Download our "Lessons Learned: New Teachers Talk About Their Jobs, Challenges and Long-Range Plans" series of reports - Issue No. 1: They're Not Little Kids Anymore: The Special Challenges of New Teachers in High Schools and Middle Schools; Issue No. 2: Working Without a Net: How Teachers from Three Prominent Alternate Route Programs Describe Their First Year on The Job; and Issue No. 3: Teaching In Changing Times.

The second in our series of Lessons Learned reports on new teachers raises questions about the support given to new teachers who come to teaching through "alternate routes." Issue No. 2: Working Without a Net focuses on new teachers in high-needs schools, comparing the perspectives of those from traditional teacher education versus those from three alternate-route programs: Teach for America, Troops to Teachers and The New Teacher Project.

According to the survey, the alternate route teachers are especially motivated by the desire to help disadvantaged children but at the same time more disheartened by the conditions they find in their classrooms than traditionally-trained teachers. Lessons Learned is conduced by Public Agenda and the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality.