that was facilitated by NCTC staff and District and School Transformation (DST) coaches. Following the orientation, corps members were paired with mentor teachers at one of three year-round schools in a cooperating LEA over a two-week period. This in-class practicum was designed to provide exposure and hands-on teaching experience in an authentic classroom environment. NCTC hosted the three concurrent Round Table events at a central location, during which corps members received additional training (discussed in greater detail below). The final day of Summer Institute reconvened all corps members to provide additional training on classroom and student behavior management practices, as well as an opportunity to reflect on the overall training process.

The previous report included an analysis of the Summer Institute based on Evaluation Team observations and on-site feedback from corps members. The report’s findings focused on the degree to which the Summer Institute built corps member knowledge and experience, prepared them for the classroom, and provided them with resources and information about ongoing

26 This report does not include information about the 2013 Summer Institute, which convened after initial drafts of this report were completed.



support. The current report updates findings in each of those areas, with the goal of providing additional formative feedback.27

Building Corps Member Knowledge and Experience: Summer Institute Orientation

The three-day orientation segment of the Summer Institute included large- and small-group sessions focused on classroom instruction and relevant policies, as well as opportunities for corps members to apply concepts and procedures. DST staff co-facilitated many of the sessions and conveyed a balance of personal teaching and training experience that was well-received among corps members.

During fall and spring focus group sessions, corps members were positive in their descriptions of their Summer Institute orientation experiences, indicating the training was “very helpful” and “beneficial.” One corps member shared, “Overall the training [was] great for me. In my opinion, the training . . . was phenomenal.”

In particular, corps members noted benefits of the small-group sessions offered throughout the training, during which they believed they were better able to build their knowledge: “When we broke off into our small group, I felt like I learned so much more.” Again demonstrating the importance of smaller-group sessions, corps members also appreciated the opportunities provided to speak candidly to the DST facilitators (often retired veteran teachers)—in particular, the potential these opportunities provided for building their own teaching strategies based on the coaches’ shared classroom experiences:

The most beneficial part of the Institute was when we all sat down with our person that’s for high school or middle school or elementary, and we actually were able to ask questions that we thought would be beneficial. . . . That probably helped me the most.

I feel like the one-on-one part at the Summer Institute was much more helpful than anything. When we all got down in smaller groups and had a veteran teacher, even though they are not teaching anymore, come sit with us and we’re like “What if a kid does this, what would you do?”

In addition, informal feedback from corps members gathered during the orientation suggested an appreciation of their facilitators’ abilities to model teacher behaviors and classroom practices.

Preparation for the Classroom

In-class practicum experience. The in-class practicum segment of the Summer Institute provided an opportunity for corps members to observe, participate in, and practice-teach in a classroom setting under the guidance of a mentor teacher. The extent to which the experience was fully

27 Draft versions of these updates were provided to NCTC in spring 2013 to ensure that NCTC would have opportunities to incorporate changes ahead of the 2013 Summer Institute. While the Evaluation Team was drafting this report, NCTC made changes to the 2013 Summer Institute that addressed some of the observations included below. For example, NCTC expanded its plans for 2013 by including an event held ahead of the standard Summer Institute (June 1st, 2013), during which NCTC provided pre-service training and preparation for teaching in North Carolina and for interviewing for teaching positions (Appendix F). Training modules for the 2013 Summer Institute are listed in Appendix H.



realized varied among corps members, with some engaging in a more active and direct role in the classroom than others. Training observations and initial feedback from corps members helped to establish an early assessment of the potential benefits and shortcomings of the practicum. As discussed in the previous report, several corps members benefited from working with veteran mentors, many of whom were observed taking the mentoring role very seriously, with some actively advising corps members throughout the process to help build their capacity to teach. However, some limitations in the practicum experience emerged during Summer 2012 observations and informal meetings with corps members; specifically, the Evaluation Team concluded at the time that corps members might benefit from a longer training period, the opportunity to observe and reflect on each other’s classroom practices, and inclusion of more targeted and specialized subject-area and special populations training (Appendix I).

During fall and spring focus group sessions, corps members expanded on these initial impressions of the practicum experience. While most of the corps members interviewed expressed appreciation for the experience (most favored their in-class teaching experiences during the last two-and-one-half weeks of their summer training over the three-day group orientation sessions), several provided in-depth feedback regarding potential areas for improvement. Reflecting earlier observations made during the training, one of the more common areas mentioned during focus group sessions was the duration of the summer training. Understandably, some corps members were concerned that three weeks could not provide enough time to fully prepare them for the classroom, especially given that a traditional preparation route could take up to four years:

They did a pretty good job for three weeks but at the same time, it’s only three weeks. Like you have people that go to school for this and it takes four years. Condensing four years to three weeks is a lot. That’s not a simple task. [I] commend them for how much they have done, ’cause I know it’s not an easy task. Not at all. That’d take a lot of dedication. But at the same time, I really did wish we had more time to just expand.

I do think if they were going to expand one piece or the other, I think it should be the in-school time.

I kind of felt like we didn’t get enough time in the classroom [while] in Durham.

I would rather do more in the classroom than spending some of the whole days at the [training site].

While most corps members expressed a desire for a longer training period, others believed that the length of their summer training, while perhaps not ideal, was at least adequate:

I think it was long enough for what we had to do. . . . It was long enough to get what I needed to be able to start where I’m at. It would be awesome if it could be longer, but I don’t think we could logistically make it work.

[I] know, coming into school, I’m definitely way more prepared than I would have been without training.

Also, most corps members reiterated that the in-class experience would better serve their overall growth and capacity development if at least a part of it took place prior to the information-driven



segments of their training. Corps members noted that the hands-on experience provided the real-life context necessary for much of the information delivered during the first three days of their training to make sense:

I felt like it was so much easier the days that we had been in our classroom, we came back, and you met with your [school] age level in your department, and you were able to process—Here’s what happened in my class, here’s why it worked, here’s what I will use—and actually be able to [connect] it to . . . an experience, instead of just someone standing up front talking at you all day about [what] could happen [in the classroom].

[I]t would have been so much more beneficial . . . to go in and just observe how a teacher teaches high school . . . actually going in before you even sign on to the program.

In addition, several corps members noted that, in hindsight, the in-class practicum experience was not well aligned with the realities of their current classroom environments. Some corps members felt the training schools in which they acquired their in-class experience did not provide experiences that represented either the schools in which they eventually found employment or the students they teach. While corps members admitted the training still “helped a lot,” they suggested that a more challenging training experience could better prepare them for the schools to which they were eventually assigned:28

I mean, you’re going to have challenges wherever you go [but we] need to have some sort of reality check before they send us off into the world.

The training has helped a lot, but the thing is we trained in a better school system, from my opinion. When we moved out here, it [was] kind of surprising, but, you know, it’s helped. Somehow, [the training] has still helped a lot.

Finally, one corps member suggested a role that corps members from the previous cohort could play as part of the preparation of the new recruits:

I think that . . . new recruits should come in and observe us teach. Personally, I would have loved . . . to have been in the second cohort because then you have these teachers who already have experience that you can ask these questions to and go and observe them and observe at all different schools.

Extending the opportunity for incoming cohorts to observe a “veteran” corps member’s classroom may be difficult to arrange; unless they find employment in a school that already hosts a corps member, such observations would require new corps members to take time off and travel at the start of their first year of teaching. It is, however, feasible that some of the more successful veteran corps members could take on the roles of mentors during the Summer Institute practicum period.

Non-corps member teachers also were asked to share their perceptions of the corps members’ preparation to teach. While only a few non-corps member teachers were interviewed, it is worth noting that all of those interviewed felt that the corps members at their schools were well-

28 NCTC partnered with a different LEA for the 2013 summer in-school experience in part to attempt to address this concern.



prepared. As one teacher shared, “I’ve never met a first-year teacher that is more capable or more confident.” Other comments indicated how impressed the teachers were with the degree of preparation and quality of the corps member:

Perhaps, you know, it’s life experiences that she brings to the table, but I would never have known that she didn’t go to an educational school to prepare her to be a teacher, you know, that she didn’t receive years and years of education to be a teacher.

I was really impressed. I was waiting for the meltdown, you know, from being around young teachers before, [but] she is just flourishing. I am really impressed with her level of preparation and there’s no way that she could be this confident if she hadn’t been properly prepared.

Resources and Ongoing Support

Resources. Resources initially were provided to corps members electronically and physically during their Summer Institute training segments and included materials such as books, checklists, and lists of strategies. After corps member employment, NCTC provided resources based on individual needs and requests, typically in the form of materials to support instructional strategies and practices. NCTC also used the all-core Saturday meetings—school-year events organized in part based on corps member needs and requests—to deliver and review additional materials. Other resources made available to corps members typically came from their school administrators and fellow teachers.

Ongoing support. NCTC’s ongoing support for its inaugural group of corps members began during the in-class training practicum, when staff provided classroom observations to attempt to provide an effective and productive training experience, and to determine what areas of additional training corps members require. NCTC staff extended that level of support throughout the school year, providing regular in-class observations to assess corps members’ progress in their development as instructors, to provide coaching in support of that development, and to determine other areas in need of additional support. In addition to the classroom observations, NCTC facilitated monthly all-core workshops (six Saturday sessions held between September 2012 and March 2013) that provided opportunities for staff to address areas in which corps members were judged by their observers to be in need of improvement (e.g., classroom management and instructional strategy), as well as practical approaches that could increase their overall effectiveness in the classroom. In reference to these sessions, one corps member stated:

[T]he ongoing sessions that we have on Saturday are very helpful. I mean, I always come back, every time, with something that I can use in the classroom, as far as learning strategies, comprehension strategies, technology strategies, those sorts of things.

In addition to the ongoing support provided by NCTC staff, corps members noted that school administrators and teacher peers also provided support; however, the degree to which they received adequate in-school support varied considerably. As one corps member explained:

The administration at my school is very supportive of new teachers and they understand that there’s still a lot of things I can learn and they are supportive of me [however] that is



not what I’ve heard from everybody in [the] North Carolina Teacher Corps, that’s not the experience that everyone has had so I’m really thankful. . . .

In separate interviews with principals at three NCTC host schools, all three principals mentioned their own efforts to provide their new teachers (including corps members) with the support they need to learn “the ropes of the school” and the “managerial aspects” of teaching. Principals noted that corps members have several avenues of support made available to them. For instance, as one principal explained, “[W]orking in departments, they have other teachers that they can lean on [and] ask questions in order to get that support.” Many of these teachers serve as official mentors—veteran teachers who assist them with areas such as “developing lesson plans” or discussing “how to manage the classroom.” Another principal shared:

Not only do I have my I[nitially] L[icensed] T[eacher] Assistant Principal, but we also have a mentor that comes in from the county to help [the corps member], and I’m actually her observer, so she’s actually got three people to help her out. You know, we’re really here for her. She also has my Math Chair that’s constantly with her, so she has a lot of resources that’s given to her to help her with her daily ins and outs of teaching.

Corps members provided their own perspectives on the in-school support they received, particularly about support provided during the first few weeks on the job. Some corps members’ descriptions of their “in-house” support structures mirrored the descriptions provided by their principals:

Well, I get a mentor, as being a first-year teacher, but then that mentor is only here part time. So our principal also assigned us a mentor that’s teaching here with us [and] she’s only two halls over, so I have someone else that I can talk to. . . . [A]nd then my Math Department Chair is directly across from me. So, if I ever need anything, I just step right across the hall. . . . [A]nd we have our PLCs every week.

I feel really blessed to be at this school, only because of the support that I do have here. I rarely have to ask anyone on the NCTC level anything.

I have that mentor outside of the school [who] comes, and then I have, it’s actually another 1st grade teacher who, from the beginning, kind of took me under her wing, and we’ve been working together. She’s getting trained and will be my mentor.

Overall, most corps members found the extra support they received to be helpful. As one corps member shared, “I think if I had to sit down and make my own lesson plans, I’d have a very difficult time, but being able to work with someone . . . helps a lot.”

As suggested above, however, not all corps members characterized their working environments as supportive; for some, their experiences were more “overwhelming.” For instance, one corps member indicated having “no collaboration” with the teachers or administration at her school, with the only support she received coming from NCTC leadership: “I have seen [NCTC leadership] multiple times and that [was] a really, really big help for me. . . . [T]hat makes a big difference for me, to have [NCTC support staff] come by, and she [also] sent me an email with some resources, which was really cool.”



