Generation Y teachers looking for change
Survey reveals the different attitudes younger teachers bring to the classroom

New, young teachers—members of Generation Y, as those under 30 have been dubbed—are committed to teaching as a long-term career, but they feel strongly about changes they want to see in the education system. That's according to a survey of first-year teachers conducted by Public Agenda for the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality (NCCTQ).

While pay is a concern for the new teachers, as it is across the board, a significant majority of the Gen Y group—79 percent—would choose supportive administrators over significant salary increases. Specifically, the new teachers are looking for more support for their efforts to be creative in the classroom, to deal with student discipline problems and to get adequate classroom resources such as textbooks. They rank low salary as a concern below such issues as lack of student motivation, too many students with discipline issues and excessive testing.

The survey also asked the Gen Y teachers for their opinions on a range of ideas for improving the profession. Two proposals topped the list: reducing class sizes and preparing teachers to adapt their instruction to meet the needs of a diverse classroom. The two issues are closely connected because the teachers said smaller classes would allow them to personalize instruction and give more help to struggling students. On the other hand, ideas such as eliminating teacher tenure or tying teacher pay to student performance received very little support.

The survey focused on first-year middle and high school teachers, and it points out some important differences between this group's attitudes compared with those of elementary school teachers as well as their more veteran colleagues. For example, the secondary teachers are more likely both to question the teacher preparation they received and to say that their training overemphasized theories of learning and shortchanged practical classroom issues. The respondents were about six months into their first teaching jobs, so their pre-service preparation was still fresh in their minds.

Teachers who came to the profession through the traditional route also felt much more prepared to deal with their jobs, especially in high-needs schools, compared with teachers who completed alternative certification programs. Only half of the alternative-route teachers felt prepared for their assignments in high-needs schools compared with 80 percent of the traditional-route teachers. The alternative-route teachers also are much less likely to see teaching as a lifelong career—only 16 percent share that view, compared with a majority of the traditional-route teachers.

"There seems to be a chronic inability or unwillingness for the education system to embrace new ideas, which is a tragic mismanagement of human capital, especially on the brink of the largest labor shortage in history," says NCCTQ director Sabrina Laine. "Programming these teachers to pledge allegiance to a broken and outdated system rather than harnessing their boundless potential will set education back another decade."

The authors of the report say it should serve as "genuine food for thought" about how the country attracts, trains, supports, rewards and manages teachers. "The findings suggest that there are significant challenges in teaching and motivating today's adolescents that are not being adequately addressed in the current system," they write. "The findings also suggest that the broad policy debate on how to respond to teacher turnover and retention may need to focus more of its attention on the special concerns of secondary school teachers."

The NCCTQ, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Education, is a partnership of the Education Commission of the States, the Educational Testing Service, Learning Point Associates and Vanderbilt University.