Inadequate compensation is often viewed as the root of teacher workforce challenges despite teacher reports that working conditions matter more. Using an original discrete choice experiment with a national sample of 1,030 U.S. teachers, we found that support staff--special education specialists, counselors, and nurses--play an essential role in…

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of high-quality school leadership, we know remarkably little about principal skill development. Using administrative data from Tennessee, Oregon, and New York City, we estimate the returns to principal experience as measured by student outcomes, teacher hiring and retention patterns, and teacher and…

Teachers of color often work in schools with few colleagues from the same racial or ethnic background. This racial isolation may affect their work experiences and important job outcomes, including retention. Using longitudinal administrative and survey data, we investigate the degree to which Tennessee teachers who are more racially isolated are…

Teachers' preference to remain close to where they grew up is recognized as a defining feature of the teacher labor market. Using a unique data set from a large school district in the southeastern United States, I apply a series of within-school and within-student comparisons to assess the effectiveness of homegrown teachers who returned to teach…

Strengthening teacher supply is a key policy objective for K-12 public education, but understanding of the early teacher pipeline remains limited. In this descriptive analysis, we leverage the universe of applications to a large public university in Texas from 2009 to 2020 to examine the pipeline into teacher education and employment as a K-12…

Studies link principal effectiveness to lower average rates of teacher turnover. However, principals need not target retention efforts equally to all teachers. Instead, strong principals may seek to strategically influence the composition of their school's teaching force by retaining high performers and not retaining lower performers. We…

Most prior research measures teacher turnover as an annual event, but teachers actually leave their positions throughout the school year. We 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. Annually,…

This article presents the quantitative portion of a mixed methods study of moral injury among professionals in K-12 public education. Using a cross-sectional correlational survey design, 218 licensed K-12 professionals from 68 schools in one urban school district in the Midwest completed an on-line survey that included measures of moral injury and…

Attracting and retaining teachers can be an important ingredient in improving low-performing schools. In this study, we estimate the expressed preferences for teachers who have worked in low-performing schools in Tennessee. Using adaptive conjoint analysis survey design, we examine three types of school attributes that may influence teachers'…

The federal Race to the Top initiative signified a shift in American education policy whereby accountability efforts moved from the school to the teacher level. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we explore whether evaluation reforms differentially influenced mobility patterns for teachers of varying effectiveness. We find that the rollout…

Given concerns with the performance and attrition of novice teachers, North Carolina allocated $7.7 million from Race to the Top to create the New Teacher Support Program (NTSP), an induction model developed and implemented by the state's public university system and targeted at low-performing schools. In this study, we assess the associations…

This longitudinal case study utilizes critical race theory methodology to chronicle the journey of an African American female in science teacher education. The study looks at her educational history first as a young child and then how she navigates a contested, racialized predominantly White teacher education program, grows and develops in science…

Alternative certification programs are now commonplace in the credentialing of new teachers. We complement the growing evidence base for these teachers by exploring their turnover patterns in four waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). We report on descriptive evidence of growing differences in the…

Educational efforts aimed at attracting the "best and brightest" into the teaching profession are widespread and include national programs, such as Teach for America and the New Teacher Project Teaching Fellows, as well as regional and state-based programs, city-based programs, and university-based programs. Yet, studies of attrition in…

Teacher performance pay programs are theorized to improve student achievement by incentivizing teachers, but opponents counter that teachers are not motivated by money. We used regression discontinuity techniques and data on a census of the students, teachers, and schools in a large urban minority-majority school district to show receipt of a…