This appreciation for NCTC support was consistent across schools. While the availability of in-school supports and resources seemed to vary based on their employment locations, corps members unequivocally agreed that the support provided by NCTC leadership was “amazing” and “fantastic.” Corps members appreciated the responsiveness and ongoing presence of the NCTC leadership:

[T]hey just don’t stay in their office in Raleigh, or after the institute this summer, they didn’t disappear. They still come out to your schools and I’ve seen [the Executive Director] here twice already. . . . [I]t’s like they’re staying involved, making sure that you’re okay.

Some corps members indicated that the feedback provided by NCTC leadership during their school observations was productive and helped them grow in their new roles:

I find that the extra support is really helpful for making sure that I can still, like, try new things, because the feedback that I get from them [helps me] to adjust, and it’s really helpful to have another venue for feedback.

NCTC leadership’s efforts to provide resources to meet corps member’s needs also were well-received:

[An NCTC leader] reached out to a few science teachers that she knows and, actually, one of them did email me the other day, which is fantastic. She sent me some email links to some different resources and that kind of thing, so that’s helpful. I mean, that, in and of itself, is amazing.

Perhaps most noteworthy are corps members’ impressions of NCTC leadership’s overall positive attitude, dedication, and motivation—all aspects of support that corps members highly value:

There will be times where things do not go the way that you want them to and it’s okay. Keep trying, keep going. And, like, the support from [the NCTC] leaders really helps out with that. . . . [T]hose ladies are amazing. I don’t know if they actually knew who they really picked, but those three, you talk about dedication, it’s crazy. Like, it really made the program for me, those three.

Employment, Distribution, and Retention of Corps Members


1. Do TFA-ENC and NCTC meet demand for beginning teachers in high-need schools?


7. What role does grouping teachers together in high-need schools have on retention of NCTC and TFA-ENC teachers?



The data reported in this section will serve as a baseline for addressing these questions in greater depth in future reports. Standards for assessing NCTC employment assistance and retention efforts:

Employment results meet or exceed targets.

Efforts to retain corps members result in retention rates that meet or exceed rates (a) in comparable programs and (b) for all beginning teachers.

Inaugural Cohort Retention

Of the 30 corps members in the inaugural cohort who remained in the program after Summer Institute, 22 (22% of the target of 100 for Year 1) found employment (one secured employment in January 2013), for an initial employment rate of 73% (Table 4). Three were unable to secure employment and withdrew from the program, three were unable to complete the Praxis II and withdrew from the program, and two left the program to pursue other job opportunities. Before the end of the fall 2012 semester, three of the 22 employed corps members withdrew from the program (one in September 2012 and two in January 2013), for a one-year retention rate of initially-employed corps members of 86%, which is slightly lower than some estimates of national rates for first-year teachers (90.1%; Kaiser & Cross, 2011); however, this retention rate will be in line with two-year TFA-ENC retention over the past several years (87%)29 in similar schools, if no additional members of the first cohort leave early and the rate holds.

Table 4. Summary of NCTC Recruitment Pipeline, 2012 and 2013

Recruitment Milestone First Cohort (2012)

(n, % of preceding group) Second Cohort (2013)

(n, % of preceding group)

Expressed Interest 481 1,010

Submitted Application 113, 23% 226, 22%

Eligible for Program 95, 84% 199, 88%

Accepted 42, 44% 108, 53%

Completed Summer Institute (Employable) 30

30, 71% 84, 78%

Initially Employed 22, 73% 73, 87%

The retention issues experienced throughout the inaugural year of the program prompted two main responses from NCTC. First, to address the mid-year departures, NCTC accepted five new

29 See p. 33, previous report: http://cerenc.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/NCTC_PreliminaryReport_10-29-2012.pdf 30 Figures do not include five corps members enrolled and employed in Spring 2013.



corps members31 (two from the spring 2012 and three from the fall 2012 recruitment pools) into the program in December 2012, all of whom found employment in one of the target NCTC LEAs before the end of the 2012-13 school year, bringing the total number of active and employed 2012-13 corps members to 24 (as of October 2013, 23 remain employed for school year 2013-14). In addition, NCTC staff, when possible, mediated the exits of the departing corps members by providing them with guidance related to the policies and procedures for leaving a position in the middle of the year. NCTC also developed an orientation handbook for its next cohort that includes a section on procedures for exiting the program in a professional manner (e.g., who to contact at NCTC and how to approach school administrators).

Second, to address the number of departures that took place during the initial cohort’s training phase of the program, as noted above, NCTC adapted its recruitment strategy to communicate more clearly to candidates during their initial interactions and meetings about program requirements, responsibilities, and potential hardships. In addition, NCTC arranged to provide Praxis II coaching for all accepted second cohort corps members ahead of Summer Institute.

Despite these first-year departures, spring 2013 survey responses indicate that 87% of the adjusted inaugural cohort (the remaining 19 from Summer 2012 plus the five newer members) plan to stay beyond their two-year commitment to teaching (Appendix B). Focus group data presented later in this report explore several factors that may play a role in corps members’ willingness to remain in teaching throughout the remainder of their NCTC commitment and beyond.

It remains important for NCTC to continue to acknowledge and address the retention issue; with a second-year cohort that is nearly triple the size of the initial cohort, NCTC will need to devise ways to maintain the capacity to support future retention efforts. Program retention will be examined again in greater detail in the final report.

Second Cohort Employment

NCTC negotiated access to LEAs and schools on behalf of its inaugural cohort and assisted corps members throughout the hiring process. In many cases, NCTC also attempted to honor candidate preferences with respect to their place of employment, under the assumption that employment in a preferred LEA would help support retention efforts. The 24 2012-13 corps members who finished their first year were employed in 11 LEAs—nine of the 17 NCTC-eligible LEAs and two additional LEAs (Cleveland and Durham). Of those 24, 6 were in RttT DST schools, 17 were in LEAs with RttT DST schools, and one was in a non-DST-eligible LEA (Cleveland).

The number of NCTC-eligible LEAs was increased for 2013-14 from 17 to 30. Hiring for the 2013-14 school year was not complete by the time this report was finalized, so the numbers for the second cohort presented here are not final. To date, 73 of the second cohort are employed across 21 LEAs. Taken together, 96 inaugural cohort and second cohort corps members are 31 One of these new corps members was employed in January 2013 and two in March 2013. The other two already were employed as lateral entry teachers at the beginning of the 2012-13 school year but joined NCTC in December 2012. NCTC provided online training modules, classroom observations, and the resources/materials from the Summer Institute to support their transition to the classroom. Also, all five of these corps members were encouraged to participate in the Saturday sessions and enroll in the 2013 Summer Institute.



employed across 23 LEAs.32 Table 5 and Figure 1 (following page) detail the LEAs in which corps members are eligible to work, and the LEAs in which they either are continuing to work or have found employment (as of October 2013) for the 2013-14 school year.

Table 5. LEAs with Corps Members, Final 2012-13 Figures and Preliminary 2013-14 Figures

^ Only 17 LEAs were eligible in 2012-13; that number expanded to 30 for 2013-14. *Alleghany County (2013-14), Cleveland County (2012-13), Henderson County (2013-14), Lexington City (2013-14), and Northampton County (2013-14) hired corps members but were not included on the list of eligible LEAs. Though served by DST, Durham was not eligible for NCTC services in 2012-13 but is eligible in 2013-14.

32 Four of the LEAs in which corps members are employed for school year 2013-14 are not on NCTC’s official eligibility list (Alleghany, Henderson, Lexington City, and Northampton).

LEANCTC-

Eligible? # Schools^ # CMs # Schools # CMs # Schools # CMs # Schools # CMs

Alamance Yes 0 0 1 1 2 3 3 4Alleghany* No --- --- 0 0 1 1 1 1Anson Yes 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1Caldwell Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Cleveland* No 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0Columbus Yes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Cumberland Yes 3 3 3 3 5 5 8 8Duplin Yes 1 1 1 1 2 3 3 4Durham* Yes 2 2 3 3 14 21 16 24Edgecombe Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Forsyth Yes 3 3 0 0 6 7 6 7Gaston Yes 3 3 4 4 1 2 5 6Greene Yes 0 0 0 0 1 1 1 1Guilford Yes 1 1 2 2 6 6 7 8Halifax Yes --- --- 0 0 2 2 2 2Harnett Yes --- --- 0 0 6 7 6 7Henderson* No --- --- 0 0 1 1 1 1Hertford Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Hoke Yes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Lexington City* No --- --- 1 1 0 0 1 1Lenior Yes --- --- 0 0 3 3 3 3Nash/Rocky Mount Yes --- --- 0 0 2 2 2 2Northampton* No --- --- 0 0 1 1 1 1Pasquotank Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Pitt Yes 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2Richmond Yes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Robeson Yes 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 2Rockingham Yes --- --- 0 0 1 1 1 1Rowan-Salisbury Yes 0 0 1 1 0 0 1 1Scotland Yes 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0Union Yes 4 4 3 3 2 3 4 6Vance Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Wayne Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Weldon City Yes --- --- 0 0 0 0 0 0Wilson Yes 2 2 2 2 1 1 3 3

Totals: 24 24 23 23 60 73 80 96

Corps Member Employment

Cohort I Cohort I Cohort II Total, 2013-14Final 2012-13 Preliminary 2013-14 (as of September 4, 2013)

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Corps Member Feedback about the Employment Process

There was some focus group conversation among corps members about their LEA interview experiences, with more than one corps member suggesting that an interview preparation segment during Summer Institute might have better prepare them for the interview process. As one corps member explained, “[G]oing in blindly, never teaching, not having our education classes, not knowing exactly what to say in our interview, maybe that’s something that NCTC could help us [with].” Another corps member added that “it would be great” if NCTC could “bring in some principals and do some mock interviews.”34

As mentioned above, corps members in focus groups indicated that they appreciated the emphasis placed by NCTC on supporting the employment process. In one instance, a corps member who considered another lateral entry program noted the lack of support from that program in comparison to NCTC:

I started checking into alternative routes and [program name] was one of them. . . . [I] found out there was no support, nothing. . . . You had to go and find your job. You had to go and do everything by yourself. . . . You’re out there on your own, and at least with the NCTC program we’re not put out to the dogs, per se.

34 In response to this feedback, NCTC opened its summer training with a pre-Institute session in June 2013 that provided opportunities for new corps members to practice their interviewing techniques with school administrators. Data collection for this report was completed before the beginning of the main 2013 Summer Institute; the final report will include a full evaluation of the Institute.



Initial Learnings: Reflections on the Inaugural Cohort Experience



8. Are NCTC teachers more effective than traditionally-prepared teachers?

Standards for assessment: The findings reported in this section are not formal assessments of any particular aspect of the NCTC initiative. Instead, they are included to: (a) provide formative feedback for NCTC about aspects of the first cohort’s first year of teaching; (b) help contextualize recommendations for addressing issues revealed in the preceding sections; and (c) inform efforts to address the two evaluation questions above in the final summative report, once more data are available.

Fall 2012 and spring 2013 focus groups and interviews yielded several perspectives on the inaugural cohort’s first-year experience as teachers. The following section is organized to reflect the salient themes that emerged in conversations with corps members, non-NCTC teachers, and principals.

Isolation

Results from the spring 2013 survey indicate that almost a third of the corps members (30%) felt isolated at their schools during their first year of teaching. While such feelings are not uncommon for beginning teachers (Heider 2005), the Team explored these feelings of isolation during focus group sessions in order to identify for NCTC whether any of the factors that contributed to them were within the program’s control.

Professional Isolation

Receiving adequate support was made more challenging for some corps members than others because of the size of their employing schools. In some cases, corps members had a restricted number of mentoring options because they were the only teachers in their subjects or grade levels, leaving them feeling isolated and without support from other teachers in their schools with whom they could plan lessons, explore ideas, or express concerns. One corps member lamented:

It’s terrible. It’s really terrible. I am the only science teacher. I teach 6th grade, 7th grade, and 8th grade science. And there’s just not, I mean, there’s no one to plan with, there’s no one to help you.

To help one corps member who served as the only teacher of a core subject in her/his employing school, the employing school had to arrange for a same-subject teacher at a nearby high school to offer assistance and support:

She doesn’t have another [grade and subject area] teacher to bounce ideas off of, so the ideas that she does need to go to, she goes to [another teacher], who is the high school



[subject area teacher], so . . . I’ve experienced some frustration from her, in that area too, because it’s just her for [grade level].

