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New Teachers Abandon Field at High Rate

Long Beach, Calif.

For much of last year, Tammy Carsten was on the verge of becoming a statistic. Working with an emergency permit, scant education courses, and no student-teaching experience to her credit, the fledgling educator was at her wits' end soon after stepping in front of her class at Harte Elementary School in north Long Beach.

Struggling just to keep the 1st graders in their seats, she felt completely inadequate to the task of teaching them the elements of reading and arithmetic. Many nights, she went home and cried. Quitting was often on her mind.

The findings, which Mr. Ingersoll has yet to publish, jibe well with earlier estimates that as many as 30 percent of new teachers quit within their first...