This unique thought experiment invites the field of agricultural education to a critical dialogue on issues related to making teaching a career. Leveraging elicitation techniques, we introduce a series of nine letters on agriculture teacher retention. Written by agriculture teacher education faculty with expertise in teacher retention, these…

Is there a shortage of special education teachers in America's public schools? If so, why? And how can policymakers fix it? The first question sounds like an easy one. Yes, there is a shortage of special education teachers. In 2023-24, more than half of districts and 80 percent of states reported such a shortage. If you doubt the self-reported…

Across the United States, vacancies in the educator workforce have drastically increased, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Leading up to the 2021-22 school year, Colorado schools sought to fill 5,729 teaching positions, representing 10.33% of all teaching positions in the state. A high-leverage need to attract, prepare, and retain teachers in…

Highly effective principals are critical to their school systems, contributing to both student outcomes and teacher retention. But despite some stabilization during the pandemic, teacher and principal turnover rates are rising again at the district and school levels, especially at high-need schools. And our recent original research underscores an…

Transitioning from teacher candidate to beginning teacher remains a difficult one despite school districts' efforts to provide mentoring and induction programs. This commentary examines teacher attrition and current practices used to support new teachers entering the profession. We draw on the tenets of characteristics of effective mentorships and…

School psychology is at a critical juncture where thoughtful, strategic, and collaborative strategies to remedy shortages must become a focus for all, no matter what setting or role. Successful initiatives exist in school districts, states, and other professions. Valuable lessons can be drawn from others regarding effective strategies that could…

Teachers' salaries are widely debated around the world, with divergent views among the actors of education. Salaries have risen very little over the last decade and have even fallen in real terms in almost half of OECD countries between 2015 and 2022. However, salary levels are just one of the many factors contributing to the attractiveness of the…

Teachers who are married to other teachers within a school district often experience their personal life events in full view of the school community. How should a principal respond when a math teacher wants to leave due to her divorce, knowing that math teachers are hard to find? Challenges in this case for campus principals and human resource…

This theoretical manuscript acknowledges the three-circle model for agricultural education as an enduring guide for student success. To complement the three-circle model, authors adapted "donut economics" to craft the donut model for agriculture teacher success. Within the proposed model, teacher success is defined as a level of…

The paper titled "Enhancing Educational Outcomes through Servant and Authentic Leadership: Addressing Low Teacher Morale and High Turnover Rates" explores the impact of two leadership theories--servant leadership and authentic leadership--on educational settings. The study addresses issues such as low teacher morale, high turnover rates,…

Retirement benefits are integral to teacher compensation; yet, most pension plans are designed to reward teachers who remain in a system for a full career while levying substantial penalties on those who do not. Even teachers who devote their lives to the profession but do not stay in a single system for their entire careers are not served well by…

We contextualize the magnitude of teacher attrition during the pandemic, including from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2021-2022 school year, using longitudinal data on teachers in Washington since the 1984-1985 school year. The teacher attrition rate after the 2020-2021 school year (7.3%) increased by almost one percentage point from the…

Situated against teacher demand problems worldwide, rising teacher turnover and declining teacher education enrollment have rendered the state of South Carolina a region commonly described as facing a "teacher shortage crisis." This paper reports results from an evaluation of the Rural Recruitment Initiative (RRI), a state-level teacher…

This article aims to provide school leaders with preliminary information and initial insight into the challenges they face when they seek to hire, retain, and sustain a diverse workforce. This article brings together some essential facts about the lack of diversity in the school district workforce in New York and outlines an array of steps school…

New teachers benefit from mentoring from more experienced colleagues, and the Wyoming Teacher Mentor Corps (WTMC) provides high-quality training for master teachers to provide this mentoring support. As part of the program, mentors learn about assessment, communication, feedback, and work-life balance. Colby Gull and Leslie Rush describe how, as…