Even in schools where there were like subject and grade-level teachers, there were times in which some NCTC members felt a sense of isolation because they perceived that veteran teachers preferred to teach and plan on their own, or would think less of them if they were to ask questions:

I think sometimes it’s hard to go to teachers in our school and [say], “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

But, the issue I have is, you know, I talk to people. . . . [I]t’s not like I haven’t tried to establish resources or . . . lines of communication, but everybody just does their own thing. I guess that’s the way they’re used to it being.35

Principals were aware of these issues. One principal attempted to alleviate feelings of isolation for one corps member by changing the corps member’s teaching location after the first semester from a mobile unit to a traditional classroom:

I [now] have him in a classroom and there’s another teacher that shares that classroom with him, so they’ve sort of bonded, too. Even though that teacher is a science teacher, [and] he’s in math, it still gives [him] somebody else—and the other teacher’s a better teacher—it gives [him] somebody else he can talk to and just bounce things off. So I think that has greatly impacted him in a positive way.

Geographic Isolation

A second factor contributing to feelings of isolation was the rural and remote setting of some of the employing schools. Several corps members commuted a significant distance to work,36 with the lengthiest commutes being between 30 and 60 minutes each way. In some employing schools, a majority of teachers—corps members and non-NCTC teachers alike—chose to commute so that they could live in less rural areas:

Here, at this particular school, the majority of the teachers do not live here in [Location A], or nearby. They live . . . in [Location B], [Location C], [Location D], or basically [Location E]. Very few of the teachers actually live here in the community. [They are] all about 30 minutes [away].

One corps member indicated that she preferred to travel an hour each way in lieu of living in the community in which she taught, because living there would have increased her sense of isolation from family: “I’m going to tell you the truth. If I moved to [Location A], I would feel very

35 One corps member shared an isolated instance in which joint planning and lesson development have been inhibited by disparities in the technology resources available to veteran and novice teachers for use in their classrooms. The corps member indicated, however, that efforts are underway in that school to acquire additional resources so that all teachers have access to the same resources. 36 In addition to school remoteness, some corps members’ commutes were lengthy in early fall 2012 because they had been placed only recently and had not yet found housing near their employing schools, even when those schools were not in rural or remote areas.



isolated, and I’m not up for that.” This sentiment was perhaps not widely shared among corps members, but it is important to note nonetheless, since one of the theories that underpins NCTC is that recruitment of corps members with ties to North Carolina will be enough to reduce one of the key reasons for turnover in programs like TFA: a lack of a sense of connection to an area. As the program continues to assess the degree to which this component of recruitment pays the anticipated dividend of longer tenure with the program, cases like this one point up the importance of determining whether state affiliation is enough to encourage retention, or whether NCTC will need to focus more recruitment efforts on candidates with regional as well as state ties.

Corps Member Reflections on Reducing Feelings of Isolation

Several corps members observed that greater connectivity to their fellow corps members would help alleviate some of these feelings of isolation. One corps member noted that teachers who share similar training and experiences naturally form a “stronger bond” and cohesiveness. Other corps members who shared feelings of isolation added:

I, basically, would love to have another NCTC person at my school [to help support me].

But yeah, it’d be nice [to have stronger connections to other corps members] in the sense that I’d have the same kind of, like, values and goals, but it’d also be nice in terms of, like, planning and creativity, because I think we’re very, like, ambitious, at this point, and we want to make those big changes right off the bat.

The potential for one approach to reducing this isolation—clustering corps members in the same schools, as TFA-ENC has been able to do in many cases—was discussed in the previous report, but it has neither been nor is it likely to be possible to gauge the value of school-level clustering for NCTC members. For one thing, after mid-year departures in 2012-13, no school hosted more than one corps member.37 For another, unlike TFA, NCTC does not directly place corps members in schools, decreasing even further the chances that such a strategy could be viable for NCTC. However, some degree of clustering has occurred at the LEA level. Over 57% of active corps members indicated in spring surveys that they valued having other corps members nearby, and corps members who taught in the same LEA, as well as their principals, believed that such clustering had helped to address teachers’ feelings of isolation and provided them with an additional outlet for support and guidance. As one corps member explained, “[W]hen we get together, it’s helpful to have [that] sounding board for frustrations and know that you’re not falling from it and out there struggling and wondering, ‘What am I supposed to be doing?’”

The first report also recommended that NCTC consider development of social networking tools to help reduce feelings of isolation, and that it work to develop more employment opportunities in schools and LEAs that have a greater capacity to provide adequate support for corps members (Appendix I). The Program Accomplishments and Recommendations section at the end of this report includes additional recommendations for alleviating isolation, some of which are supported by evidence from the next section, which discusses findings related to corps member integration into their host schools and communities. 37 Indeed, in the school that hosted a cluster of three corps members in 2012-13, two resigned by the end of the year.



Integration

As is clear from some of the comments above, often related to feelings of isolation was the degree to which corps members were formally integrated into their new school settings and communities. This section details their impressions and the impressions of their non-corps colleagues about the degree to which they were able to integrate at the start of the 2012-13 school year.

School Integration

Several of the corps members were the last staff to be hired at their employing schools; in some instances, they were actually hired after the beginning of the school year. Because of their late arrival, some corps members’ opportunities to become adjusted to their school communities were limited. One principal commented on the difficulties inherent in such late arrival:

They were all hired at the end of the summer, so it was a real push to get that assimilation in with not only the students . . . but their peers, other teachers in the school, and building a quick relationship with them that . . . those individuals trust that teacher and that teacher trusts them. You know, . . . there’s something to be said of kind of being around and . . . having that camaraderie with your peers that really . . . helps that assimilation. . . . [W]e ended up hiring 25 teachers, new teachers, this summer, and . . . you know, we had some openings there at the very end that the NCTC teachers filled for us. It may have been easier for us to do it at the beginning of the summer, and that way we could send them to some professional development, have them work with other members of the department, and . . . that way they may have assimilated a little bit better going into the school year, rather than just rush, rush, rush: “Here it is. Here’s the key. Here are the books. You’re off and running.”

Even given these less-than-ideal integration situations, several corps members were praised for their ability to come into a school and fit into the existing system with minimal difficulty. Several corps members experienced success with respect to connecting with their peers, students, and parents. One corps member met the challenge head-on by taking a proactive approach to creating relationships with teachers at her/his school:

It’s all about yourself, first of all. I mean, I don’t know anybody here, but I walk in lunch, I’ll see a teacher. I’ll sit there and eat with them, ask them. I mean, I don’t feel isolated. I feel like family, so I talk to her, but I also talked to a person I didn’t even know.

One principal shared a similar situation in which another corps member was able to blend into her/his department with ease:

[The corps member] got along right away. You know, . . . we have a young math staff where the rest of my groups here are pretty seasoned, so it was pretty [easy] for her . . . to adjust. . . . [T]hey all get along great. So we have them all together; they’re all in the same hallway, a main hallway, so, I mean, they’re always together, always talking. I mean, she gets along with everybody. That’s a good department.



As the school year progressed, more corps members felt more readily accepted by their peers. Often, the working relationships became mutually beneficial. One non-corps member noted, “It’s been good. I’ve gone to her for help. She’s come to me for help. It’s been very open, so we have a really good relationship.” Another corps member at a different school shared a similar sentiment: “A few times, the teachers were like, ‘Oh, it’s nice to have you here . . . a fresh perspective. You’re very idealistic.’” Non-corps member teachers also noted the acceptance:

[A corps member at my school and I are] really close friends, so we talk every day, whether it’s about math or not. . . . [O]ne week I’ll make the test and quizzes, one week she’ll make them. And then . . . we make sure we are on the same page content-wise, too. We always will talk about it: “How far did you get today? Okay, I was able to go a little further,” so tomorrow maybe I’ll go back and review a little bit so we are always on the same page.

In addition to integrating better into the regular school day, some corps members also chose to devote time to activities that extend beyond the school day. One corps member’s colleague described her perceptions of the extent of her corps member colleague’s integration in this way:

She volunteers; she’s doing the SAT thing [tutoring after school]. She volunteers to do other stuff too. I mean, the SAT thing, they only have two people, so her and an English teacher are the only two doing the SAT thing, so every Monday and Wednesday, she stays after school until 6:00. . . . She lives in math.

In another instance, a corps member was praised for her ability to communicate effectively with the parents of her students:

I think she’s done fine. I mean, especially [at the employing school,] the community is so involved—very, very involved—that if you don’t [learn to communicate], you won’t survive. And, you know, she . . . learned how to adjust her way of thinking and talking and the way that you deal with each different individual parent, or whoever comes in, or whatever they’re asking of you, because they can be demanding, and, you know, you have to learn how to monitor that and deal with that at the time, not to give right in, but to show how you can moderate it and make it work for both sides, so she’s done a pretty good job there. She’s fine. She’s involved in everything. She does what she needs to do.

Several veteran teachers also worked actively to support corps members’ success in their schools. As noted in the Resources and Ongoing Support section above, veteran teachers served as both formal and informal mentors to corps members by providing both moral and teaching support. Teachers gave freely of their time, offering both compliments and constructive feedback to corps members. Three corps member were enthusiastic in their descriptions of this kind of support:

The first two weeks, a couple people helped me a lot, and some senior teachers, actually, came to me saying, “Oh, I heard a lot of good things about you.” And then I found out the principal said good things about me, I said, “That’s a compliment. Thank you.” But, you know, it gives you [the desire to] . . . keep going, and the thing is, the department, and the head of the department, actually, comes to you and talks to you.



The people that I came in contact with have been pretty helpful. . . . Like, they really put me under their wing. . . . [I]t’s why I’ve got like two moms at school.

And everyone is so supportive. I’ve had so many teachers who just stop in. . . . [T]he day before my formal observation, I had our Reading Coach, and then I had another—a 4th grade teacher, actually—who were in there trying to help me find all my materials, because we realized I don’t have all my books that I was supposed to have, and you know, she stayed after school instead of working on her stuff, she was helping me, who was not on her team. She doesn’t really know [me,] either. . . .

In another instance, a principal shared a situation in which a veteran teacher provided feedback to an NCTC member to help her correct a deficiency,

I think she’s [NCTC member] doing fine. She had one little incident yesterday, that her and another teacher…didn’t…an incident that happened in the classroom that they were sharing, and…the experienced teacher, for lack of a better word, didn’t like it, and…so she told her about it, and…and she handled it well.

Not all corps members integrated as smoothly into their employing schools, however. There were instances in which corps members had a hard time breaking down barriers so that their ideas could be accepted by veteran teachers. A corps member shared one instance in which she struggled to rectify issues that were being overlooked by other staff members:

I’m one of the only new teachers at [employing school]. The other new teachers actually went to [employing school as students], so they’re part of that community already. And . . . it’s hard, because I’m younger, and everyone is older and . . . when you’ve been doing it [teaching] for a while, I think . . . you become a little complacent, maybe. . . . I came in, and wanted things to be done the way that they should be done. So, for example, like, in our E[xceptional] C[hildren] Department, we have kids that are not receiving the services that they should be, and a lot of kids are just falling through the cracks, and . . . when you talk about these kinds of things, the other teachers are like, “Well, you don’t understand yet. You just have to do this, and no one really checks that, and da da da.”

Community Integration

Several corps members also became acclimated to the communities in which they served. Many of them had had limited opportunities to do so before participating in the fall 2012 focus groups for this study, but some corps members did indicate at that point that they had used various mechanisms to try to connect to their new communities, such as attending churches or reaching out to social groups (e.g., sororities, fraternities, etc.). As one principal noted, these types of connections are often slower to develop:

I don’t think she’s had a lot of opportunity to do . . . things in that realm. . . . I think that she will have some opportunity later on, because we’ll have some more opportunities to bring . . . community members in, and we do some outreach things with the community also around Christmas time and things of that nature.



During the spring 2013 focus groups, corps members had much more to share, indicating to some extent that their integration into their new communities was progressing. Several corps members became more adept at understanding the context of the communities in which they served. For some, this translated into enhanced relationships with parents. One principal highlighted a corps member who was becoming a teacher who actively seeks parent partnerships:

[H]e’s completely different in that now than when he started, and that’s in a positive way. Parents know his name, they hear their children talk about him, so I think that has made him much more comfortable in reaching out.

Another principal shared that, as the year progressed, one of his corps members was able to gain a deep understanding of her community and use that information to inform her teaching:

I don’t think she’s from this part, but I know she has worked it out to the point where, I mean, she fits right in. She knows what the micro-political piece is here. . . . And, you know, she knows how to play the game, and she’s done well.

