Understanding High Need: Exploring School and District Employment and Retention Patterns of Noyce Scholars in Texas

Abstract

A majority (61%) of Texas’s 5.4 million public school students are from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, ensuring that essentially all districts are serving substantial numbers of students with high need. This study seeks to understand a more nuanced story of Texas’s unique context by exploring the employment and retention patterns of Noyce Scholars at the school level. In particular, this study uses a descriptive analytical strategy to explore the first-year employment and retention patterns of Noyce program graduates from four Texas institutions. When the placement and retention of STEM teachers at highest-need schools were examined, researchers found that Noyce recipients were employed at highest-need schools at a modestly lower rate than their non-Noyce recipient peers (34% to 38%) and were retained into their second year of teaching at those schools at a lower rate than their non-Noyce peers (64% to 73%). Though Noyce participation had no observable association with placement or retention at highest-need schools, as indicated by a lack of statistical difference, more work could be done to ensure that those teachers are going to and staying in classrooms with the highest needs. The sustained federal investment in increasing the supply of quality STEM teachers in high-need districts brought about by the Noyce program continues to be an essential part of that effort. The findings here suggest that future iterations of this program and similarly designed interventions may benefit from increasingly intentional efforts to recruit and retain Noyce Scholars in the highest-need schools.