INTRODUCTION
School districts must take measures to recruit and retain minority teachers. School systems are becoming more diverse with student populations. The teaching populations at these schools need to reflect the student demographics (Tennessee Department of Education, 2006). Tennessee Department of Education has taken measures to recruit minorities into teaching by creating PASS (Partnership to Assist School Success), which offers minority high school seniors a financial aid package for majoring in education and repaying the package through teaching in Tennessee. The state has also established a task force that comes up with ideas to retain minority teachers, such as offering support of obtaining advanced degrees.
The research will be based on a descriptive quantitative research. “In a descriptive study, no attempt is made to change behavior or condition”; the situation is analyzed as it is (Hopkins, 2000). For this study, the district as it currently stands will be studied to identify what steps are being taken to recruit minorities to the district and what steps are being taken to keep minorities in the district according to members of the district. In order to obtain measurable outcomes of the study a Likert-type scale will be created. A Likert scale shows “a set of attitude statements” (Underwood, 2008). Using this scale, “subjects are asked to express agreement or disagreement of a five point scale. Each degree of agreement is given a numerical value from one to five. Thus a total numerical value can be calculated from all the responses” (Underwood). For this study, the subjects will express their opinions in degrees from very encouraging to very discouraging. Very encouraging receiving a numeric value of four and very discouraging receiving a numeric value of 1. The factors that receive the highest values will be those that the subjects find very encouraging as far as staying in the profession.
The population for this study is minority teachers in Orangeburg Consolidated School District 4. All teachers at every school and every grade level will be encouraged to fill out and return the survey.
A survey will be used to conduct the study. For time sake, the survey was created by another researcher. For the actual study, the survey shown will be edited by the researcher of this study. The survey was chosen because it would be easy to administer to a large group, there is no training involved, and the population could respond with anonymity. The first part of the survey requests general background information from the subject. The second part allows the subject to determine the best recruitment and retention strategies for the district, and the 3rd part is an open ended question that allows the subject to add any details that he/she feels is vital to the research.
In order to conduct the study many small steps had to be taken. (1) Permission had to be granted by Argosy University being that the researcher is a current student and conducting the research for studies at the university. (2) Permission had to be granted by the school district itself since its employees were going to be asked to supply the information. (3) The individual school principals had to be contacted for permission to administer the surveys to the minority faculty. (4) A representative at the school was chosen to pass out surveys and collect them. This person was also informed of the anonymity expectation. (5) Surveys were collected after a week from each school. (6) Surveys were analyzed by the researcher.
The collected surveys will be analyzed. The surveys contained open ended and close ended responses. For the close ended responses, which included responses such VE, E, D, and VD, a chart will be created to show how many participants responded under each value. The open ended responses will be read individually. Similar responses will be grouped together. Responses will be indicated in the summary part of the research.
Getting minorities into education is just the first step. Measures must be taken to keep them in education. In order to retain minority teachers, schools and school districts should increase salaries, when plausible. Seeking higher salaries is one of the reasons why minority teachers leave the profession. Working conditions should not be too stressful. Minority teachers are leaving low income areas due to being overwhelmed with so many poverty issues. To combat this, teacher preparation should focus on preparing teachers for some of the hardships that may have to be endured in order to stay in education. And finally, mentoring relationships and programs should be created to connect experienced and novice teachers. Effective relationships and programs will increase the retention of teachers.
___a. 0-2 ___b. 3-5 ___c. 6-10 ___d.11-15
___e. 16-20 ___f.20+
Early June 2009
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*If the project is rejected at Argosy, corrections will be made to get it approved.
*If the project is rejected at Orangeburg Consolidated School District Four, another district will be contacted.
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Late June 2009
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July 2009
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Early August 2009
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Late August 2009
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Late September 2009
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Early October 2009
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Late October 2009
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