Teacher Quality

Fall focus groups and interviews indicated that early impressions of corps members as teachers were positive among both their non-corps member peers and their principals, and spring follow-up visits—after principals and fellow teachers had had more time to observe and reflect on their corps member colleagues’ skills—suggested that those impressions were largely unchanged.

Several principals praised the improvements in their teaching that corps members demonstrated across their first year, but they were quick to note that they expected that kind of growth (e.g., acquisition of some of the more intangible teaching skills that veteran teachers have long since perfected) from all beginning teachers—not just corps members. When asked to discuss the progress of their corps member as compared to an early career teacher one principal explained:

NCTC teachers are no different than anyone stepping in the classroom for the first time. What makes them different is the lack of having some sort of teaching experience going into it. But once again, I wouldn’t say that it’s any different than a lateral entry teacher.

Early-career non-corps teachers praised corps members for their positive attitudes, their diligence, and the great relationships they create with students. Although many of them did not spend much time with corps members in their classrooms, their day-to-day interactions with them and the feedback they heard from students informed their opinions about improvements in corps members’ teaching abilities. For example, one non-corps teacher said, “I can just say that it’s obvious that she loves what she does. I mean, her life is math. You can just observe that it’s in everything that she does and she really loves what she does.” Another non-corps teacher recalled the many stories her students told about one corps member:

My students always talked about . . . how they enjoyed her class and she kept it . . . exciting, but they still got the work done. [They were] comparing [her] to . . . [their] other teachers.



Classroom Management

During fall interviews, principals generally agreed that classroom management was the most challenging aspect of instruction for corps members. They attributed the difficulty that most corps members experienced to lack of exposure to classroom teaching and insufficient knowledge of their employing schools’ culture. In their critiques, principals acknowledged that classroom management is perhaps the most difficult skill to master for any new teacher and that, because corps members were at the beginning of their teaching experience and also in a new environment, they were expected to struggle. One principal also conceded that teaching in a high-pressure context like the ones many corps members entered in fall 2012 might test any teacher’s ability to manage a classroom effectively:

I think all of them struggled with classroom management. This is a high-priority school . . . what we call high-priority is a low socioeconomic school, and we have a very diverse school. I think [corps members] would struggle at any school, no matter what the poverty level, even if there was no poverty level, but it is compounded at a high-priority school.

Two principals responded to their corps members’ classroom management issues with targeted professional development. They found that supporting corps members during their challenges and explaining different approaches to resolving classroom management issues was the best way to promote more successful teaching practices:

Obviously, for a brand new teacher, you know, she was struggling a little bit with the classroom management piece, but we’ve fixed that already. . . . [S]he’s caught on really quick. She’ll be good in the long run.

In fall focus groups, corps members agreed with principals that classroom management was the aspect of instruction that they had the most difficulty mastering. From their perspective, their difficulty teaching in high-need schools was compounded by the need to incorporate differentiated learning strategies while also responding to challenging behavior management issues. One corps member explained, “I have some really challenging students who are doing sixth grade for the second time, and I think that’s the hardest [thing]—adapting to those kids who are so burned out that they just don’t want to try anymore.” Another corps member added:

In the classroom, the only thing that I’m kind of struggling with is my behavior management, which is something I knew was going to be an issue. I’m not real firm and not real pushy, so I have a hard time sometimes, getting them to stop and to listen.

By spring, principals agreed that, overall, corps member classroom management had improved. One principal observed that, over the course of the year, his corps member had developed a new understanding of the differences in student learning styles, which improved her ability to create a more effective classroom environment: “I think she’s learned that she needs to move kids around a little bit better—you know, where to sit them, get a feel for who their friends are and if they’re going to be talkative or not.”



A few early-career non-corps teachers were particularly impressed with some corps members’ abilities to manage their classrooms. They cited in particular the highly-organized working environments they established:

If you see her classroom, you can see how organized this woman is, just down to her every file being just so, and every poster being just so, and she has a system for everything, whether it be like calculator loan-outs [of classroom supplies] to students with corresponding numbers. . . . [S]he’s a mathematical thinker, so she’s . . . organized. It’s suiting that she teaches that subject.

Other non-corps teachers cited examples of management improvements made by corps members in their own classrooms that also facilitated positive changes for other teachers and classrooms throughout their school. For example, one early-career teacher discussed a corps member’s work developing a grading system for students that allowed them to track their own progress. She recalled how quickly “[she] went to [The NCTC teacher] before the end of fourth quarter and got that list so [she] could help [her] EC kids try to get caught up.” Another non-corps teacher gave the example of a collaborative effort to create a reward system for students:

[The corps member] did a lot of good things with positive behavior management. [She helped build] a structure for us to give rewards, and we all collaborated [to put] it together. She was the spearhead of that, and . . . I think it helped a lot, it helped a lot of kids.

Delivery of Instruction

When asked to assess the quality of corps members’ delivery of instruction during fall 2012 interviews, most principals were hesitant. They emphasized that, while they believed corps members were knowledgeable about the content they were expected to teach, it was still too early in the school year to fully judge the quality of their instructional delivery; each principal recognized that “delivering material and knowing it well enough to put it in layman’s terms and then build upon that is a talent, and that’s something that is developed over time, and it’s not natural in any way.” By spring, some principals remained cautious. One principal concluded that his corps members “knew their material but they [didn’t] know enough of it to be able to navigate through all the intricacies in the classroom,” and that he was not entirely confident that his corps members could adapt lessons to fit differing student needs.

In addition, initial differences among corps members in terms of their preparation for other aspects of teaching (such as classroom management), as well as challenges in sorting out the impact of new teacher training programs at some employment sites, added to principals’ hesitancy during fall interviews to assess the degree to which each corps members’ instructional delivery skills were attributable to prior training, as opposed to what had been learned since their arrival. Finally, one principal explained that his school was “very much involved in co-teaching, so a lot of what the students are getting right now is being created by the lead teacher.” Because those corps members were not fully responsible for developing or implementing the lessons in their classrooms, he believed that it was unfair to make a definite assessment of their abilities yet.



Despite these early hesitations, a few principals and non-NCTC teachers shared in the fall that they were very impressed by corps members’ knowledge, instructional strategies, and delivery. After observing a corps member multiple times, one principal reported being surprised and impressed that, unlike other new teachers at his school, this corps member maintained a welcoming classroom while also implementing multiple instructional strategies:

She builds over to her lesson plan. She has time constraints for each activity and makes those constraints well-known, and so the students are expected to be on task, and she also makes sure that the rigor of her assignments are what they need to be in order to meet the needs of the students.

A non-NCTC teacher described similar early impressions of the corps member at her school:

She’s right at home in a classroom. The curriculum doesn’t bother her. She’s ready to go ahead, and [she’s] knowledgeable of the curriculum that’s been expected for her to teach, and she has ideas and strategies and the creativity available to get it done.

By spring, many principals noted how pleased they were with the instructional improvements that corps members showed over the course of the year. One principal indicated that his corps member had become more confident in her ability to manipulate the content and adapt to meet student needs. He explained that she

used to be hesitant [and] didn’t think the class could understand the material. She’d be hesitant of how to present it in a way that she knows would work, and now she has the confidence to present it, and she knows, “I’m going to do it this way with this group. I know it will work.”

Non-corps member teachers also became more confident by spring in their corps members’ content knowledge and ability to deliver content effectively. In some cases, news of the advances that corps members made in their classrooms spread throughout their host schools. One non-corps member explained that a corps member had been recommended to her for observation as a model for content delivery and classroom management. In another instance, a non-corps member cited students’ enthusiasm as a marker of the success of another corps member’s instructional strategy and teaching style:

She does a lot of hands-on activities. You know, you walk by her room, she’s got posters they’ve done and . . . a lot of projects that . . . the kids really enjoy doing, instead of just sitting there and listening to a lecture for an hour and a half, so . . . what I’m basing [my opinion] off of is what kids have told me.

Retention

Finally, as noted in several sections above, the Evaluation Team was interested in learning more about what factors were most likely to contribute to a critical desired outcome of the NCTC initiative: the likely return of corps members for additional years of teaching in North Carolina. Since NCTC recruits serve predominately in high-need schools, ensuring retention of cohort members not only could be more important for these schools than for lower-need schools (where continuity of the teaching staff may have less impact), but also potentially will be more



challenging. Most of the corps members who completed their first year remained positive throughout the year about remaining in North Carolina and in low-performing schools—one said, “I would stay [in a low-performing North Carolina school]; I find it really rewarding,” and another added “I want to stay in North Carolina, I want to teach”—but they indicated that several factors would contribute to that decision.

Mirroring findings in the Integration section above, focus group and interview data suggest that the most critical element for retention may be the support networks provided to corps members by the program and by their employing schools. As one principal put it, the key to retention “is pure [teacher] support”:

That’s the key with I[nitially] L[icensed] T[eacher]s or NCTCs [or] any new teacher is just pure support. That’s the reason they leave. You know . . . sometimes it’s the students, but if you’re getting them the support in the classroom to deal with those students, they’ll still stay. You know, what it all comes down to is pure support, so, you know, that’s what we offer [the corps member at our school]. We’re there for her, and she has a mentor, and we give her what we can, you know, and I think that will keep them longer.

One corps member agreed that school “support systems” are absolutely critical:

[S]upport systems can, like, completely make or break your experience. . . . I have had horrible, horrible days at work, and, you know, this one day, I was walking out and I thought, like, I can’t even imagine coming back tomorrow. And then, like, you run into another teacher, and you talk about it, and they put things in perspective, and, you’re like, okay, it’s going to be alright.

Corps members identified two types of support systems that they believed were important, the most prominent of which was employment in schools with encouraging, supportive, and warm environments. Schools with faculty who are, in corps members’ words, like a “family unit” and environments that are “pretty warm” can provide supports that NCTC teachers find attractive and that can contribute to their retention:

I mean, [my employing school is] a family unit. That’s one of the biggest things I look for. Granted, it’s far away from my family, but the teachers are kind of like a family, so it’s . . . a pretty warm environment. It’s not cold. Nobody has given me the cold shoulder—nobody. Everybody is pretty sociable, too. So, yeah. I’m staying.

I’d really like to establish myself as a teacher in one place, because I feel like having that continued relationship with someone, they saw where I was, they can see how I’m growing. I feel like . . . they’ll be able to give better feedback to me. I’ll feel like I’ll be able to grow more if I’m not trying to start over in a new place.

Corps members who indicated they most likely would not want to return to their employing schools for a second year but who indicated that they wanted to remain in teaching said their decisions were largely due to feelings of a lack of support in their particular schools.



The second type of support that impacted corps members’ retention decisions was support from NCTC staff, who many felt provided them with much-needed encouragement and support. One corps member characterized the importance of NCTC program support in this way:

And so I find that the extra support is really helpful for making sure that . . . I can still, like, try new things, because . . . the feedback that I get from [NCTC staff is] really helpful. . . . [O]therwise . . . I probably wouldn’t . . . come back next year.

In addition to being a recruitment incentive, the opportunity for online licensure and support for completion of a master’s degree while teaching serves as a retention incentive as well. Several corps members cited this program component as critical to their decisions to return to their host schools:

CM1: So, being in the NCTC program, being able to teach, earn a paycheck, and still be doing my licensure at the same time, all online, makes it very convenient, and makes [it] very helpful to stay in the program.

CM2: It makes it accessible.

CM1: Yes. Definitely an incentive to stay, because . . . some of us have kids, or your husband’s in the military, right? And [we] can’t . . . teach all day [and then] go to school at night at another university [and still] keep up with your duties as a teacher, because it doesn’t stop at 3:30 or 2:30. It goes on and on and on. . . .I already said to another teacher here who’s doing [a different] alternate route, “I’m so glad I’m in the NCTC program.” So glad. Because it’s more convenient, you know?

Finally, it is important to note that some cohort members emphasized that uncertainly about their contracts, job security, and compensation remained concerns that could negatively influence their decisions to stay. Some expressed a desire for having the option of securing a multiyear contract at the outset:

[T]he one thing that I’m worried about with the program is [that] I think the school should have to, at least, sign us on for our two years that we have to fulfill with [NCTC], or our three years, if we decide to get our master’s, because I don’t think it’s fair to us to say, “Oh, well, you have a job this year, but we don’t know about next year,” and that’s my main issue right now, is what am I going to do next year?

