There s new research from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that helps us understand the experience of new teachers in the classroom. The new paper includes some particularly insightful statistics on the widespread practice of last-minute hiring by school districts. The study, performed by Susan Moore Johnson, Edward Liu, and Susan M. Kardos, relies on survey data from 486 first- and second- year teachers in 186 schools in the states of California, Florida, Massachusetts and Michigan. They found that 33% of teachers were hired after the beginning of the school year. Also interesting was the high number of career-switchers 46% with an average age of 38.