Anne Arundel, Carroll, Baltimore, Howard and Harford counties offer financial incentives to attract and maintain teachers, but little data shows they actually work.
“It seems pretty clear that incentives up the number of applicants, but whether they work in the sense of raising student achievement and keeping the teachers” is unknown, said Ben Schaefer, program manager at the Washington, D.C.-based National Commission on Teaching and America?s Future, a nonprofit that promotes high-quality teachers.
Now a state lawmaker is seeking additional rewards to bring teachers to hard-to-staff schools, adding to the existing programs, which range from $1,000 signing bonuses in Howard County to four-year scholarships in Baltimore County.
The bill, sponsored by Baltimore City Sen. Nathaniel McFadden, D-District 45, would give a $1,500 statewide tax credit to teachers who agree to teach in area of critical need subjects, such as math and science, or to low-performing schools.
Such legislation is necessary because of Maryland?s increasing teacher shortage, according to the proposal. Nearly 8,000 teachers were imported from other states and countries last school year, according to the state department of education.
The Virginia Department of Education is one system actively monitoring the success of a pilot incentive program it launched in 2004 for difficult-to-staff schools.
“It?s clear that the incentives had some impact, but I think it will take some additional analysis and data” to fully gauge it, said Charles Pyle, director of communications for the department.
The incentives offered in rural Caroline County ? $15,000 for new teachers to relocate there and $3,000 to retain qualified teachers ? have decreased turnover, he said.
After the first year of the program, teacher attrition immediately dropped. By the second year, more teachers left the school system, but at a lower rate than before the program was initiated, he said. Schools may be better off putting resources into teacher retention, experts say.
“The big incentives for teachers are subjective instead of monetary ? teachers like to go to schools where students come to school prepared to learn ? they like to go to schools where parents care,” said Erling Boe, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania?s Graduate School of Education.
To avoid teacher attrition, schools should invest in teacher development, improved working conditions and rewarding teachers for good performance, Schaefer said.
“It?s easy to look at the shortages at schools and say we need more teachers, but then you look and see that half of all new teachers leave in five years,” he said. “If you can retain those teachers, you don?t need as much money on the front end.”
McFadden, who introduced a similar tax credit bill last year, did not return calls seeking comment.