I think that we should have some kind of job security, if we meet what we sign up to meet. If our students are excelling. If . . . we’re doing the best that we can in the situation that we’re put in, we should at least get that [level of support] from the school system.

Since current state statutes allow LEAs to recommend non-renewal for any probationary teacher (teachers without three years of experience and local school board designation as a career-status teacher),38 it may be important for NCTC to clarify during the recruitment process that multi-year contracts are not available for any beginning teacher.

38 NCGS 115c-325



In addition, though it was not an issue raised during the fall focus groups, it is important to note that by the spring, after completing a full year of teaching, compensation started to become an issue for some corps members as they considered plans for ongoing employment in teaching:

If [my family] . . . had another source of income then . . . there’s nothing that could take me from teaching. [N]othing would be able to drag me out of this classroom, but because [I do not], it’s really changed the way I have to live. . . .

I’ve always wanted to be a teacher, always. I even wrote in chalk on the back of my bedroom door and made my sister be my student. So I’ve always wanted to be a teacher. The only thing that would probably change my mind about—and I really hate [this]—about doing something that I love so much would be the pay. . . .

NCTC Program Feedback from Participating Principals

As noted in the introduction to this section, some principals shared general reflections on their perceptions of the overall quality of the NCTC initiative during their interviews. In the fall, when asked to reflect on their overall experiences with NCTC thus far, principals indicated that their limited interactions with program administration had been positive, but they also admitted that they were unclear about the goals and overall focus of NCTC. One principal admitted that the only interaction he had with program administration was during corps member interviews, after which he had had no communication with them directly. Other principals were guardedly optimistic in their appraisals:

This is my first hire of an NCTC person, so, you know, I’m still kind of feeling my way about how I feel about the program, how I feel about the outcomes. Right now, I would say that my experience has been a successful one with NCTC, but I think that I would need to, you know, follow through [and] learn more about the program.

I’ve been impressed with [NCTC], you know. They get back with us. . . . They’re always offering teachers, you know? . . . I’d take another teacher in a heartbeat from them . . . and put them here as soon as possible, if I have the spot. . . . I think . . . they probably need to do a little more frequent visits. I think that would probably be the only thing I would say.

Though in the fall many were unfamiliar with the details of the NCTC initiative, most principals interviewed looked at their partnerships as opportunities to hand-pick a teacher who could make a difference in their schools. While they did not think that having one corps member would change the culture of their schools, they did believe that the impact of a critical mass of competent, successful teachers—whether from NCTC or some other source—would help change their schools’ student performance overall. As one principal of a high-turnover school put it:

I’m looking for that teacher who is fresh out of the box, but is confident in what they’re doing, and is well-trained. If I can get them in here before other [principals] do, then I can get a critical mass of that type of teacher. I’m not just saying NCTC teachers, but just the ability to get that type of teacher in here and get a critical mass, I think that it will improve the overall quality of education at the school.



By spring, some principals began to view their participation in the NCTC program as an investment that they hoped would pay off the longer their corps members stayed at their schools:

I think that each year that he stays here [he] will get better and better. He’s already doing a good job; I just think it will become easier for him. . . . [H]opefully, with the investment and the time [we have committed to him], he chooses on his own accord to stay and continue to teach [here].

When asked in the spring to provide suggestions for the improvement of the NCTC program, principals primarily focused their responses on the need for improvement in training efforts and recruitment strategies. One principal pointed out that, in addition to the difficulty of being a first-year teacher, the challenges that his corps members faced dealing with low-performing students was a major impediment to the success of their experience. Thus, he emphasized that NCTC program staff need to focus their training and recruitment efforts on “counseling these individuals and making sure that they know that their life is going to be very difficult at first, and it’s not going to be easy no matter at what school [they are placed] at, but especially at your Title I schools.” With regard to the interview and selection process, another principal suggested that they (principals) be given more opportunities to interview multiple candidates in order to select the right person they feel is prepared for their particular school context.



Program Accomplishments and Recommendations

This second report built on the baseline data presented in the first report in preparation for the final report’s summative analyses, and it also adds below to the formative recommendations of the first report (Appendix I). This section leads with a summary of program accomplishments from the 2012-13 school year upon which the program can build as it moves forward. The list is followed by recruitment training, and support recommendations that complement those from the first report for NCTC to consider as it moves into its second full year of activity and revises its school-year support model.

Program Accomplishments

Corps member appreciation for NCTC staff is very strong, as is their appreciation for what the program provides them in terms of support, relative to their perceptions of the support received by other lateral entry teachers in their schools.

Principal and non-corps member teacher feedback suggests that many corps members have integrated successfully into their school communities and are valued by their students and peers.

The size of the second cohort of corps members represents a nearly three-fold increase in the number of corps members eligible for employment (84, up from 30)39 over the first year of the program.

In terms of indirect indicators such as GPA and school selectivity,40 the second cohort also represents a marginally stronger field of corps members.

Recruitment

NCTC’s recruitment results (84 employable corps members) fell short of the target for Year 2 (150 corps members). Though the raw number of accepted corps members increased from the first cohort to the second (from 42 to 108), the yield in terms of the proportion of initially-interested contacts who applied and were eventually accepted improved only slightly (from just under 9% to just under 11%), indicating a need to modify and improve some aspects of the recruitment process. Without improvement in this yield, NCTC likely will need to expand its number of contact events yet again to meet acceptance and employment targets—an option that will be very difficult, given current staffing levels.

To improve these results, there are three possible periods in the recruitment process that NCTC may consider addressing: (1) the conversion of interested potential candidates into actual applicants; (2) the conversion of accepted applicants into corps members; and (3) the retention of accepted corps members throughout the summer training period. For the second cohort, the second of these three periods resulted in a yield of just over 50% (108 accepted corps members out of 199 eligible applicants), but an increase in the number of candidates who are accepted

39 Figures do not include five corps members enrolled and employed in Spring 2013. 40 Program-assigned leadership scores, however, were lower for Cohort 2, but not enough data are available yet to determine whether these scores are valid or reliable.



may come at the cost of further compromising the quality level of accepted corps members, as noted earlier. Data on the retention rate of accepted corps members during summer training were not yet available at the time the report was drafted, but for the first cohort, the yield was about 70% (30 out of 42). Therefore, the Evaluation Team recommends that NCTC focus more of its efforts for revisions to the recruitment process on the first period—the conversion of interested potential candidates into applicants—which for both the first and second cohorts resulted in the lowest yields of the three components (23% and 22%, respectively).

Evaluation Team observations of NCTC’s recruitment efforts for the second cohort were nearly identical to those for the first year of recruitment efforts—NCTC visited similar locations (albeit twice as many) and used the same materials and methods to engage and recruit potential candidates. Because the approach to second-year recruitment was nearly identical to the previous year’s approach, many of the recommendations in the first report—expansion of the use of Internet recruitment tools, customization of recruitment activities for multiple audiences, and development of relationships with recruitment event sponsors and hosts (Appendix I)—still apply as NCTC works to increase its recruitment yield even more. This report proposes five additions or refinements to those original recommendations, all of which may help convert more of those who express initial interest into applicants.

Make data-based refinements to the recruitment process. NCTC made several changes to its schedule of recruitment events between 2012 and 2013 (see Table 1), but data from the 2012 and 2013 recruitment cycles suggest several more ways in which NCTC could better coordinate its recruitment efforts to help maximize corps member yield:

o Develop a stronger web-based presence. For the second cohort, by far the largest group of employable corps members (accepted applicants who complete Summer Institute) came from candidates who learned about NCTC via the Internet, whether on college and university career pages, via direct emails, or from visits to the NCTC homepage (the largest source). In addition to developing a website independent of the main NCDPI site (a recommendation from the previous report), NCTC also should seek out ways to increase traffic to its web page—whether through creation of parallel social media websites, efforts to optimize search engine results for terms related to NCTC (such as “teaching in North Carolina” or “alternative licensure in North Carolina”), or other means.

o Dedicate more resources to follow-ups with all who express interest. As noted above, the greatest drop-off in the recruitment process is between the group that expresses interest in the program and the group that eventually applies—across two years, only about 23% of all who express interest end up applying (see Table 4). Identifying ways to interact multiple times and through multiple media with those expressing interest (see, for example, the recommendation below about expanding NCTC recruitment staff) may help improve the conversion of that interest into applications.

o Further refine the recruitment event site list. Only 12 recruitment sites produced more than one employable corps member across two years (Table 1). NCTC may want to consider significantly reducing the number of on-site recruitment events it attends in order to shift some of those resources to the most productive venues.

o Revise strategies for low-yield but highly-selective schools. The reduction suggested above should not be based solely on raw numbers, however; equally as important will be



considerations of other NCTC goals, such as recruitment of the highest-caliber candidates. For example, NCTC may want to revise its approach at events with low yields but higher-caliber candidates by experimenting with new ways to improve yield at those events, rather than dropping the events altogether.

Incorporate current corps members into more of the recruitment process. During spring 2013, NCTC involved a few of their second cohort fall 2012 early signers (and one first cohort corps member) in some recruitment events. NCTC’s efforts to convert interest into applications may be buoyed even further by providing more opportunities for interested candidates to interact with veteran corps members, both in person and virtually. The enthusiasm those corps members have for the program and for the NCTC staff’s support has the potential to sway candidates who might otherwise have decided against submitting an application based on the information provided by staff and in recruitment materials alone. In addition to bringing current corps members to some recruitment events, when feasible, NCTC also could consider arranging for interested recruits to visit current corps member classrooms.

Digitize the application process. The first report suggested that NCTC consider enhancing the NCTC website to streamline the registration process. Establishing an online recruitment event registration and application process would support more effective data collection and management of candidate information. In addition, NCTC should consider providing laptops or tablets at each recruitment event so that candidates can submit at least some of their registration information on-site. This added strategy also could help recruiters manage the occasional overflow of interested candidates—individuals with whom the recruiter is unable to engage can access the registration form and the NCTC website to review additional information.

Provide more information to recruits. Consider enhancing the program’s website and the paper materials provided at each event by including more detailed program information (such as the full list of participating LEAs and the employment locations of active corps members).

Expand recruitment staff. To support all of these recommendations, consider hiring a dedicated recruitment (and retention) specialist. This staff person can be responsible for maintaining the NCTC website, managing recruitment and cohort databases, and supporting NCTC retention efforts. In addition, this specialist could explore ways to expand recruitment year-round (e.g., by organizing smaller recruitment events) and improve recruitment targeting (e.g., by identifying the indirect recruitment methods that have generated interest in the program from candidates who did not participate in the formal recruitment events).

Summer Institute and Ongoing Training

Based on observations of the first Summer Institute and initial corps member feedback, the first report offered three recommendations—extension and expansion of the Summer Institute (including extension of the in-class practicum experience and incorporation of more specialized subject-area training), addition of a pre-Summer Institute in-school experience, and exploration of the possibility of conducting Summer Institute with partners (Appendix I)—all of which targeted development of a more robust training experience. In addition, this report offers three extensions to the original recommendations.



Seek sponsors for summer stipends. To support the expansion of the Summer Institute, and in response to corps member feedback about challenges they faced during the institute, NCTC should pursue sponsorship for stipends or paid internships for corps members, to help defray income lost as a result of participation in the institute. Such support also might enhance the possibility of extending Summer Institute, as recommended in the previous report.

Continue to enhance the summer practicum experience. Based on corps member and principal feedback, NCTC should continue to adjust the Summer Institute practicum experience so that it more closely reflects the school environments in which most corps members will find employment. NCTC already has made one major change in this area for 2013—movement of the practicum to an LEA with more summer opportunities for corps members to work with lower-performing students—but additional modifications could include: incorporating during-practicum sessions (after hours or on the weekends) that extend instruction currently provided only in pre-practicum modules on topics of particular importance to corps members and their potential employers, such as techniques for better classroom management and for meeting the needs of students with special needs; and pairing new corps members with veteran corps members for at least some portion of their summer practicum experience.41

Establish an online community. As an extension of the recommendations in the first report related to the development of a larger online presence for enhancing recruitment and building initial cohort camaraderie (Appendix I), NCTC also should work toward creation of an online forum to support ongoing corps member interaction, resource-sharing, and reflection. While support for the development of more clusters of corps members at school or LEA levels also might help establish similar networks, the online network would help link a much larger number of corps members. The forum would provide a low-cost option for enhancing corps members’ capacity development through provision of an e-community of practice, reduction of feelings of isolation, enhancement of corps member cohesion, and, ideally, closer monitoring of corps member progress and needs. To help establish the online community, NCTC should consider consulting with organizations that have experience with facilitating similar communities, such as TFA or the Center for Teaching Quality.

