Retention Strategies

This report presents selected findings from the school principal data files of the 2007-08 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS).  It provides the following descriptive information on school principals by school type, student characteristics, and other relevant categories: number, race/ethnicity, age, gender, college degrees, salary, hours worked, focus of work, years experience, and tenure at current school.

This report from KIPP provides a snap short of critical indicators from KIPP schools from across the United States.

This study examines how and why teacher quality is inequitably distributed, by reviewing research and examining data on school funding, salaries, and teacher qualifications from California and New York—two large states that face similar demographic diversity and educational challenges.

This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS).

In this report, we examine the degree to which teacher mobility is problematic in Chicago Public Schools (CPS) and look at the factors associated with high mobility rates, including teachers’ background characteristics, school structure, students’ characteristics, and workplace conditions.

State-level policy support for teacher induction programs can help teachers realize their full potential, keep them in the profession, promote greater student learning, and save money. Higher education institutions and school districts must work together to provide high-quality and well-designed induction programs. 

The first brief in this series, Teacher Shortages: What We Know, explores research on teacher shortages and highlights recent state task force findings. This report is one of five policy briefs examining strategies states are using to address shortages.

The authors use panel data from New York City to compare four ways in which teachers are new to assignment: new to teaching, new to district, new to school, or new to subject/grade. 

The National Report Card is a critique of state school funding systems and the extent to which these systems ensure equality of educational opportunity for all children, regardless of background, family income, place of residence or school. The report makes the assumption that "fair" school funding is defined as "a state finance system that ensures equal educational opportunity by providing a sufficient level of funding distributed to districts within the state to account for additional needs generated by student poverty."

The Second Edition of the National Report Card on public school funding, Is School Funding Fair?, shows that far too many states continue to deny public schools the essential resources they need to meet the needs of the nation's 53 million students and to boost academic achievement. The National Report Card rates the 50 states on the basis of four "fairness indicators" - funding level, funding distribution, state fiscal effort, and public school coverage. The Report provides the most in-depth analysis to date of state education finance systems and school funding fairness across the nation.

The 3rd Edition of Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card details how the Great Recession and its aftermath have affected school funding in the states. The National Report Card (NRC) examines each state's level of commitment to equal educational opportunity, regardless of a student's background, family income, or where she or he attends school. Providing fair school funding -- at a sufficient level with additional funds to meet needs generated by poverty -- is crucial if all students are to be afforded the opportunity to learn and be successful.

Using a structural perspective from organizational theory, the authors review aspects of schooling associated with dropout. They then briefly review selected reform initiatives that restructure the school environment to improve student achievement and retention. 

This research reports on the cost of teacher turnover in five school districts. It reports the rate of turnover, the relationship between turnover and teacher and school characteristics, and the costs associated with recruiting, hiring, and training replacement teachers.

This study uses statewide completer survey data from North Carolina to assess whether perceptions of preparation quality and opportunities to learn during teacher preparation predict completers’ value-added estimates, evaluation ratings, and retention.

The main body of the report takes readers through the four stages that this study used to define the teacher career continuum: Preservice, Novice, Career, and Teacher Leader stages.

This study examines the detrimental impact of principal turnover, including lower teacher retention and lower student achievement. Particularly hard hit are high poverty schools, which often lose principals at a higher rate as they transition to lower poverty, higher student achievement schools.

The Characteristics of Public and Private Elementary School Principals in the United States is a subsection of the NCES 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). It provides descriptive statistics on K-12 school principals in areas such as: race, gender, education level, salary, experience, and working conditions.

The purposes of this research were to quantify trends in three components of teacher turnover and to investigate claims of excessive teacher turnover as the predominant source of teacher shortages.

This comprehensive meta-analysis on teacher career trajectories, consisting of 34 studies of 63 attrition moderators, seeks to understand why teaching attrition occurs, or what factors moderate attrition outcomes.

Many U.S. school districts have difficulty hiring enough qualified teachers to replace those who retire, transfer to other districts, or leave the teaching profession. Some subjects are more difficult to staff and some schools have higher turnover than others, creating recruitment and hiring bottlenecks.

This report examines the efficiency of the nation's public education system

This Statistics in Brief adds to existing research on early-career teachers by presenting findings on their preparation and supports from data from the 2011–12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). This brief, like past research, investigates several specific areas of preparation and types of support.

This Statistics in Brief adds to existing research on early-career teachers by presenting findings on their preparation and supports from data from the 2011–12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). This brief, like past research, investigates several specific areas of preparation and types of support.

This paper assess the long-run implications of alternatively certified teachers. 

For well over a decade school districts across the United States have struggled to recruit and retain effective mathematics teachers. This article examines the qualifications, student achievement gains, and retention of Math Immersion teachers in New York City compared to New York City mathematics teachers who began their careers through other pathways.

This article explores the relationship between school contextual factors and teacher retention decisions in New York City and finds that school administration by far has the greatest influence on teacher retention.

The goal of this paper is to estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement.

This paper examines New York City elementary school teachers’ decisions to stay in the same school, transfer to another school in the district, transfer to another district, or leave teaching in New York state during the first five years of their careers.

By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of .03 standard deviations.

This study uses applications-to-transfer data to examine separately which teachers apply for transfer and which get hired and, in so doing, differentiates teachers from school preferences.

This study provides new evidence on the importance of school leadership by estimating individual principals’ contributions to growth in student achievement.

The authors of this illuminating book identify a comprehensive set of practices and conditions that were key factors for improvement, including school leadership, the professional capacity of the faculty and staff, and a student-centered learning climate.

The analysis of nationally representative survey data from the 2012 Schools and Staffing Survey and the 2013 Teacher Follow-up Survey reveals that the severity of turnover varies markedly across the country

Using the most recent nationally representative data from the National Center for Education Statistics' Schools and Staffing Surveys, the authors detail which teachers are leaving, why, and which students are most impacted.

The report provides recommendations and strategies for managing chronic absenteeism at all levels of education leadership, from state agencies through individual schools.  It also has an interactive web site where the reader can drill down on specific data at all levels of the education system.  www.attendanceworks.org

This paper examines the issue of the efficacy of valued-added measures in evaluating the effectiveness of teachers and long term impact on student’s lives.

Research has revealed that effective teachers are critical to improving student achievement. Little evidence exists, however, about the best ways to help teachers be more effective, or about how schools that serve the students in most need can attract and retain the most effective teachers.

The study separately compares the effectiveness of teachers from each program with the effectiveness of other teachers teaching the same subjects in the same schools.

Using longitudinal data on teachers, we estimate hazard models that identify the impact of this differential pay by comparing turnover patterns before and after the program’s implementation, across eligible and ineligible categories of teachers, and across eligible and barely-ineligible schools.

Using information on teaching spells in North Carolina, the authors examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. They conclude that salary differentials are a far less effective tool for retaining teachers with strong pre‐service qualifications than for retaining other teachers in schools with high proportions of minority students. 

Although many factors combine to make a successful school, most people agree that quality teachers and school principals are among the most important requirements for success, especially when success is defined by the ability of the school to raise the achievement of its students. The central question for this study is how the quality of the teachers and principals in high-poverty schools in North Carolina compares to that in the schools serving more advantaged students.

This report to the North Carolina General Assembly provides detailed information on teacher retention in the state’s public schools for the period ending 2013.

By analyzing data from the Schools and Staffing Survey, the authors empirically test four of the core assumptions embedded in current arguments for expanding alternative teacher certification (AC):

The aims of this study were to investigate whether and how teachers' perceptions of social–emotional learning and climate in their schools influenced three outcome variables—teachers' sense of stress, teaching efficacy, and job satisfaction—and to examine the interrelationships among the three outcome variables.

The aims of this study were to investigate whether and how teachers' perceptions of social–emotional learning and climate in their schools influenced three outcome variables—teachers' sense of stress, teaching efficacy, and job satisfaction—and to examine the interrelationships among the three outcome variables.

One of the more difficult issues involves a debate between observers who are concerned about an overall teacher shortage, and others who see it largely as a distributional problem where some schools have a relative surplus of teachers while other schools struggle with a persistent, unmet demand for qualified teachers.

Research suggests that substantial pre-service student teaching is essential for the preparation and retention of special educators.  It was found that substantial pre-service student teaching experience has a strong effect on the probability that a beginning special educator will remain in the field 1 year later.

The study compares the effectiveness of different routes to teaching. It finds there is no significant difference in the effectiveness of teachers who were traditionally trained when compared to teachers who obtained training through alternative credential programs.

Though policymakers are increasingly concerned about teacher shortages in U.S. public schools, the national discussion does not reflect historical patterns of the supply of and demand for newly minted teachers.

In this paper, we study how providing improved information to principals about teacher effectiveness and encouraging them to use the information in personnel decisions affects the composition of teacher turnovers.

The authors study the mal-distribution of teachers and examine its causes then describe examples of both states and local school districts that have fashioned successful strategies for strengthening their teaching forces. 

This information is used to determine the current number of charter schools in each state and to estimate total charter school enrollment at the national level.

While anecdotal accounts of substantial teacher shortages are increasingly common, we present evidence that such shortages are not a general phenomenon but rather are highly concentrated by subject and in schools where hiring and retaining teachers are chronic problems. We discuss several promising, complementary approaches for addressing teacher shortages.

While anecdotal accounts of substantial teacher shortages are increasingly common, we present evidence that such shortages are not a general phenomenon but rather are highly concentrated by subject and in schools where hiring and retaining teachers are chronic problems. We discuss several promising, complementary approaches for addressing teacher shortages.

The costs associated with teacher turnover in Alaska are considerable, but have never been systematically calculated,1 and this study emerged from interests among Alaska education researchers, policymakers, and stakeholders to better understand these costs.

This study is the first to examine these teachers’ retention nationwide, asking whether, when, and why they voluntarily transfer from their low-income placement schools or leave teaching altogether.

This report analyzes the retention problem in the United States through documentation of recent teacher turnover data, and reviews the research on the factors that contribute to teachers’ decisions to remain in the
classroom.

This report provides an overview of the research that documents how teacher turnover impacts students, teachers, and schools. Understanding turnover’s impact is essential for making the case for the policies and strategies needed to keep effective teachers in classrooms.

This paper examines the impact of teacher turnover on education systems. Teacher turnover is quite costly, and primarily has negative consequences for school operations, staff collegiality, and student learning.

This report documents broadly the research that addresses the prevalence of principal turnover, the factors associated with a principal’s decision to leave, the consequences of principal turnover for teaching and learning, and evidence-based strategies for improving principal retention.

Research on teacher turnover has led to the identification of retention strategies to help advance the profession and improve the recruitment, preparation, and support of teachers. This report summarizes available research on these strategies and discusses potential barriers and research on their relative cost-effectiveness.

This brief explores why principal turnover matters and how the effects of this issue are borne out in schools. Specific policy recommendations based on research and aimed at reducing principal turnover are provided.

This paper looks at methods to enable teachers to generalize skills taught in pre-service to use in the classroom.

Using matched student-teacher panel data from the state of Florida, the authors study the determinants of teacher job change and the impact of such mobility on the distribution of teacher quality.

The current investigation is part of an ongoing line of research designed to identify critical instructional components for training new staff members in the implementation of behavior-analytic procedures, with the goal of approximating the efficiency of
indirect instructional methods while retaining the effectiveness of more direct methods.

This report presents information garnered from a comprehensive review of the literature on restorative
justice1 in U.S. schools. The purpose of this review is to capture key issues, describe models of
restorative justice, and summarize results from studies conducted in the field.

This chapter analyzes 2011 survey data from a sample of Texas principals who were asked about their perceptions of their working conditions such as: Support and facilities; salary; resources; autonomy to make decisions; testing and accountability pressures; and relationships with supervisors. 

The purpose of this study is to examine how the principal preparation programs of newly hired elementary school principals might influence school achievement. The study looks at differing elementary school principal preparation program approaches impact on build teams and the affect this has on student achievement.

Our scan reveals GYO to be a widespread strategy that has been leveraged in myriad ways in an attempt to solve teacher shortages and increase the racial and linguistic diversity of the educator workforce. While much variation exists in program design and delivery, states and districts are unified in the reason for promoting and investing in GYO: the belief that recruiting and preparing teachers from the local community will increase retention and equip schools with well-prepared teachers who are knowledgeable about the needs of students and families in the community.

This paper uses administrative data from two states covering the school years 1987–1988 to
2000–2001 to examine principal turnover and mobility.

The authors fit multilevel logistic regression models to a large state administrative dataset in order to examine (1) if the percentage of SWDs a teacher instructs was associated with turnover, (2) if this association varied by student disability, and (3) how these associations were moderated by special education certification.

The study examines whether comprehensive teacher induction programs lead to higher teacher retention rates and other positive teacher and student outcomes as compared to prevailing, generally less comprehensive approaches to supporting new teachers

To evaluate the impact of comprehensive teacher induction relative to the usual induction support, the authors conducted a randomized experiment in a set of districts that were not already implementing comprehensive induction.

In this final report, we present findings on the implementation and impacts of an intervention
that identified school districts' highest-performing teachers and then used monetary
incentives to encourage them to transfer into the lowest-achieving schools.

In this paper we examine the mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality, measured using value-added estimates of teacher performance.

This article documents the mismatch between the supply and demand of STEM and special education teachers in Washington State, where almost 4,000 more STEM and special education teachers have left the profession than have been produced by in-state teacher training institutions over the past 25 years. 

In this study, we present a comprehensive, descriptive analysis of the inequitable distribution of both input and output measures of teacher quality across various indicators of student disadvantage across all school districts in Washington State.

This study presents a comprehensive, descriptive analysis of the inequitable distribution of both input and output measures of teacher quality across various indicators of student disadvantage across all school districts in Washington State. 

This report presents analyses of data from semistructured interviews with central office personnel, principal supervisors, and principals, as well as data from surveys of supervisors and principals in each of the six PSI districts.

This report describes the ongoing development and implementation of the SAM® process, which has the goal of increasing the capacity of principals to use time in instructionally focused ways while decreasing time on management tasks. 

The Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS), first conducted in school year 2008-09, is a component of the 2011-12 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). The 2012-13 PFS was administered in order to provide attrition rates for principals in K-12 public and private schools. The goal was to assess how many principals in the 2011-12 school year still worked as a principal in the same school in the 2012-13 school year, how many had moved to become a principal in another school, and how many had left the principalship.

This report presents selected findings from the Public School Principal Status Data File of the 2016–17 Principal Follow-up Survey (PFS). The PFS is a nationally representative sample survey of public1 K–12 schools in the 50 states and District of Columbia and was initiated to inform discussions and decisions regarding principal attrition and mobility among policymakers, researchers, and parents.

This report provides nationally representative data on attrition and mobility of beginning teachers in public elementary and secondary schools.

This study hypothesizes that school working conditions help explain both teacher satisfaction and turnover. In particular, it focuses on the role of effective principals in retaining teachers, particularly in disadvantaged schools with the greatest staffing challenges. 

Using multiple measures of teacher and principal effectiveness, the authors document that indeed more effective principals see lower rates of teacher turnover, on average

This study investigate the association between principal effectiveness and principal turnover using longitudinal data from Tennessee, a state that has invested in multiple measures of principal performance through its educator evaluation system.

Numerous studies investigate high-stakes personnel evaluation systems in education, but nearly all focus on evaluation of teachers. The authors instead examine the evaluation of school principals at scale using data from the first 4 years of implementation of Tennessee’s multiple-measure administrator evaluation system. 

this article identifies multiple conceptual approaches for capturing the contributions of principals to student test score growth, develops empirical models to reflect these approaches, examines the properties of these models, and compares the results of the models empirically using data from a large urban school district.

This report examines how teacher turnover in charter schools resembles and differs from teacher turnover in traditional public schools. They offer two perspectives on the issue.

This study examines the characteristics of elementary schools that experience chronic teacher turnover and the impacts of turnover on a school’s working climate and ability to effectively function. 

This study draws on segmented labor market theory to examine the dynamics of the teacher labor market in charters and TPS, focusing on newly hired teachers. 

This article seeks to provide a comprehensive and detailed picture of reliability results. More specifically, the authors present a meta-analysis of reliability results derived from 52 data sets derived from 43 independent empirical studies in which the PIMRS had been employed for data collection.

The RAND Corporation served as the evaluator of PPIP and examined implementation and outcomes from school years 2007–2008 through 2010–2011. Although the district is likely to continue implementing much of what constitutes PPIP, this report focuses only on the period during which PPIP was being funded by the TIF grant.

This discussion provides a quantitative statement of one approach to achieving the governors’ (and the nation’s) goals – teacher deselection.

This chapter of Handbook of The Economics of Education reviews research on teacher labor markets, the importance of teacher quality in the determination of student achievement, and the extent to which specific observable characteristics often related to hiring decisions and salary explain the variation in the quality of instruction.

Eric Hanushek and Steven Rivkin examine how salary and working conditions affect the quality of instruction in the classroom.

This paper provides direct evidence about the impacts of school job matching on productivity and student achievement.

This new research addresses a number of critical questions:  Are a teacher’s cognitive skills a good predictor of teacher quality? This study examines the student achievement of 36 developed countries in the context of teacher cognitive skills. This study finds substantial differences in teacher cognitive skills across countries that are strongly related to student performance.

This paper examines the combined effects of overall turnover and the quality distribution of teacher transitions for a large, urban district in Texas with special emphasis on nonrandom sorting of students into classrooms, endogenous teacher exits, and grade-switching.

This paper examines the issue of teacher attrition and the factors that motivate teachers leaving schools. The results indicate that teacher mobility is much more strongly related to characteristics of the student population (race and lower socioeconomic status) and achievement. The study finds salary plays a much smaller role in these decisions.

The authors study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement.

This volume is the third report in a series on the potential, promise, experience, and needs of career changers who are teaching in America’s classrooms today. It is based on a survey of a cross-section of such individuals conducted by Hart Research Associates in 2009.

How to bring schools from the brink of doom to stellar success.

This work presents new evidence on the nature of differential teacher attrition in Texas and attempts to reconcile these conflicting results. 

Because principal turnover may occur in response to or contemporaneous with a downturn in student achievement, the effect of a turnover is confounded with unobserved school-level factors. We employ a novel identification strategy that blocks each potential source of endogeneity to isolate plausibly causal effects of within- and between-year principal turnover.

Using unique administrative data from North Carolina that allow us to separate classroom teacher turnover during the school year from end-of -year turnover, this research find students who lose their teacher during the school year have significantly lower test score gains than those students when their teachers stay. 

This paper examines the issues for performance compensation for school principals and other administrators.

This report provides descriptive information on traditional public, charter, and private school principals over the period of 1987-88 through 2011-12. It includes comparative data on number of principals, gender, race/ethnicity, age, advance degrees, principal experience, teaching experience, salaries, hours worked, focus of work, experience and tenure at current schools, etc.

The purpose of this study was to examine the workplace factors that positively and negatively impact Black K12 teacher retention. This study utilized a mixed-method approach to examine the qualitative and quantitative data.

In this essay, we present a typology of teacher turnover measures, including both measures used in existing teacher turnover literature as well as new measures that we have developed. 

New “autonomy initiatives” aim to increase schools’ decision-making authority as a strategy to leverage school improvement. These policies build on lessons of previous reforms such as site-based management in ways that bode well for their success. However, how are these policies actually faring in implementation? The authors addressed that question with a comprehensive research review.

This paper examines the relationship between the time principals spent on different types of activities and school outcomes including student achievement, teacher and parent assessments of the school, and teacher satisfaction.

In this study the authors use longitudinal data from one large school district – Miami-Dade County Public Schools, to investigate the distribution of principals across schools.

In this policy brief Heather Hough and Susanna Loeb examine the effect of the Quality Teacher and Education Act of 2008 (QTEA) on teacher recruitment, retention, and overall teacher quality in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). They provide evidence that a salary increase can improve a school district’s attractiveness within their local teacher labor market and increase both the size and quality of the teacher applicant pool. 

The present study explores the relationship between distributed leadership and teachers' organizational commitment. Semi-structured interviews with teachers and school leaders of secondary schools were conducted

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the relationship between principal effectiveness (which we capture with a principal quality measure) and turnover. Specifically, we assess whether higher quality principals are more or less likely to leave their schools in New York City (NYC) as well as at the national level.

This paper investigates organizational characteristics and conditions in schools that drive staffing problems and teacher turnover.

This report summarizes a series of analyses that have investigated the possibility that there are other factors—tied to the organizational characteristics and conditions of schools—that are behind school staffing problems.

This is taken from the testimony of Richard Ingersoll in front the Pennsylvania legislature on the issues of school turnover.

This report utilizes the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) to examine changes in the elementary and secondary teaching force in the United States over the quarter century from 1987–88 to 2011–12.

This study examines the magnitude, destinations, and determinants of the departures of mathematics and science teachers from public schools.

This review critically examines 15 empirical studies, conducted since the mid1980s, on the effects of support, guidance, and orientation programs—collectively known as induction—for beginning teachers.

This report summarizes the results of an exploratory research project that investigated what trends and changes have, or have not, occurred in the teaching force over the past three decades.

This review critically examines 15 empirical studies, conducted since the mid 1980s, on the effects of support, guidance, and orientation programs— collectively known as induction — for beginning teachers.

This brief summarizes the results from a study of the recruitment, employment, and retention of minority k-12 teachers. The study examines the extent and sources of the minority teacher shortage—the low proportion of minority teachers in comparison to the increasing numbers of minority students in the school system.

This study seeks to empirically ground the debate over mathematics/science teacher shortages, and evaluate the extent to which there is, or is not, a sufficient supply of teachers in these fields.

This study addresses the question: Do the kinds and amounts of pre-service education and preparation that beginning teachers receive before they start teaching have any impact on whether they leave teaching? Authors  examine a wide range of measures of teachers’ subject-matter education and pedagogical preparation. 

This research evaluated the impact of structured and intensive teacher induction programs over a three-year time period, beginning when teachers first enter the teaching profession. The current report presents findings from the second year of the evaluation and a future report will present findings from the third and final year.

Teachers affect a variety of student outcomes through their influence on both cognitive and noncognitive skills. The author proxy for students’ noncognitive skill using non–test score behaviors. These behaviors include absences, suspensions, course grades, and grade repetition in ninth grade.

To identify and better understand the experience of these teachers, the authors started by studying 90,000 teachers across four large, geographically diverse urban school districts

The purpose of this article is to provide prospectus to the problem and develop key recommendations that may be utilized by urban districts to reduce its financial costs and to significantly improve staff and student attendance.

This article reports on a longitudinal study designed to explore these questions. In 1999, researchers from The Project on the Next Generation of Teachers selected and interviewed a diverse group of 50 new teachers in the Massachusetts public schools.

The Literature Review considers research that provides insight into problems of teacher shortage and turnover, offers a comprehensive explanation for why some able teachers leave the classroom prematurely, and suggests current strategies for increasing retention rates.

the authors build on this body of work by further examining how working conditions predict both teachers‘ job satisfaction and their career plans.

This policy brief summarizes the available evidence on the policy relevant factors that affect teacher turnover.

This article shared information about the Wing Institute and demographics of the Summit participants. It introduced the Summit topic, sharing performance data on past efforts of school reform that focused on structural changes rather than teaching improvement. The conclusion is that the system has spent enormous resources with virtually no positive results. The focus needs to be on teaching improvement.

This article reports on a national survey designed to learn how school districts are using standards-based leadership evaluation and pay for performance.

