American schools spend more than $2.6 billion annually replacing teachers who have dropped out of the teaching profession. At a Capitol Hill briefing on June 23, the Alliance for Excellent Education released a new report which cites comprehensive induction, especially in a teacher's first two years on the job, as the single effective strategy to stem the rapidly increasing teacher attrition rate.

The report, Tapping the Potential: Retaining and Developing High Quality New Teachers, includes federal policy recommendations, in-depth analysis of new teacher induction practices, and four case studies: Connecticut BEST, Santa Cruz New Teacher Project (California), Tangipahoa FIRST (Louisiana), and The Toledo Plan (Ohio).

At the report's release, representatives from the Alliance for Excellent Education were joined at the briefing by U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), Tom Carroll (president of the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future), Ellen Moir, Executive Director, New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and nationally recognized University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education researcher and professor Richard Ingersoll.