As noted earlier, NCTC already has begun to address some of the original recommendations by providing a pre-service training event to better prepare incoming corps members for summer training and future employment. Details about the quality, relevance, and usefulness of the first pre-service training will be included in the final report.

Employment

In addition to the inefficiencies noted above with respect to converting interest in the program into applications, the employment rate of trained and hirable corps members in the first cohort (22 of 30 eligible corps members [73%] hired before the start of the 2012-13 school year; Table 4) also is an area of concern. Because NCTC ultimately relies on corps members to find their own employment (albeit with assistance from the program), high under-employment remains a

41 NCTC already has incorporated veteran corps members into other aspects of the Summer Institute experience, such as its new pre-Institute event and two of the three Summer Institute training days.



possibility for future cohorts without some programmatic changes, even given the higher employment rate experienced by the second cohort (87% employed).

Data from the first year of implementation suggest that several recommendations from the first report—de-emphasizing corps members’ expressed preferences with respect to the LEAs in which they would prefer to teach, consulting with programs with goals similar to those of NCTC to identify additional employment strategies, and targeting schools and LEAs that demonstrate a capacity for supporting corps members and their development (Appendix I)—continue to apply. The Evaluation Team will report on the second cohort’s success in finding employment in the final report.

In-School Support and Retention

Three recommendations from the first report originally classified under “Employment”—targeting schools and LEAs that demonstrate a capacity for supporting corps member development; providing additional support for corps members in schools without this capacity; and monitoring closely the experiences of corps members in schools without other corps members (Appendix I)—continue to apply to in-school support and retention efforts. In addition, data from the first full year of implementation suggest that the following recommendations may be of use as well:

Increase support staff. To the extent possible, and in addition to expanding the recruitment staff, allocate program funding to expand the NCTC support staff. As the size of the cohorts increases each year, NCTC will need a staff large enough to provide coverage and support during each phase of the program—pre-service training, Summer Institute, and across the school year. Staff expansion can help ensure that corps members continue to receive the level of support so highly valued by the first cohort.

Expand site visits. An increase in staff size also may allow NCTC to establish a site visit schedule that allows more time for meetings with administrators and mentor teachers at each school. In addition to helping NCTC to establish a stronger presence at each school and to develop more school-level relationships that increase program support, these extended visits also may help NCTC leverage more direct administrative and peer teacher support for corps members—especially for those corps members who otherwise are less likely to receive the on-site mentoring and support they need. Doing so also may increase the chances that NCTC can identify warning signs that corps members are considering leaving the program and leaving their schools.

Support corps member school and LEA integration. NCTC should experiment with ways to help encourage corps member development of on-site peer relations. In addition to increasing opportunities for the development of meaningful mentorships (cited as important by many successful first cohort corps members), these efforts also may help to reduce early feelings of isolation. One option may be to provide strategies and opportunities during Summer Institute and the subsequent employment process that can help them learn how to integrate quickly into their new school communities, such as staff facilitation of in-depth school and LEA visits for groups of new corps members who have found employment in the same area. The experiences of successful first cohort corps members may be particularly helpful as well; find more opportunities for them to share what they learned during their first year about



successful integration—if not during Summer Institute, then perhaps during the already-scheduled during-the-year Saturday sessions.

Plan for 2014. Finally, NCTC should begin to prepare for the end of the first cohort’s second year by identifying strategies to encourage corps members to stay for a third year of teaching, whether at their current schools, somewhere else in their current LEAs, or even somewhere else in the state that can benefit from the presence of an NCTC teacher in the classroom.



Next Steps

Over the course of the 2013-14 school year, the Evaluation Team will continue to monitor expansion of TFA-ENC, but in accordance with our scope of work, we will focus most of our resources on completing our tracking of the development of NCTC. The NCTC evaluation will conduct one more round of site visits to host schools and surveys of corps members (fall 2013), as well as ongoing observations of recruitment events and professional development activities throughout Summer and fall 2013. Data collection will be reduced during spring 2014 as the Team moves toward a summative evaluation and cost-effectiveness analysis.

School Year 2013-14 Tentative NCTC Evaluation Schedule

NCTC school visits (focus groups, interviews)—Early fall 2013

NCTC and TFA-ENC pre-experience surveys—Early fall 2013

NCTC recruitment follow-up observations—fall 2013. In addition to observing recruitment events in fall 2013, the Team also will continue to gauge the effectiveness of the recruitment process through conversations with accepted corps members as part of the focus group sessions planned for fall 2013.

Final NCTC school visits (focus groups, interviews)—Early spring 2014

NCTC and TFA-ENC post-experience survey—spring 2014

Assessment of intermediate outcomes (increases in NCTC and TFA-ENC corps member cohort size; indications of NCTC corps member retention/intent to return, relative to comparable teachers; NCTC corps member employment outcomes in target schools; changes in TFA-ENC corps member quality as a result of expansion, NCTC recruitment, efforts, etc.)—Summer 2014

Data allowing, preliminary assessment of value-added impact of NCTC teachers relative to teachers who enter via other pathways (including TFA)

Final Report: Impact, qualitative assessment, and policy recommendations—July 2014 (draft); fall 2014 (final release)

In addition to these activities, the Team also will continue efforts to more fully catalog and describe programs similar to NCTC already in operation across the state, not only in an effort to differentiate NCTC from these other programs but also in preparation for the summative cost-effectiveness analysis of the program, which will be part of the final report.

A Note Regarding Collection of TFA-ENC Survey Data

The difficulties associated with collecting survey data outlined in the Data and Methods section above suggest that a more efficient approach would be for the CERE-NC Evaluation Team to administer the surveys to TFA-ENC corps members online, as is done with the NCTC corps members. The Team will work with TFA-ENC administrators to determine the least intrusive way for the Team to conduct the 2013-14 TFA-ENC surveys online.



References

Clotfelter, C. T., Ladd, H. F., and Vigdor, J. L. (2010). Teacher credentials and student achievement in high school: A cross-subject analysis with student fixed effects. Journal of Human Resources, 45(3), 655–681.

Cohen, J., Cohen, P., West, S. G., & Aiken, L. S. (2002). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3 ed.). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates;

D’Agostino, J. V., & Powers, S. J. (2009). Predicting teacher performance with test scores and grade point average: A meta-analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 46(1), 146-182.

Heider, K.L. (2005). Teacher Isolation: How Mentoring Programs Can Help. Current Issues in Education, 8(14). Retrieved from http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume8/number14/.

Henry, G. T., Bastian, K. C., & Smith, A. A. (2012). Scholarships to recruit the “best and brightest” into teaching: Who is recruited, where do they teach, how effective are they, and how long do they stay? Educational Researcher, 41(3), 83-92.

Kaiser, A., and Cross, F. (2011). Beginning Teacher Attrition and Mobility: Results from the First through Third Waves of the 2007-08 Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study (NCES 2011-318). U.S. Department of Education. Washington, D.C.: National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2011/2011318.pdf.

Kane, T. J., Rockoff, J. E., & Staiger, D. O. (2008). What does certification tell us about teacher effectiveness? Evidence from New York City. Economics of Education Review, 27(6), 615-631.

Wiersma, W., & Jurs, S. G. (2008). Research methods in education: An introduction (9th ed.). Boston: Pearson.



Appendix A. NCTC Recruitment Observation Protocol

Observer Name: Date and Time: Location of Recruitment: Number and Type of Recruitment Activities/Events Observed: Directions: Please use the following question prompts to record your observations of the NCTC recruitment event(s) you observed. Questions are grouped under four main themes: NCTC Organization/Structure, Potential Recruits/Teachers, NCTC Staff, and Additional Comments. If more than one recruitment event was observed please indicate where appropriate. I. NCTC Organization & Structure 1. How is NCTC described/explained to potential recruits/teachers?

2. What elements of NCTC seem to appeal most to potential recruits/teachers?

3. What elements of NCTC appear of most concern to potential recruits/teachers?

4. What types of resources were used to promote NCTC?

How was NCTC organization/structure described on these resources?

II. NCTC Potential Recruits/Teachers 1. Are potential recruits/teachers responding favorably or unfavorably to the program? Explain

2. Are potential recruits/teachers considering other programs?

If so, which ones and for what reason(s)?



3. Approximately how many potential recruits/teachers were at the event(s) you observed? Please differentiate by event if you observed more than one event.

4. Do potential recruits/teachers express concerns about participating in NCTC?

If so, what are they?

III. NCTC Staff 1. What types of approaches do NCTC staff utilize to recruit students/potential teachers?

2. How do NCTC staff promote the program?

3. Do NCTC staff discuss NC TEACH II?

If so, how do staff differentiate the two programs?

4. Is Teach For America (TFA) discussed with potential recruits/teachers?

If so, how is TFA discussed?

5. Do NCTC staff address potential recruits’/teachers’ concerns, if expressed? How?

IV. Additional Notes, Observations, and/or Suggestions



Appendix B. North Carolina Teacher Corps Member Survey Items and Initial Results

Descriptive statistics for items from the fall 2012 and Spring 2013 survey administrations.

Fall 2012

Factor Item N Mean

Do Not Agree at

All Agree a

Little Somewhat

Agree Strongly

Agree

Very Strongly

Agree

Sen

se o

f C

omm

un

ity

I value having other NCTC members at my school/district/cohort.

18 3.89 0% 0% 33.3% 44.4% 22.2%

I feel isolated at this school.

18 2.28 27.8% 27.8% 33.3% 11.1% 0%

I receive valuable feedback about my teaching from other NCTC members at my school/district/cohort.

18 2.22 38.9% 16.7% 33.3% 5.6% 5.6%

I feel supported by other NCTC members at my school/ district/cohort.

18 2.78 16.7% 22.2% 38.9% 11.1% 11.1%

Having other NCTC members in my school/district/cohort will be or was critical to my decision to return for my second year of teaching.

17 1.88 70.6% 0% 5.9% 17.6% 5.9%

I plan to stay beyond my two-year commitment to teaching.

18 3.61 5.6% 16.7% 22.2% 22.2% 33.3%

Never

Less than once a month Monthly

Bi-weekly to weekly Daily

Str

engt

h o

f C

omm

un

ity Frequency of

discussing school-related issues with other NCTC members

17 2.18 47.1% 11.8% 29.4% 0% 11.8%

Frequency of participation in non-school-related activities with other NCTC members

17 1.65 64.7% 5.9% 29.4% 0% 0%

Note: Items either asked about school (n = 2), district (n = 15), or cohort (n = 1) depending on whether the respondent indicated that he or she was the only NCTC teacher at his or her school and/or district.



Spring 2013

Factor Item N Mean Strongly Disagree Disagree

Neither Agree nor Disagree Agree

Strongly Agree

Sen

se o

f C

omm

un

ity

I value having other NCTC members at my school/district/cohort.

23 3.83 0% 0% 43.5% 30.4% 26.1%

I feel isolated at this school.

23 2.87 17.4% 26.1% 26.1% 13.0% 17.4%

I receive valuable feedback about my teaching from other NCTC members at my school/district/cohort.

23 2.83 0% 34.8% 47.8% 17.4% 0%

I feel supported by other NCTC members at my school/ district/cohort.

23 3.26 0% 21.7% 39.1% 30.4% 8.7%

Having other NCTC members in my school/district/cohort will be or was critical to my decision to return for my second year of teaching.

20 2.70 10.0% 35.0% 40.0% 5.0% 10.0%

I plan to stay beyond my two-year commitment to teaching.

23 4.09 4.3% 0% 8.7% 56.5% 30.4%

Never

Less than once a month Monthly

Bi-weekly to weekly Daily

Str

engt

h o

f C

omm

un

ity Frequency of

discussing school-related issues with other NCTC members

23 1.70 52.2% 26.1% 21.7% 0% 0%

Frequency of participation in non-school-related activities with other NCTC members

23 1.57 69.6% 17.4% 4.3% 4.3% 4.3%

Note: Items either asked about school (n = 0), district (n = 20), or cohort (n = 3) depending on whether the respondent indicated that he or she was the only NCTC teacher at his or her school and/or district.



Appendix C. Technical Notes: North Carolina Teacher Corps Member Survey

As a result of a) a review of the performance of the 2011-12 survey and b) NCTC programmatic changes at the start of the 2012-13 school year, the Evaluation Team determined that six of the eight survey items and response options required adjustment. The Team decided to introduce the changes in the spring 2013 administration in order to improve data collection for the first cohort of NCTC members, even though doing so meant that it would not be possible to make direct comparisons between the fall 2012 pre-experience and spring 2013 post-experience results for those six items.

