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Improving Teacher Quality

California Math Project Supporting Teachers to Retention (CMP STIR)

Grant Number: 03-360

Grant Award: $5,275,920

Duration of Project: Tuesday, August 01, 2006 - Friday, September 30, 2011

Project Subject Areas: Mathematics

Grade Band: 6-12

Institutes of Higher Education:

  • University of California, Los Angeles

Local Education Agencies:

  • Calexico Unified, Calexico

Partners:

  • University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, Mathematics

Number of teachers/principals/highly qualified paraprofessionals participating in the project:

470

Goals:

Provide a coherent and comprehensive induction and/or support program for teachers of mathematics that will:
  1. Increase the retention of teachers of mathematics
  2. Increase the retention of teachers of mathematics within the school
  3. Deepen teachers' mathematics content understanding and extend pedagogical content knowledge
  4. increase the leadership roles and/or educational advancement of mathematics teachers
  5. Establish a collegial and supportive school culture

Conduct research that adds to the knowledge base on mathematics teacher retention

Disseminate findings broadly

Activities:

CMP has held an internal competition and selected 10 CMP sites to provide a coherent and comprehensive induction and /or support program for teachers. Each CMP STIR Site will provide intensive development (PD) totaling 15 days and systematic and sustained support for teachers at the school site (e.g., administrative support, mentoring and coaching, Lesson Study, school site networking, data reflection, or access to resources) for at least 27 teachers (retention cohort) for three years.
In the fourth year, the sites will focus on increasing leadership roles and/or education advancement of the retention cohort and provide PD for 10 additional teachers. In year 5, another 10 teachers will be provided PD focusing on teacher retention. The CMP will monitor the sites and provide technical assistance when needed.
Extensive research will be conducted with the following research questions addressed:
  • Does mathematics PD improve the retention of these mathematics teachers in the profession?
  • Does PD improve the retention of mathematics teachers in their schools?
  • Does PD increase the content knowledge and the pedagogical content knowledge of the participants?
  • Does PD increase the leadership roles and/or educational advancement for the participants?

Each site has a designated a Research Associate who will collect all the data, administer measures and enter information in the Online Information System (OIS) database. Dissemination will include research briefs, presentations at local, state, and national conference, sponsorship of a National Teacher Retention Dissemination Conference, and articles submitted to refereed research journals.

Anticipated Outcomes:

Teachers participating in the retention cohort professional development will have a higher teacher retention rate and engage in more leadership and career enhancement activities than teachers in the comparison cohort. Additionally, retention cohort teachers will show increases in mathematics content knowledge as a result of participation.

Contacts:

Project: Barbara Pence, Research Director, pence@math.sjsu.edu
Institute of Higher Education: Susie Hakansson, Project Director, shakans@ucla.edu

Questions, Comments, Corrections?

Send an e-mail to Teacher_Quality@cpec.ca.gov .