Investigating the Relationship between Adherence to Connecticut's Teacher Education and Mentoring Program and Teacher Retention. REL 2020-022

Connecticut is one of many states that implements an induction program for beginning teachers to mitigate high turnover and lower efficacy among early-career teachers. The state's Teacher Education and Mentoring (TEAM) Program requires beginning teachers to complete five instructional modules, have a certain number of contact hours with a mentor, and submit four reflection papers. This study was conducted to explore the relationship between adherence to TEAM Program requirements and the outcome of interest-teacher retention. The results suggest that teachers who completed more of the program requirements were more likely to stay in the same district and in the Connecticut public school system. Adherence varied across program requirements; completion rates were highest for the requirements related to module completion and lowest for the requirements related to contact hours with mentors. For the program requirements related to module completion and teacher-mentor contact hours, adherence was higher for teachers in the state's 30 lowest performing districts than for teachers in higher performing districts. [For the appendixes, see ED607770; for the study brief, see ED607768; and for the study snapshot, see ED607769.]