Posted on August 19, 2025

How ed-prep programs can strengthen new teacher retention through mentorship and induction

Cece Zhou

This story is part of a series lifting up policy solutions to foster more affordable and high-quality pathways into teaching. A full policy report will be released in September. Subscribe for updates

As a former teacher and current student-teacher supervisor and mentor, Francita McMichel deeply understands how much weight teaching can be – mentally, emotionally, and physically.

At Marian University in Indianapolis, where McMichel has coached aspiring and new teachers for over a decade, she offers more than instructional feedback to aspiring teachers: she’s a lifeline. Through Marian’s post-graduate mentorship program, her coaching helps beginning teachers not only manage their classrooms but also process the emotional weight of a profession that asks them to care deeply and give constantly.

Video Transcript

McMichel: Well, and I think it helps being a former teacher because I understand how you can become so exhausted in the everyday planning, the everyday preparation, working with students, but then you have the whole other piece of social, you're getting to know these students. You're accepting them into your heart. You're carrying these students on your heart and on your shoulders. And when life happens for them, life also happens for you because you've become a part of that student's world. They're a part of your world. And if you're not careful, you don't realize three or four situations in a week in your classroom, you're feeling heavy, you're feeling exhausted. It's because now you're carrying all that internal trauma. And our students, again, they just came right out of undergrad and now they're in a residency program and they're not understanding why am I tired? Why am I crying? Why am I frustrated? Well, because you don't realize that subtly in your body, you're carrying 27 students on your heart and on your shoulders. Not only are you teaching them, but you're also worrying about their home life. You're worrying about am I teaching everything correctly? But then again, like I said, you're also worried about what's happening to them when they go home. I know they're going to be with mom this weekend and not dad. So these are a lot of the conversations that I also have with a lot of my residents about how to purge that and how to take care of yourself. Then you can take care of your students.

“Our students…they just came right out of undergrad, and now they're in a residency program, and they're not understanding, ‘Why am I tired? Why am I crying? Why am I frustrated?’ Well, because you don't realize that subtly in your body, you're carrying 27 students on your heart and on your shoulders.”
-Francita McMichel, Assistant Professor, Marian University

This kind of holistic, human-centered mentorship isn’t the norm for all new teachers in the U.S. But it should be.

Across the country, educator-preparation programs (EPPs) and local education agencies (LEAs), like PK-12 school partners, don’t always have a strong partnership when it comes to aligning their support for novice teachers. While their EPPs may surround them with experienced mentors, the transition to leading a classroom is often one where they’re suddenly without that familiar support system yet responsible for an entire classroom of kids. As a result, new teachers can often feel siloed, overwhelmed, and burnt out as they face a brand new context and significant expectations without clear guidance and action steps for how to navigate them effectively. This experience contributes to the high turnover of novice teachers: more than 40% of new teachers leave the profession within five years, and underprepared teachers are 2.5 times more likely to leave than those who are well-prepared.

Research shows that comprehensive mentoring and induction programs, which can support novice teachers to develop and use evidence-based instructional strategies, better meet the needs of students with disabilities and English language learners, foster positive classroom environments, and engage parents – help new teachers navigate the challenges of the early years in the classroom and reduce their stress and burnout, which contribute to higher retention of these teachers. Additionally, numerous studies repeatedly found that new teachers who participated in induction programs also contributed to stronger student achievement.

A teacher in front of her classroom with a smartboard, with a few students raising their hands

Economically, the average cost of turnover can be substantial: approximately $12,000 for a small rural district and $25,000 for large urban districts per teacher per year. In comparison, the amount that a mentor receives from their EPP for providing support to aspiring and novice teachers ranges from $1,500 to $7,500 per academic year.

Despite what we know about the value of mentoring, 19 states still don’t require mentoring and induction for all new teachers. Many EPPs don’t offer continued support once their graduates receive their teacher certification and step into their first classrooms, nor do PK-12 schools engage their EPP partners for ongoing guidance and input on in-school support systems, such as instructional coaches. Even in states where policies exist, funding and implementation often are highly variable. Some EPPs offer little more than occasional classroom management feedback, while others, like Marian, build ongoing, personalized coaching aligned with coursework, curriculum, and student needs. The resulting imbalance of support from one EPP to another creates an additional burden on schools as they attempt to support and retain new teachers from different pathways who all may bring a wide variety of experiences, skills, and assumptions about teaching.

But even the funding sources that EPPs like Marian rely on to provide this mentoring support can be fragile. Earlier this spring, Marian lost their Teacher Quality Partnership (TQP) grant that supports a significant amount of the operations required to run this program, putting the future of this program at risk.

It’s imperative that states, local education agencies, and EPPs work together to coordinate funding, professional learning topics, and workforce needs to enhance training that novice teachers and leaders receive in order to reduce redundancy, ensure quality, and maximize each stakeholders’ strengths.

New teacher induction as a retention solution

Marian isn’t the only EPP that has invested in an innovative effort to foster meaningful transitional support experiences for beginning teachers in partnership with K-12 schools.

About two hundred miles away in Chicago, National Louis University (NLU)’s National College of Education has stood up its own New Teacher Induction (NTI) program, which offers mentorship and professional development for new teachers. Dean Carolyn Theard-Griggs explains that while there were no state policy requirements for them to do this, they had invested in this effort as a response to the feedback they had received.

