But with the help of Patty Nagano, a 25-year educator, Ms. Carsten learned techniques of literacy instruction and the nuances of classroom management. Ms. Nagano observed the novice at work and offered constructive criticism. She encouraged her to try different approaches and to stick with what worked. I haven't gone home crying once this year. Some attrition is healthy in any field as a way of weeding out the less competent, but the teaching profession is notorious for cannibalizing its young.
Schools regularly give the toughest assignments to the newest recruits.
The attrition problem among younger teachers is so acute, some experts say, that it outweighs retirement as a cause of teacher shortages. Few states understand that dynamic as well as California, where an estimated 25,000 new teachers must be hired each year. So state policymakers last fall showed little hesitation in approving a nearly four-fold increase in spending on the Beginning Teacher Support and Assessment Program, the initiative that brought Ms. Carsten and Ms. Nagano together. For the most part, though, the need to retain teachers has spurred far less interest nationally than has the push to hire them in the first place. Predictions that the United States will need 2 million new teachers over the next decade have prompted signing bonuses for new hires, alternative forms of credentialing to open the field to nontraditional candidates, and recruitment from the armed forces and from abroad.