Using six waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey that span two decades, our study explores the differences between urban charter and traditional public school teachers and how those differences become more or less pronounced over time. During this time frame, the charter sector experienced…

Effective schooling requires teachers to have professional discretion; yet in the twentieth century, bureaucratization enhanced administrative control of teaching. Teacher unionization offered one response to bureaucratization, intended in part to protect teacher professional discretion. More recently, the charter school movement offered a second…

There is scant evidence on the level of arts education available in U.S. public schools and how this has changed over time. In this paper, I present new evidence on broad trends in arts education in U.S. public schools from 1988 through 2018 using nationally representative data from the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the National Teachers…

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) sponsors the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Education in order to collect data on public and private schools, principals, and teachers in the United States. The U.S. Census Bureau conducts the survey for NCES. The NTPS provides data on the…

This article summarizes the results of an exploratory research project that investigated what demographic trends and changes have, or have not, occurred in the elementary and secondary teaching force in the U.S. over the past three decades, from 1987 to 2018. Our main data source was the Schools and Staffing Survey and its successor, the National…

Purpose: The purpose of this article is to estimate the relationship between principal quality and turnover. Principals can have potentially large effects on student outcomes. When school leaders leave their roles, they cause disruptive effects to the school's climate. If effective principals are more likely to leave, the negative effects of…

It has been asserted that the test-based accountability of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) increased instruction in tested subject areas reading and math, leading to reductions in arts education. We tested this using two waves of data, before and after NCLB implementation, in a difference-in-differences design. The analyses indicated that the total…

Purpose: This study examines differences in the mechanisms that charter schools and traditional public schools use to facilitate parental school involvement and the degree to which these differences account for the high levels of involvement among charter school parents. Data and Research Methods: We merge data from principals and teachers from…

Drawing on nationally representative data from the 1988 to 2018 school years, the authors provide an overview of some of the key changes in the characteristics of first-year teachers in the U.S., including racial/ethnic identity, education levels, subject area, and certification status. The data also show that new teachers have become increasingly…

Background: The charter school movement relies on teachers as critical components. Teacher commitment is an important aspect of teachers' lives, because it is an internal force for teachers to grow as professionals. It is also considered one of the crucial factors in influencing various educational outcomes, including teacher effectiveness,…

Purpose: 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,…

This report uses teacher responses to the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) public and private school teacher questionnaires from the 2003-04, 2007-08, and 2011-12 school years. SASS is a system of related questionnaires that provide descriptive data on the context of elementary and secondary education in the United States. The SASS system covers…

This study examines and compares the recruitment, employment, and retention of minority and nonminority school teachers over the quarter century from the late 1980s to 2013. Our objective is to empirically ground the ongoing debate regarding minority teacher shortages and changes in the minority teaching force. The data we analyze are from the…

This study sought to predict U.S. public-school principals' risk of turnover using nationally representative data. After screening several personal and school characteristics that might predict the likelihood of principals leaving their jobs, a logistic regression analysis was employed using 15 significant predictors out of 37 variables identified…

The purpose of this study is to identify different types of school leadership as perceived by teachers and to test the extent that these types predict teacher retention. School leadership varies by perception, context, and may influence a teacher's decision to leave their current school or the profession. Four statistically different types of…