First, the Evaluation Team determined that the survey did not offer respondents a balanced set of responses for those items. The Team adopted a five-point Likert scale for the first six items of the spring 2013 survey that provided corps members with response options that reflected a more balanced disagreement-to-agreement continuum.

Second, after the first cohort of NCTC members found employment, it was evident that most were not employed in clusters at the school level but instead were clustered at the LEA level; as a result, the Team adjusted the wording for Items 1, 3, 4, and 5 on the survey to reflect this higher level of clustering.

Reliability and validity evidence for the survey was collected in fall 2011 and spring 2012 (with TFA-ENC data) using multiple psychometric methods at both the item and scale levels of analysis. The analyses included a rational review of the survey and of each item, descriptive statistics analysis (e.g., arithmetic means, standard deviations, distributional properties), exploratory factor analysis (EFA), confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and reliability analysis. This same analytical strategy—with the exception of EFA and CFA analyses, which were not appropriate due to the small sample size—was conducted for the fall 2012 and spring 2013 NCTC survey data. The results of these analyses are detailed on the following pages.



Descriptive Statistics

Descriptive statistics were analyzed at the item and scale levels of analysis. The analysis consisted of measures of central tendency (e.g., median and arithmetic mean) and dispersion (e.g., standard deviation), as well as item- and scale-level distributional properties (Table C.1 and C.2).

Table C.1. Fall 2012 Descriptive Statistics.

Item/Factor n Mean SD Skewness Kurtosis Item 1 18 3.89 0.76 0.195 –1.118 Item 2 18 2.28 1.02 0.122 –1.067 Item 3 18 2.22 1.22 0.629 –0.257 Item 4 18 2.78 1.22 0.256 –0.359 Item 5 17 1.88 1.45 1.200 –0.311 Item 6 18 3.61 1.29 –0.461 –0.896 Item 7 17 2.18 1.38 0.937 –0.023 Item 8 17 1.65 0.93 0.828 –1.395 Sense of Community

17 3.01 0.73 0.131 –0.840

Strength of Community

16 1.78 0.98 1.008 –0.092

Note: Item 2 was reverse scored when computing the descriptive statistics for the composite (e.g., 1 = 5, 2 = 4) because it is worded negatively; however, scoring for Item 2 was not reversed at the item level of analysis.

Table C.2. Spring 2013 Descriptive Statistics.

Item/Factor n Mean SD Skewness KurtosisItem 1 23 3.83 0.83 0.352 –1.475 Item 2 23 2.87 1.40 0.257 –1.009 Item 3 23 2.83 0.72 0.273 –0.893 Item 4 23 3.26 0.92 0.205 –0.644 Item 5 20 2.70 1.08 0.672 0.550 Item 6 23 4.09 0.90 –1.820 5.502 Item 7 23 1.70 0.82 0.647 –1.190 Item 8 23 1.57 1.08 2.189 4.467 Sense of Community 20 3.23 0.59 0.954 1.731 Strength of Community

23 1.63 0.84 1.361 1.423

Note: Item 2 was reverse scored when computing the descriptive statistics for the composite (e.g., 1 = 5, 2 = 4) because it is worded negatively; however, scoring for Item 2 was not reversed at the item level of analysis.



Reliability Analysis

Internal consistency reliability (Cronbach’s coefficient alpha [α]) was examined for both factors (Tables C.3 and C.4). By default, α between .70 and .90 is considered desirable. Both factors demonstrated acceptable levels of α, although Sense of Community fell trivially below the arbitrary .70 cutoff.

Table C.3. Fall 2012 Alpha Coefficients.

Factor n α Sense of Community

17 .67


16 .83

Note: α = Cronbach’s coefficient alpha.

Table C.4. Spring 2013 Alpha Coefficients.

Factor n α Sense of Community

20 .62


23 .70

Note: α = Cronbach’s coefficient

Factor Analysis (TFA-ENC Data)

This section presents the factor analyses conducted for the TFA fall 2011 and spring 2012 TFA survey. Because the current NCTC sample size is insufficient to conduct factor analyses, last year’s analyses are presented to support the psychometric merit of the instrument and the continued use of the instrument for the NCTC evaluation. When NCTC membership increases (school year 2013-14), an acceptable sample size should be available to rerun the same analyses using NCTC data only. Results of those analyses will be provided in the final NCTC report.

Both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) were conducted in fall 2011 and spring 2012 (Figure C.1, following page). The 2-factor model demonstrated acceptable fit in fall 2011 (χ2 = 25.249; p = .153; CFI = .97; TLI = .95; RMSEA = .07; SRMR = .06) according to accepted guidelines for determining model fit. The 2-factor model was then cross-validated in spring 2012 (χ2 = 31.931; p = .032; CFI = .94; TLI = .92; RMSEA = .08; SRMR = .05). With one exception, the items loaded well onto factors that matched their grouping on the survey instrument: Five of the first six items onto Factor 1 (Sense of Community) and the final two items onto Factor 2 (Strength of Community). The exception (“I plan to stay beyond my two-year commitment to teaching”) also was categorized by a very low mean, relative to the other items in the first group of questions. It is possible that, unlike the other five items in this grouping, there are many more outside factors—factors beyond those

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Appendix D. Focus Group and Interview Protocols, Fall 2012 and Spring 2013

NC Teacher Corps Member Focus Group Questions

Overall / Introduction

How would you describe your NCTC experience to this point?

Initiative Effectiveness / Recruitment and Retention

Did you consider other teaching opportunities? If so, what were they, and why did you choose NCTC?

What do you think are the benefits of being placed with other NCTC members at your school? What are the drawbacks?

Do you think being placed with other NCTC members affects your thinking about returning next year to this school?

Have you experienced any feelings of isolation during your time here at [name of school]? In [name of community]? If yes:

o What role does being away from your family play in these feelings?

o What role does being away from a larger city play?

o What other factors do you think contribute to these feelings of isolation?

o Has being with other NCTC members helped reduce these feelings? If so, how? If not, why not?

Do you plan to remain in teaching at this school next year? Why or why not? Are you considering remaining in teaching beyond your commitment? Why or why not?



Non-NCTC New Teacher Focus Group Questions

Overall / Introduction

How would you describe your first-year experience to this point? Your experience working with NCTC members at your school? [Probe for positive and negative interactions]

Initiative Effectiveness / Recruitment and Retention

When you were an undergraduate, were you aware of opportunities like Teach for America or NCTC [Insert brief description of each program here, if necessary]?

o Did you consider applying for a position through one or more of those programs? Why or why not?

o Would you make the same choice again? Why or why not?

How would you describe the preparedness for teaching in this school of the NCTC teachers? Do you believe they were as well-prepared for their first year of teaching as you were?

o Could you please elaborate on your perceptions of their content knowledge mastery?

o Could you please elaborate on your perceptions of their instructional delivery effectiveness?

o Could you please elaborate on your perceptions of their classroom management skills?

NCTC places teachers in groups of three or more at some schools. Do you think that having several NCTC teachers at your school has impacted their individual or collective effectiveness?

Have you experienced any feelings of isolation during your time here at X [name of school]? In [name of community]?

o What role does being away from your family play in these feelings?

o What role does being away from a larger city play?

Do you think NCTC teachers feel isolated at this school? In this community? Why or why not?

Are you planning to return to this school next year? Why or why not?

o [If returning]: Are you considering remaining in teaching for more than two years? Why or why not?

o [If not planning to return]: Are you planning to return to teaching somewhere else? If so, where?

o [If not planning to return to teaching]: Are you planning to stay in education in some capacity? If so, describe.



Principal Interview Items

How would you describe your experience with the NCTC teachers to this point?

What supports and/or resources do you provide specifically to your NCTC teachers?

How prepared were NCTC staff for teaching at your school?

o Could you please elaborate on your perceptions of their content knowledge mastery?

o Could you please elaborate on your perceptions of their instructional delivery effectiveness?

o Could you please elaborate on your perceptions of their classroom management skills?

How well do you think NCTC teachers are assimilating a) in the school, b) with other teachers, and c) in the community?

Do you sense that your NCTC teachers feel isolated at this school? Why or why not?

[If more than one NCTC teacher is assigned to the school] To what extent do you think the fact that there are multiple Corps Members at your school impacts their individual or collective effectiveness? In what ways?

What is your sense of the likelihood that your NCTC teachers will choose to continue teaching at your school next year? What about after their commitment to NCTC ends?

How would you characterize differences (if any) between your NCTC teachers and your other early-career teachers who are not affiliated with NCTC?

o To what extent do you think your NCTC teachers are more or less effective in the classroom than your other early-career teachers?

o Are there certain content areas for which you think your NCTC teachers are better suited?

How do you think the presence of NCTC teachers [will impact/has impacted] the culture of your school?

What are your impressions of the NCTC program at this point? What improvements would you suggest?



Appendix E. Coding Scheme for Focus Group Results

Integration: the degree to which corps members work their way in or are worked into different contexts associated with their placement. Integration Community: community living (i.e. integration into a rural context) Integration School: degree to which corps members have been assimilated into the school

culture; i.e, corps members are interacting well/poorly with school members Isolation: the degree to which corps members feel disconnected from based on proximity Isolation Family: discussion about feelings of separation from family Isolation Geographic: feelings of separation due to distance from where they want to be (e.g.,

far from city/cultural centers) Professional Development: pre-service and on-going training/mentorship that bolster teacher quality PD Ongoing Training: Catch-all “in school” professional development training

o PD Ongoing Training ACC (TFA Only): Once a month TFA-ENC training o PD Ongoing Training Mentoring: mention of mentor relationship with TFA Staffer

assigned to their area, or mentoring at the local school, any level of guidance from anyone else who is helping them

PD Preparation: Non-corps member’s perceptions of corps members preparedness for the teaching experience o PD Preparation Cultural Sensitivity: training targeted specifically toward being sensitive

to cultural differences that corps member may encounter in their school; e.g. working with rural students from low SES backgrounds, ethnic differences,

o PD Preparation Pre-service Training: Explicit discussion about pre-service training experiences or lack thereof

PD Support Systems: Informal or non-TFA-provided professional development support, such as local PLCs, organic networks of corps members, etc.

Placement: How teachers get assigned to schools and classes (content area) within schools Placement Pods: intentionally placing 3 or more teachers within the same school Recruitment: How teachers became a part of the program; also, whether a state-based program (like NCTC) would have appealed to them Recruitment Selectivity: use of specific criteria to select teachers or comparing/contrasting

teachers on the basis of their quality Retention: indication of a teacher’s (TFA & Non-TFA) intention to stay at their school, in teaching or education. (Typically beyond the two year commitment) Retention Education: will remain in education, not necessarily as a teacher Retention Same School: will remain in teaching at the same school Retention Teaching: will remain in teaching, but not at the same school Retention Leavers: do not intend to stay in teaching or education



Teacher Quality: the perceived quality of a teacher in any of a number of categories including but not limited to effectiveness Teacher Quality +/- Tenacity: description of corps member’s ability to persist in the face of

adversity/challenges Teacher Quality Classroom Management: Any technique or strategy utilized to run the

classroom effectively and/or behavioral management of students Teacher Quality Delivery of Instructional Content: comments about delivery of instruction

that has to do with the topic itself: e.g.she really knows her geometry (one of three aspects of effectiveness)

Teacher Quality Delivery of Instructional Pedagogy: comments about the delivery on instruction that has to do with how the content is taught; e.g. she really knows how to teach geometry (one of three aspects of effectiveness)

Teacher Quality Delivery of Instruction Rigor (Broader): Includes expectations for students as well as the depth of instruction beyond the minimum standards (strategy + concept) (one of three aspects of effectiveness)

Teacher Quality Non-TFA TQ: (Catch All) for discussions by non-TFAers about their own teaching quality or by TFAers about the quality of their non-TFA colleagues

Program Feedback from Participating Principals: The extent to which participants provide feedback on the NCTC program as a whole. NCTC Program School Culture: The extent to which participants feel having an NCTC

teacher in the school impacts the school culture.



Appendix F. NCTC Recruitment and Pre-Training Calendar, 2012-13

PHASE I RECRUITMENT - COHORT II WHAT TIMEFRAME

Career Fairs, Info Sessions, and Career Site Postings

September 11th through November 28th

Application Deadline November 21st

Interviews December 3rd through December 20th

Candidates Notified No later than January 4th

PHASE II RECRUITMENT - COHORT II WHAT TIMEFRAME

Career Fairs, Info Sessions, and Career Site Postings

January 23rd through June 6th

Application Deadline June 12th (originally March 15th)

Interviews March 20th through June 17th

Candidates Notified No later than June 21st

COHORT II TRAINING WHAT TIMEFRAME

Praxis Preparation, Interview Skills, TBD

January 15th through June 30th (online and face to face options, study materials for check out), with pre-service training June 1st.

Online coursework May/June

Summer Institute July 15th-August 2nd

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Appendix H. NCTC 2013 Summer Institute Modules

Cohort II Training (July 15th-August 2nd)

Training Theme Module Title

Day 1: Setting the Stage

Introduction of 2013-14 NCTC Candidates Overview of NCTC Handbook NC Educator Code of Ethics, NCBT Policy First Days of School – Elementary, Middle, and

Secondary Breakaway Sessions Introduction of Mentors

Day 2: Effective Instructional Design(group sessions arranged by content/grade level)

Bringing the Family Together – Cohort I and II Standard Course of Study – 21st Century Skills Effective Instruction – Elementary, Middle, and

Secondary Breakaway Sessions

Day 3: Effective Instructional Design (group sessions arranged by content/grade level)

Navigating the Network Creating a Successful and Safe Learning Environment Field Guide Closure and Next Steps

Days 4-14: Practical Application (In-Class Practicum)

Student Teaching and Planning with Mentor Roundtable Learning (Days 7, 9, and 12)

Day 15: Putting It All Together

Welcome and Reflection Teacher Evaluation Process Seclusion and Restraint De-escalation/Behavior Closing and Celebration

Cohort I Follow-Up Training (July 16th-17th)

Training Theme Module Title

Day 1: Sharpening the Saw

Bringing the Family Together – Cohort I and II Beyond Survival: Becoming a Teacher Leader Home Base and True North Logic 21st Century Continued Critical Thinking

Day 2: Enhancing Instruction for Student Success

Enhancing Instruction for Student Success Reflections/Closure



Appendix I. Formative Recommendations from the First Report

A (*) indicates formative recommendations that remain valid as NCTC enters its second year, based on analysis of data from NCTC’s first year.

Recruitment

Last year’s recruitment results (29 corps members) fell well short of the target for Year 1 (100 corps members), despite the fact that NCTC recruitment efforts attracted interest from a large number of people (481)—a candidate-to-corps-member recruitment yield of only about 6%. In addition to the changes already under way in NCTC’s recruitment process for 2012-13 (noted above), Evaluation Team observations of NCTC recruitment efforts and reviews of recruitment strategies practiced by similar programs suggest several other actions NCTC should consider, not only to raise the raw number of potential candidates but also to reach a more diversified candidate pool and potentially increase recruitment yield.

*Expand the use of Internet recruitment tools. The first year of NCTC recruiting suffered from a late start and did not meet expected targets, but with an earlier start for 2012-13, NCTC may be able to attract a larger number of interested candidates. To ensure that NCTC draws from the largest pool possible, the program should consider an expanded marketing approach that includes a stronger Internet presence. For example, establishing a unique URL for NCTC, one that is independent from the current host site (the NCDPI website), could help establish a clear identity for NCTC as a stand-alone program. In addition, providing potential corps members access to the website while at the recruitment event would expedite the application process and also reduce the number of recruits lost as a result of lag-time between recruitment and application, or general resistance to the steps necessary to complete a paper application. Also, active recruitment strategies that include popular social networking sites (such as Facebook) have proven successful for similar organizations (like TFA)42—particularly for recruitment of currently-enrolled university students—and may help NCTC to boost its number of potential recruits. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the expansion of Internet recruitment tools may provide NCTC with a platform on which to begin to support the development of the cohort camaraderie cited by many TFA-ENC corps members as an important component of their early TFA experiences (see Employment recommendations, below).

*Customize recruitment activities for multiple audiences. Acquiring as much information as possible about the organization of and anticipated vendor attendance for each recruitment event ahead of time may be beneficial to NCTC recruitment efforts. Although the information NCTC will present at each event likely will be similar (e.g., requirements and benefits of the program), it may be helpful to prepare materials and discussion points that identify the strengths of NCTC in comparison to the other programs present at a given recruitment event. As noted by TFA-ENC corps members in focus groups, these discussion points might include ways to set appropriate expectations for candidates with respect to both the opportunities and the challenges that they will face in targeted schools.

42 http://www.facebook.com/teachforamerica; see also https://www.facebook.com/peacecorps for another example.



*Develop relationships with recruitment event sponsors and hosts. Given the annual nature of university and regional career fairs, it may be beneficial for NCTC to begin to create and sustain multiple ongoing relationships at each recruitment site to support recruitment efforts beyond official recruitment events. For example, one important goal on college and university campuses might include leveraging those relationships to make connections to student organizations and clubs that share values similar to those of NCTC.43 In addition, NCTC may want to consider establishing a presence in a wider array of venues, including those that capture mid-career candidates, such as military personnel who are exiting service (for example, NCTC could enlist additional help from Troops to Teachers, which was the referral source for some members of the inaugural cohort). Finally, relationship-building may help ensure not only access to but also possibly preferential treatment at future recruitment opportunities, especially at the schools at which NCTC has experienced the most success (for 2012, sites like East Carolina University and North Carolina A&T; Table 1, above).

Summer Institute

*Extend and expand the Summer Institute. In addition to the planned training extensions for 2013 described above and in Appendix G, as budget, recruitment, and partnering allow, NCTC should consider beginning Summer Institute earlier in the summer to allow for a longer Institute (e.g., incorporating more of the interactive sessions with trainers that appeared to work so well, covering in greater depth the mechanics of teaching, and extending other modules so that they can better model effective teaching practices) and the opportunity to extend not only the cohort’s time in the practicum but also the number and variety of experiences available to corps members (e.g., subject variety [especially for elementary teachers], peer observation, and formal reflection). In comparison, even at seven weeks long, the more expansive TFA Summer Institute experience still did not seem long enough to some of the TFA-ENC corps members who participated in focus groups and reflected on the impact of Summer Institute on their first year of teaching. Of particular importance will be finding ways to provide more in-depth training in specialized fields and for working with special-needs populations.

Offer pre-Summer Institute in-school experiences. NCTC should consider providing corps members—especially those who are offered admission during the Winter acceptance window (Appendix G)—with time in schools before Summer Institute begins, to help give the corps members some context for the training they receive during Summer Institute. While this in-school experience does not necessarily need to involve direct instruction, even a week of in-school observations prior to the Summer Institute could help provide the schema necessary for corps members to benefit optimally from the information they receive during Institute about teaching at the first Institute, this instruction was delivered largely in an experiential vacuum for most corps members. It may also help address the issue raised by several TFA-ENC corps members regarding disconnects between their pre-experience impressions of the work ahead and the realities they faced once they arrived at their schools.

*Seek Summer Institute partnerships. NCTC should consider partnering with one or more of the other new teacher summer training and induction programs offered across the state every

43 For example, the Carolina College Advising Corps at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and groups sponsored by the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership at Duke University.



summer (listed below). These partnerships may be able to help the program by (a) reducing costs, (b) pooling intellectual resources and expertise (for example, via access to best-practices instruction on training modules common to most or all of the partnering institutes), and (c) supporting the development of a larger, statewide network of first-year teachers. With assistance from NCTC and the other partnering organizations, such a network could contribute to the formation of a supportive community that could assist its members with securing jobs and other early-career struggles (such as resource and curriculum development). In addition, introduction of some commonality across summer licensure and training programs for new teaches may help move the state toward delivery of a common set of messages, values, and beliefs for all starting teachers, regardless of the portals from which those teachers come. In addition, a common Summer Institute may help with candidate employment by allowing the state to host a larger, on-site job fairs at the joint Institute (to be attended by LEA representatives).

Potential partners might include New Teacher Support Program (NTSP, also RttT-funded), NC Teach (ECU), Teach for America, NCDPI’s District and School Transformation division (with whom NCTC already has partnered for the first Summer Institute), Troops to Teachers, NC INSPIRE (UNC-General Administration), and North Carolina New Schools Project’s NC STEM Teacher Education Program (NC STEP)—many of which operate lateral entry programs similar to NCTC’s. NCTC already has begun to explore these partnerships via meetings in Fall 2012 with representatives from NC INSPIRE, NCSTEP, and NTSP. In an ideal partnership arrangement, NCTC would not subsume its whole Summer Institute into the larger common Summer Institute, but would instead merge only those training segments that are common across most or all of the summer programs (e.g., instruction on Common Core/Essential Standards and on basic teaching procedures); training modules specific to NCTC and its mission would continue to be offered during a separate, NCTC-only session.

Employment

Opportunities for intentional placement of NCTC corps members were rare for the first cohort, given cohort size and the late start of the program, and they are likely to remain challenging, as long as primary responsibility for securing employment is left up to the candidates. Those opportunities should grow, however, as the program establishes longer-term relationships with target LEAs and schools, and as cohort sizes grow. The following “best practices”—derived in part from the Evaluation Team’s analysis of TFA-ENC focus group and survey data from 2011-12—are offered in anticipation of the possibility for more active, direct, and extensive involvement in the employment of future NCTC cohorts.

*Dedicate more resources to multiple components of the employment process. Early evidence suggests that employment of every corps member in a timely fashion (i.e., before the start of the school year) is likely to be a recurring challenge until the program is better established in the target LEAs; even several weeks into the 2012-13 schools year, 7 of 29 corps members still were not employed. As time and resources allow, NCTC should look for ways to increase its involvement in three components of that process. First, NCTC should consider de-emphasizing the importance of corps members’ expressed preference with respect to the LEAs in which they would most like to find employment; taking corps member preferences into consideration at this stage in the program’s development not only reduces their chances



for employment but also may dampen enthusiasm among LEAs—especially those least preferenced by corps members—for the program. In addition, data from TFA-ENC corps members indicate that NCTC corps members are likely to benefit from increased availability of information about the employment process—from information about anticipated hiring calendars to strategies for interviewing to the types of positions for which they are most likely to secure employment (especially when those positions are in areas that typically will be out-of-field for most corps members, such as special education). As noted above, NCTC already has begun this process by developing plans to offer interview coaching for the 2013-14 cohort. Finally, NCTC may benefit from consulting with programs with similar goals to identify additional strategies for promoting individual corps members for specific positions.

*Target schools and LEAs that demonstrate a capacity for supporting corps members and their development, and provide additional support for corps members in schools that do not. Based on feedback from TFA-ENC corps members, it likely will be beneficial for NCTC to assess all of the potential host schools within the set of approved schools prior to future NCTC member employment for their ability to provide adequate support to corps members. Ideal employment sites are host schools with cultures or structures that facilitate a sense of community and integration for all staff members. Evidence from TFA-ENC focus groups suggests that, in addition, NCTC should investigate ways to provide corps members with techniques for successful school integration, both prior to employment and throughout their first year of teaching.

*Monitor closely the experiences of corps members employed in schools at which no other corps members are employed. Regardless of the eventual size of the typical NCTC cohort, school-level and even LEA-level single corps member employment is likely to continue. In some cases, such employment outcomes may be ideal, depending on corps member disposition and the employment site context. In other cases, as indicated by TFA-ENC focus group data, such isolation may negatively impact retention. In addition, expansion of the availability and use of social networking tools (such as Facebook or Google+) to keep corps members connected not only to each other but also to the wider pool of new teachers may help. The Evaluation Team will take advantage of the large number of single-corps member employment situations in 2012-13 to gather more data about the impact of such situations for future reports.

Attempt to fit school-level cohort size to school, LEA, and corps member needs. Two lessons from the 2011-12 TFA-ENC pods were that bigger is not always better, and one size does not fit all. Optimization of the number of corps members at a given school appears to depend on LEA and school needs and cultures. For example, evidence from TFA-ENC focus groups suggests that a high concentration of corps members within a specific school is not necessary for ensuring cohort support if several faculty members at the host school share several characteristics in common with their fellow NCTC teachers, such as age, experience level, or teaching philosophy. Even so, there does appear to be in most cases an optimal range of between three and five corps members—larger school-level clusters (typically six or more corps members) often hinder healthy integration of corps members into the larger school community, and two-teacher clusters may not be large enough to support NCTC’s retention goal.

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