A study published by the Institute of Education Sciences evaluates the impact of the Retired Mentors for New Teachers program – a two-year program in which recently retired teachers provide tailored mentoring to new teachers – on student achievement, teacher retention, and teacher evaluation ratings. The new teachers meet with their mentors weekly on a one-to-one basis and monthly in school-level groups over the course of the two years.
Dale DeDesare and colleagues conducted a randomized controlled trial involving 77 teachers at 11 elementary schools in Aurora, Colorado. Within each school, half of the new teachers were randomly assigned to a control group to receive the district’s business-as-usual mentoring support, while the other half received the intervention as well as business-as-usual mentoring support.
The study found that at the end of the first year, students who were taught by teachers in the program group scored 1.4 points higher on the spring Measures of Academic Progress math assessment than those taught by teachers in the control group (effect size = +0.064), and this difference was statistically significant. Reading achievement was also higher among students taught by teachers in the program group, however, the difference was not statistically significant (effect size = +0.014 at the end of the first year and +0.07 at the end of the second year). The effect of the program on teacher evaluation ratings and teacher retention was not significant, although more teachers in the program group left after two years than in the control group.
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