Research has shown that while the number of school-age children has steadily increased over time, the number of qualified teachers available to educate them has not matched this need. This topical brief shows the percentage of public schools across the nation with teaching vacancies and summarizes strategies implemented in Region 5 Comprehensive…

The special education teacher shortage in the U.S. continues to grow and the implication of this shortage is multifaceted. First and foremost, students that are eligible for special education may not be receiving the educational supports and services that they deserve and legally require. Additionally, this shortage may cause great financial…

Effective recruitment and retention strategies of teachers remain elusive for school districts. This study examines the pilot implementation of a year-long teacher residency program throughout four high-needs districts. This program embeds eight residents in these schools and provides various teacher preparation supports to support these beginning…

Texas's educator workforce has been characterized over the past few decades by high attrition rates contributing to persistent teacher shortages and increased hiring of underprepared and uncertified teachers. These conditions have motivated state investment in a multifaceted strategy to seed and support teacher residency programs. State guidance,…

This study is the first statewide analysis of the effectiveness of the Texas Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) program. Introduced in 2019, TIA is the most significant and unprecedented teacher merit-pay system in the U.S. Leveraging the Synthetic Control Method (SCM), we construct a counterfactual scenario to assess the causal impact of TIA on…

Despite enacting well-intentioned policies to improve teacher recruitment and retention, many states continue to face significant staffing challenges, particularly in high-need schools and hard-to-staff subjects such as math, science, and special education. Two years ago, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) set out to explore the…

The United States is facing growing teacher shortages that may disproportionately affecting schools serving high proportions of students of color, low-income students, and those in rural or urban areas. Special education teachers (SETs) are particularly in demand. Each year, nearly half of all vacancies are filled with teachers switching from one…

News headlines across the country continue to include policy updates, new strategies, and other information relating to the continuing teacher shortage in the United States. School-based agricultural education is not immune to the teacher shortage. Agriculture teacher shortages have been documented for more than a century. Extensive research has…

The study aimed to address rural school principals with unique challenges and responsibilities who have the critical task of attracting and retaining skilled teachers. These schools often face challenges in hiring and keeping quality teachers due to their remote locations, low salaries, and additional workloads. The research focused on identifying…

Heritage Spanish speakers (HSSs) in the U.S. who seek certification as bilingual teachers must show Spanish language proficiency. The state of Texas requires candidates to pass the Bilingual Target Language Proficiency Test (BTLPT) a test seen as a gatekeeping mechanism (Clark & Flores, 2002) in a field that presents chronic shortage of…

We use frame analysis to analyze the first iteration of the Texas District of Innovation policy, which allows districts to take exemption from state education requirements mandating the hiring of a state certified teacher. We analyzed 451 district policies and find the plans use very similar, and sometimes identical, language to frame both the…

Teacher shortages increase yearly while interest in the teaching profession seems to be at an all-time low. Policymakers are again seeing value in high school "grow your own" (GYO) teacher programs as a source of future teacher talent. Against the backdrop of career development models for teaching, we developed an instrument based on…

There was a period in U.S. history when Black teachers were heavily employed within the educational workforce and were leading examples of excellence (Anderson, 1988). Black teachers, teaching within their communities, were able to directly impact their students' achievement and behavior while also reinforcing shared family values. As a result of…

As school systems work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, states continue to grapple with persistent teacher shortages, a lack of teachers of color in the workforce, and high turnover rates undermining recruitment efforts. Teachers' effectiveness and their likelihood of staying in teaching are strongly influenced by the quality of preparation…

Grow Your Own Programs (GYO) have gained increasing popularity with the impact of shortages of quality teaching candidates in many school districts, particularly in urban areas. To address the lack of quality teaching candidates, school districts and states have responded creatively to recruit the best teachers for their schools. To explore some…