The goal of this paper is to provide researchers and policymakers with a comprehensive and timely review of this body of work.

This study present some of first evidence on the implementation and subsequent effect of discretionary layoff policies, by studying the 18th largest public school district in the nation, Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools (CMS).

This study is among the first to address the empirical limitations of prior studies on organizational contexts by leveraging one of the largest survey administration efforts ever conducted in the United States outside of the decennial population census.

We use comprehensive data on student teaching placements from 14 teacher education programs (TEPs) in Washington State to explore the sorting of teacher candidates to the teachers who supervise their student teaching and the schools in which student teaching occurs. We find that, all else equal, teachers with more experience, higher degree levels, and higher value added in math are more likely to serve as cooperating teachers, as are schools with lower levels of historical teacher turnover but with more open positions the following year.

This quantitative study examines the relationship between teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions and their intended and actual departures from schools.

This study examines the relationship between two dominant measures of teacher quality, teacher qualification and teacher effectiveness (measured by value-added modeling), in terms of their influence on students’ short-term academic growth and long-term educational success (measured by bachelor’s degree attainment).

This study created a model and methodology to document turnover costs for the middle and high schools in the Boston Public Schools to test the degree to which it could detect differences in costs for teachers of science, and to explore the feasibility of its implementation by school personnel

This report provides descriptive information about retention, attrition, and mobility among teachers and administrators that can be used to inform policy and program decisionmaking in West Virginia.

Using California teacher survey data linked to district data on salaries and staffing patterns, this study examines a range of school conditions as well as demographic factors and finds that high levels of school turnover are strongly affected by poor working conditions and low salaries, as well as by student characteristics. 

In this paper, the authors use value-added methods to examine the relationship between a school’s effectiveness and the recruitment, assignment, development and retention of its teachers.

The authors use longitudinal data from one large school district to investigate the distribution of principals across schools. They find that schools serving many low-income, non-White, and low-achieving students have principals who have less experience and less education and who attended less selective colleges. This distribution of principals is partially driven by the initial match of first-time principals to schools, and it is exacerbated by systematic attrition and transfer away from these schools.

This research summary focuses on aspects of the study’s results that are likely to be most useful for policymakers and school leaders as they strive to maintain and manage an effective teacher workforce.

Building on the analysis that was first reported in School Leadership That Works, the authors of Balanced Leadership identify the 21 responsibilities associated with effective leadership and show how they relate to three overarching responsibilities

This article presents the results of research into the impact of principal turnover on schools, and the ability of schools to mitigate the negative effects of frequent turnover by distributing leadership in the schools. 

This report updates a series of NCES reports on high school dropout and completion rates that began in 1988. The report draws on a wide array of surveys and administrative data sets to present statistics on high school dropout and completion rates at the state and national levels. The report also includes data on the percentage of students who graduate with a regular diploma within four years of starting ninth grade (adjusted cohort graduation rates) and data on alternative high school credentials. 

This article provides an analysis of factors influencing the supply of and demand for special education teachers

This research seeks to provide policy makers with some hard information on the costs of teacher turnover. The goal is to develop an average dollar cost per vacancy, which could also be converted to a percent of payroll, in order to compare to the rules of thumb mentioned
above.

This study provides evidence that student-weighted allocation can be a means toward greater resource equity among schools within districts. Resource equity is defined here in per-pupil needs-weighted fiscal terms.

The authors trace the district's process of moving to a system of student-based budgeting:
funding children rather than staff members and weighting the funding according to schools'
and students' needs.

Using twelve years of administrative data from North Carolina public schools, this paper explores the relationship between principal turnover and student achievement. 

This study investigates the effect of NCLB sanctions on principals’ working conditions, job stress, and turnover behaviors using a nationally representative sample of principals and detailed school-level assessment/AYP data systematically collected from each state education agency.

In examining recruitment and retention of teachers in rural areas, David Monk begins by noting the numerous possible characteristics of rural communities—small size, sparse settlement, distance from population concentrations, and an economic reliance on agricultural industries that are increasingly using seasonal and immigrant workers to minimize labor costs.

Using data on charter and public school districts in Texas, the authors test the hypothesis that the labor practices in charter schools, in particular, their ability to easily dismiss poorly performing teachers, diminishes the negative effect of teacher turnover on student achievement and graduation rates in comparison to public schools. 

The authors offer a new vision of teacher career pathways for the 21st century that holds promise for recruiting and retaining excellent teachers who further student learning. They showcase recent initiatives at the local, state, and national level that promote teacher role differentiation and create different models of teacher staffing and teacher career continuums.

In discussions to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and other federal initiatives such as Race to the Top and the ESEA flexibility waivers, legislators have focused on the impact educators have on improving student achievement

This book examines seven jurisdictions that have worked to develop comprehensive teaching policy systems: Singapore and Finland, the states of New South Wales and Victoria in Australia, the provinces of Alberta and Ontario in Canada, and the province of Shanghai in China. 

