Mary M. Harris

Special Educators in a Regional Induction Program

Over a 4-year period, eleven first-year special educators participated with 93 other first-year teachers in a regional induction program, Project Launch. District and campus administrators in a 13-county rural area recruited participants and designated mentor teachers for each beginner. We compared the experiences of special educators to other participants in Project Launch, considering their action plan goals, their success in achieving their goals, and their retention in teaching and in special education. We found that special educators differed from other participants in identification of goals, with special educators significantly more likely to select goals in “responding to individual differences” and “relating to groups or the community” and less likely to select goals that involved “applying content knowledge.” Special educators were generally successful in fulfilling their first-year goals and were retained in teaching for at least five years to the same degree as other participants, with all except one of those retained remaining in special education. From these findings, we conclude that the general model for induction employed in Project Launch, with its focus on special education through the mentoring component, was effective in supporting special educators in their first year of teaching in a rural state.

What Matters to Career K-12 Educators

Case studies about issues arising from education policy were written between 2003 and 2011 by doctoral candidates in Curriculum and Instruction who were career K–12 educators. Literary analysis was employed in grouping 57 case studies, which described primarily situations that occurred in school districts in one large metropolitan area, by topic and theme. Case studies of high school reform; development of programs for vulnerable students; high-stakes testing provisions of No Child Left Behind with attention to the variables of time, alignment, grouping for instruction, professional development, and teacher quality; and ethical issue were considered. Conclusions reinforce concerns about the ability of current federal accountability and related state policy to support the curriculum or the qualities of teachers needed by today’s public school students. To be successful, a locally implemented innovation must achieve an unlikely confluence of policy compliance, administrative support, and a common vision at least at the campus level.