The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic led districts and schools to experiment with new staffing and support structures to meet students' academic, emotional, and physical safety needs. Shortages of teachers and substitute teachers, challenging conditions for student teaching, and early retirements all became pressing issues during this time.…

For any labor market to function properly, clear information is needed to guide decision making; its absence invariably leads to less than optimal decisions and inefficiencies. While the broader labor market is riddled with imperfect information, the teacher labor market is particularly vulnerable--largely for the lack of the most basic…

Hiring and retaining teachers of color is one approach that policymakers can use to support improved academic achievement and opportunities for racially and ethnically diverse students. National data show that while the student population is becoming more diverse, the teacher workforce remains largely white and female. While teachers from all…

Persistent and consistent criticism of our nation's educational system has increased pressure on school districts and teacher education programs to improve the quality of teachers in our public schools. While there is research regarding the characteristics of effective teachers, the difficulty is often in identifying and hiring those teacher…

Given the ubiquitous nature of social media, it is important for prospective and current teachers to be aware of the impact of a personal digital footprint upon their career. Teachers are held to a higher standard due to the public nature of their employment. Teachers represent the school district not only during the school day, but beyond the…

This article presents a research project that challenges the skills-based approach to classroom management in teacher education, particularly in the domain of responding to student misbehaviors. In 90-minute narrative-based interviews, 16 first-year Chicago Public School (CPS) teachers were prompted for narratives of their experiences responding…

Slowly but surely, a growing number of states are eyeing policies to select academically stronger individuals for their teaching programs as one avenue to improve the quality of new teachers. Underneath the attention such plans are attracting, though, run deep-seated fears about their potential consequences--particularly whether they will result…

Teach For America (TFA) began in 1990 as an organization purportedly interested in working towards ameliorating a national teacher shortage by sending its corps members into urban and rural schools. In the decades that followed, especially during and immediately following a nationwide onslaught of teacher layoffs instigated by the 2008 Great…

The Every Students Succeeds Act (ESSA) provided states with newfound flexibility on accountability measures and school improvement strategies. Many policy experts have analyzed states' ESSA plans, which explain how states use their federal funds under various provisions of the new law, as well as the approaches states take to identify and rate…

Despite the importance of teachers and the fact that teacher hiring is decentralized in most school districts, we know relatively little about the process through which individual principals hire faculty for their schools. Using interviews with 31 Chicago principals, we explore how principals find job candidates, whether they collaborate with…

Charter schools are publicly-funded educational entities that operate independently from local school districts and are exempt from certain state and local requirements, particularly with regard to teacher personnel policy. In exchange for this flexibility, charter schools are held more accountable for results and may be shut down if they fail to…

The "No Child Left Behind" (NCLB) reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 has created a system, which potentially labeled 82% of US school as "failing" in 2011. Consequences for failing schools go beyond public ostracism to the release of numerous staff and school leaders or the closing of the…

This article describes a teacher-led school "Mathematics and Science Leadership Academy" (MSLA) that is part of the Denver Public Schools. At MSLA, teachers collaborate to make authentic and substantive decisions about how the school operates and seek to meet each student's needs. At teacher-led schools, teachers hire their own…

"Turning around" chronically low-performing schools is of increasing interest to educators and policymakers, as highlighted by the U.S. Department of Education's (2010) recent call to rapidly improve the nation's 5,000 lowest performing schools. Yet there is little rigorous research on changes in student populations and teacher workforce…

Purpose: Relatively little is known about how principals make decisions about teacher hiring. This article uses mixed methods to examine what characteristics principals look for in teachers. Research Methods: Data were gathered using a mixed method approach, including in-depth interviews with a representative sample of 31 principals as well as an…