Prior research on teacher turnover focused mostly on whether or not and who leaves. This research builds on and extends prior studies by investigating not only whether and who but also when a teacher leaves. The phenomenon of this study emphasizes the dynamic nature of teacher exit.

Informed by literature on labor market and school choice, this study aims to examine the dynamics of principal career movements in charter schools by comparing principal turnover rates and patterns between charter schools and traditional public schools.

School leaders are increasingly being asked, whether by rhetoric or policy, to measurably improve student achievement. The resultant need to assist school leaders in their ability to improve teaching and learning for all students in their schools led to the establishment of the National Institute of School Leadership's (NISL's) Executive Development Program. 

This study examined the impact of EDP on student achievement in Pennsylvania schools
from 2006-2010. It updates and extends a prior evaluation (Nunnery, Ross, & Yen, 2010a) study
of this same cohort from 2006-2009.

This report presents findings of a study conducted in the fall of 1994 by the Department of Research, Evaluation, and Planning of the Chicago Public Schools (CPS). Researchers examined demographic data on CPS principals from personnel records, analyzed results of a 1992 survey of Chicago principals, and constructed an administrative history of all schools since 1987-88

One explanation: The working conditions are better in private schools, so instructors are willing to take a salary cut.

This study uses multivariate analysis of a large panel dataset to examine the determinants of principal retention (and, thus, the determinants of attracting a principal away from her current position)

Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, the authors document substantial cross-district variation in teacher retention rates. They also explore the influence of temporary leaves of absence and cross-district, within-state movement on retention estimates.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a brief overview of historical trends in the funding of special education programs, to discuss current issues, and to consider alternative directions for the future

This article examines the unique features of the rural school context and how these features are associated with the stability of principals in these schools

This article examines the salary trajectory of teachers as they move up the career ladder into leadership positions.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize what we know about the current state of rural teacher labor markets by contrasting them with the same data from urban, suburban, and large and small town settings.

This paper provides a review of the current teacher compensation system and examines the structure of teacher compensation in the U.S. K-12 public education system.

REL Midwest conducted a study on the mobility of teachers and administrators in public schools within and between Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The study was supported by representatives of the state education agency in each state. This study is the first to examine educator mobility using the same methodology across these three states.

The authors investigate how the labor market decisions of recent college graduates, new teachers, and employers affect the academic quality of the teaching workforce in public schools.

This report reviews an extensive body of research on teacher recruitment and retention, and identifies five major factors that influence a teacher’s decision to enter, remain in, or leave the teaching profession, generally, and high-need schools, specifically.

The purpose of this review is to take stock of what we have learned about the sources and consequences of principal turnover, and to identify what gaps remain.

This report examines the career paths of beginning public school teachers and how these career paths vary by characteristics during the teachers' first year of teaching and most recent year of teaching. 

Underlying this research is the belief that the cultural fit between students and teachers has the potential to improve a child’s academic and nonacademic performance in school. 

Teacher turnover occurs during and at the end of the school year, although documentation of within-year turnover currently rests on anecdotal evidence.

This research use data from North Carolina to measure teacher turnover monthly throughout the entire year and conduct an analysis of their persistence to examine the differences in early career teacher turnover.

The authors report on descriptive evidence of growing differences in the characteristics of alternatively and traditionally certified teachers and the schools in which they teach.

This paper disentangles the impact of schools and teachers in influencing achievement with special attention given to the potential problems of omitted or mismeasured variables and of student and school selection. 

We examine whether working conditions in different types of charter schools lead to different levels of teacher turnover. 

The objective in this review was to summarize and critique empirical research on the impact of beginning teacher induction on teacher retention and teacher quality (particularly studies in which teacher effectiveness was evaluated by using student achievement measures).

This study used a version of value added modeling to evaluate the impact of teacher turnover has on student achievement.

The authors use research-based "impact modeling" to show how a strategic approach to recruiting and supporting rookie teachers could yield as much as 4.2 extra months of student learning. We provide 5 recommendations for school systems to leverage their investment in structures that provide rookie teachers with both shelter and development.

This brief describes: (1) The need for more and better principal professional development to improve principal effectiveness, decrease principal turnover, and more equitably distribute successful principals across all schools; (2) The research on the importance of principals and how professional development can improve principals' effectiveness; and (3) Options and examples for leveraging current policies to revisit and refocus efforts concerning principal professional development.

This paper reviews evidence from six recent studies, which collectively suggest that teachers who leave high-poverty schools are not fleeing their students, but rather the poor working conditions that make it difficult for them to teach and their students to learn. They include school leadership, collegial relationships, and elements of school culture.

This study examines the relations between school context variables and teachers’ feeling of belonging, emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and motivation to leave the teaching profession. Six aspects of the school context were measured: value consonance, supervisory support, relations with colleagues, relations with parents, time pressure, and discipline problems.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate statistically the results of the literature on teacher expectations. 

High teacher turnover imposes numerous burdens on the schools and districts from which teachers depart. Some of these burdens are explicit and take the form of recruiting, hiring, and training costs. Others are more hidden and take the form of changes to the composition and quality of the teaching staff. This study focuses on the latter. 

This study asks how schools respond to spells of high teacher turnover, and assesses organizational and human capital losses in terms of the changing composition of the teacher pool. 

This analysis examines the available research on effective teaching, how to impart these skills, and how to best transition teachers from pre-service to classroom with an emphasis on improving student achievement. It reviews current preparation practices and examine the research evidence on how well they are preparing teachers

This paper provides evidence on how school leaders used their new autonomy and its impact on school performance. 

This paper reviews the research literature on new teacher mentoring, focusing on issues of definition, why teachers quit, and the effects of mentoring on retention. 

This book examines issues pertaining to making effective hiring decisions. The authors present a research-based interview protocol built on quality indicators.

This study uses national survey data to examine why charter school teachers are more likely to turnover than their traditional public school counterparts.

This paper predicts high school graduation and dropout for at-risk students in one of the largest school districts in the United States using the 2007-2010 Florida high school graduation cohort.

To contribute to the limited empirical literature on the principal labor market, this study explores the reasons for the disparity of turnover rates between charter school principals and their counterparts in traditional public schools (TPSs).

The Wallace Foundation, which invested tens of millions of dollars into strengthening the ranks of school leaders in those districts, is trying to answer that question. Over the next several months, the foundation will take the knowledge and lessons learned in its “principal pipeline” districts to 90 more school systems in 31 states.

Recent media reports of teacher shortages across the country are confirmed by the analysis of several national datasets reported in this brief. Shortages are particularly severe in special education, mathematics, science, and bilingual/English learner education, and in locations with lower wages and poorer working conditions. Shortages are projected to grow based on declines in teacher education enrollments, coupled with student enrollment growth, efforts to reduce pupil-teacher ratios, and ongoing high attrition rates.

Effective preparation and professional development programs build the capacity of principals to lead across their full range of responsibilities, fostering school environments where adults and students thrive. Research points to several key building blocks of strong preparation and development programs. 

The purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which a grow your own (GYO) program equitably increased special education teacher capacity in one Southern state's rural and non-rural school districts.

The purpose of this study was to develop a model that may be used to estimate the financial costs of teacher turnover in urban school districts. 

The National Teacher and Principal Survey is completed every four years soliciting descriptive information from principals and teachers across the 50 states. A few highlights include: Sixty percent of school principals have been at their schools for three years or less. 

This report from the United States Department of Education provides national data on teacher retention.

This report from the state of North Carolina provides data on the performance of the states’ schools.

This report from the state of North Carolina provides data on the performance of the states’ schools.

Despite a growing body of turnover literature, much remains unknown about the factors predicting career transitional behaviors of school principals. To bridge this gap, we examined variations in principal, school, and district characteristics influencing administrator leaver and mover behaviors, using Hierarchical Generalized Linear Modeling. 

Despite concerns about turnover among administrators, conditions that influence career longevity intentions of school principals are less known. To address this gap in the literature, we conducted a three-level Generalized Multilevel Model to estimate variations in school and district characteristics impacting principals’ career departure and mobility intentions, based on data from the School and Staffing Survey.

This study examines whether principals' movements and school achievement are associated with their salaries.

The purpose of this study is to examine the costs of replacing high school principals. 

The third in a series of reports evaluating a multi-year Wallace initiative documents ways in which six districts are working to improve school leadership districtwide. 

This article is a critical review of the literature on special education teacher attrition and retention. The research focused on journal articles from 2004 to present.

The authors measure the impact of replacing these principals on school-wide student achievement by measuring the changes in achievement that occurred when principals were replaced, and comparing these changes to achievement in comparison schools within DCPS that kept the same principal

The cost of teacher turnover to schools and school districts has only recently been studied. This research reveals that when high-quality teachers leave the classroom, the effect on both student performance and school and district fiscal operations is significant and deleterious.

This international study examines the impact of teacher performance pay on student math, science, and reading achievement.

This book describes the research undertaken during the Teaching Competence Project, a two-year research project funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. There were five interlinked studies in the research.

This research addresses the problem of teacher shortages in urban, high-needs schools.

This paper issued by the Education Commission of the States offers an overview of the key issues involved in the pay-for-performance concept

During the past two decades, principal turnover issues have raised nationwide concerns about leadership stability and student performance. With national data from National Center for Education Statistics, this study examines how principal working conditions influence the probability of different types of principal turnover (mover, promoted, demoted, leaver, and retired).