“Because we are really committed to making sure that these new teachers remain successful in the field, we're interviewing them and conducting focus groups about how they feel about teaching and what concerns that they have,” Theard-Griggs explained. “So we're collecting some survey data, but our intention is to remain connected to them even in their third, fourth, fifth year to find out how they're doing and what impact this mentoring program had on them as teachers, as professionals, if it helped them to stay in the profession. Because ultimately our goal is to make sure that teachers remain, that we retain them and that they feel good about the work that they're doing, and that they feel confident about their role as teachers.”

Dean Carolyn Theard-Griggs sitting at table in conversation with two colleagues

“Our intention is to remain connected to them even in their third, fourth, fifth year to find out how they're doing and what impact this mentoring program had on them as teachers.”
-Carolyn Theard-Griggs, Dean, National College of Education, National Louis University

NLU conducts several surveys throughout the year of participants in their NTI program. Latest survey results show that 94.2% of participants felt more prepared to teach effectively, while 100% of participants shared they plan to remain in the teaching profession for at least five years.

Jennifer Jackson, a first-year kindergarten teacher, is one recent NLU graduate that has found incredible value in this program. When we visited and observed her classroom, there was clear evidence that NLU had prepared her well instructionally. She had a detailed lesson book, where her notes indicated she had clearly internalized the lesson to prepare to engage students in rigorous instruction. She was attentive to the range of her students’ different responses and needs. She effectively used a turn-and-talk to ensure her students were actively thinking and discussing the content. These are all signs of a great beginning teacher eager to grow and do her best for her students. But underneath, she revealed, her confidence was shaky as she was receiving constructive feedback without a strong, trust-based relationship:

Video Transcript

Jackson: So I would say when we first met, I was really struggling with my confidence as a teacher. The feedback that I was getting from my school, my coach was like, oh, you could do this to get better. You could get this better. But it was never like, you're doing a good job where you're at. And she came in at the end of the day, our day ends at 3 45. She came in at three and she watched me very quiet, sitting in the corner, wrote her little notes. I got the kids ready. We had a moment that day. One of the kids was crying. He had just lost his grandmother. He was breaking down, but it was out of nowhere. So we all came to the carpet, me and my kids, and we all hugged, and then we got ourselves ready to leave. We left. When I came back in from letting them go, she was like, you're awesome. And just to hear that coming from somebody that only seen you for 30 minutes is a sigh of relief when the feedback you've been getting is, I don't want to say negative, but constructive. You got to do this and you got to do this, and you got to do this. And for me, just feeling comfortable in my own skin is what helps me be a better teacher. And she did that right away that that was a special moment for me. She doesn't even know.

Nolan: My thought about this and the first thing that came to my head was building a relationship. If we can have a relationship together and she can trust me, then we can move to making changes. It's hard when you're only here once every two weeks or every three weeks, and you're trying to help, but you have other responsibilities too. But I felt like if I could reach her and give her some confidence that by giving suggestions or motivational things, I feel like then we could get to where maybe if something needs to change or I was looking at this and maybe we could do this, but if we don't have the trust, I'm supposed to be supportive and we're supposed to collaborate. I'd want her to think of me as her peer, someone that she can talk to, honestly. And that's where confidentiality comes in. You have to be a good listener.

When mentoring is responsive, intentional, and grounded in evidence of what works, it not only equips teachers with the skills needed for success but also fortifies their resilience and dedication. Students and schools shouldn’t have to rely on chance when it comes to whether or not their novice teachers are getting the aligned support they need. Every EPP, and its PK-12 partners, must consider how they can work together to establish a support system that ensures that the handoff from preparation into the first years of the classroom is intentionally designed to set up beginning teachers for long-term success.

A group of four educators standing together and laughing

Policy can play an important role in incentivizing a scalable approach. Policies that prioritize comprehensive mentoring and induction programs – including increased funding for mentor stipends, structured mentorship frameworks, and aligned EPP-PK-12 partnerships – are essential to incentivizing these impactful practices as a valuable means to addressing challenges in teacher retention.

A preview from our forthcoming policy report:

Do policies support aspiring teachers to receive timely, actionable, and aligned feedback across practice opportunities?

To formalize high-quality feedback, mentoring, and induction, state and federal policy leaders should champion policies that:

Program Approval & Renewal

Incentivize formal induction period whereby novice teachers are guaranteed ongoing support and training from their EPP and LEA and are paired with a high-quality mentor.
Require planning time for PK-12 and EPP faculty and staff to build shared language and visions for instructional priorities and create feedback loops for aspiring teachers.
Require joint professional development opportunities for PK-12 mentor teachers, clinical supervisors, and other relevant faculty and staff that build their capacity to provide timely, actionable, and aligned feedback.

Funding

Compensate and recognize mentors of aspiring teachers and novice teachers.

Convening Power

Host state or regional convenings to align state, PK-12, and EPP instructional priorities.

Our new policy report summarizes insights from our work with educator-preparation programs, leaders, and policymakers over the last 10 years on how to advance and implement policies that foster instructionally-focused, practice-based, accessible, and innovative & responsive pathways into teaching across all 50 U.S. states and D.C. Subscribe to our newsletter to download the full report when it releases in September.

Learn More

We offer strategic advising to teacher-preparation programs and state education agencies to develop and implement policies that strengthen pathways into teaching. Get in touch: