title: The effects of experience and attrition for novice high-school science and mathematics teachers.
abstract: Because of the current high proportion of novice high-school teachers, many students' mastery of science and mathematics depends on the effectiveness of early-career teachers. In this study, which used value-added models to analyze high-school teachers' effectiveness in raising test scores on 1.05 million end-of-course exams, we found that the effectiveness of high-school science and mathematics teachers increased substantially with experience but exhibited diminishing rates of return by their fourth year; that teachers of algebra 1, algebra 2, biology, and physical science who continued to teach for at least 5 years were more effective as novice teachers than those who left the profession earlier; and that novice teachers of physics, chemistry, physical science, geometry, and biology exhibited steeper growth in effectiveness than did novice non-science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teachers.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Policy and Education Policy Initiative at Carolina, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3435, USA. gthenry@unc.edu
authors.forename: Gary T
authors.initials: GT
authors.lastname: Henry
authors.forename: C Kevin
authors.initials: CK
authors.lastname: Fortner
authors.forename: Kevin C
authors.initials: KC
authors.lastname: Bastian