This qualitative study explores the ethical dilemmas felt by teachers as they transferred from hard-to-staff to easy-to-staff schools within a large urban school district. According to these teachers' accounts, many were motivated by a notion of craft conscience and felt a professional responsibility to leave schools where they were prevented from…

Amid heightened concerns of teacher shortages, we document the role of principals in shaping teachers' labor market decisions. Using teacher transfer applications from a large urban school district, we find that teachers are most likely to seek transfer away from schools with less-experienced principals and weaker leadership. The qualities of…

One way to identify good schools is to look for the schools where teachers want to work. Jeremy Glazer interviewed teachers in one large urban school district who moved from hard-to-staff schools to some of the district's most desirable schools, asking what motivated their moves and why the schools they sought out were attractive to them. These…

With support from the William Penn Foundation, RFA sought to further examine and understand Black teacher attrition and retention in Philadelphia, and promising strategies and initiatives that can promote the retention of Black teachers in the city and elsewhere. In totality, the project includes qualitative research that centers the perspectives…

The Teacher Rotation Policy (TRP) is a recent teacher policy developed in the context of China. TRP seeks to close China's teacher quality disparities through rotating 'high-quality' urban schoolteachers to teach in hard-to-staff rural schools for a period of time. This qualitative case study examined how five policy actors carried out TRP in one…

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…

This 5-year study investigated transfer and retention behavior for 76 science and mathematics teachers in the United States. Counter to the research literature, a bivariate correlation analysis showed that poverty, minority composition, and passing state exams did not impact a decision to transfer schools after the 1st year of teaching, although…

Despite growing concern over teachers' ability to live comfortably where they work, we know little about the systematic impacts of affordability on teachers' well-being, particularly in high-cost urban areas. We use novel survey data from San Francisco Unified School District to identify the patterns and prevalence of economic anxiety among…

Teachers are the most important influence in schools on student achievement, which makes attracting and retaining excellent teachers a high priority for all school districts. But public schools in large cities like Philadelphia are especially challenged to provide every student with a highly-effective teacher. Teacher mobility--that is,…

Substantial teacher turnover poses a challenge to staffing public schools with effective teachers. The scope of the teacher retention challenge across school districts, however, remains poorly defined. Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, we document substantial…

This article assesses the association between the Title I School Improvement Grant (SIG) program's personnel replacement policy and teacher employment patterns within an urban school district. Hannan and Freeman's population ecology model allowed the authors to consider schools within districts as individual organizations nested within a larger…

This brief examines the mobility of public school teachers and principals (including assistant principals) in Wisconsin and presents annual and five-year mobility rates between 2006/07 and 2010/11. An average of 8.0 percent of teachers changed schools between consecutive years, and 19.4 percent changed schools within a five-year span. Teachers…

Education leaders have expressed concern about educators' moving to different schools--within the same state or in another state--because these moves create costs for the home district and have potential impacts on the equitable distribution of effective educators among schools. However, many states do not routinely monitor mobility among…

This brief examines the mobility of public school teachers and principals (including assistant principals) in Minnesota and presents annual and five-year mobility rates between 2006/07 and 2010/11. An average of 9.5 percent of teachers changed schools between consecutive years, and 20.8 percent changed schools within a five-year span. Teachers…

This brief examines the mobility of public school teachers and principals (including assistant principals) in Iowa and presents annual and five-year mobility rates between 2006/07 and 2010/11. An average of 6.7 percent of teachers changed schools between consecutive years, and 18.9 percent changed schools within a five-year span. Teachers were…