This report describes the implementation and intermediate impacts of an intervention designed to provide incentives to induce a school district's highest-performing teachers to work in its lowest-achieving schools to improve student achievement. The report is part of a larger study that used random assignment to form equivalent groups of…

It is commonly assumed that urban school districts hire teachers late due to issues related to district size and/or restrictions in collectively bargained teacher contracts affecting teacher hiring and transfers between schools. Our investigation of late teacher hiring and collective bargaining is based on a survey of 40 school districts that…

Purpose: This article discusses the opportunities presented by the globalization of education and the role of knowledge management in successful global expansion. It seeks to explain why the tacit dimensions of the knowledge transferred during international education provision makes it difficult to provide educational services in offshore…

"Irreplaceables" are teachers who are so successful they are nearly impossible to replace, but who too often vanish from schools as the result of neglect and inattention. To identify and better understand the experience of these teachers, the authors started by studying 90,000 teachers across four large, geographically diverse urban school…

Teacher transfer requests interfere with the stability and continuity of teaching thereby causing low student performance. The purpose of the study was to investigate how teacher transfer requests can be minimized. The study employed a descriptive survey design. The population of the study included 16 head teachers, 126 teachers and the provincial…

The objective of this study is to use nationally representative data to examine the rates, destinations and sources of math and science teacher turnover. There are four sets of research questions the authors address concerning the departure of mathematics and science teachers from their schools: (1) At what rates do mathematics/science teachers…

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these reforms have the potential to benefit schools and…

This paper analyzes attrition patterns among teachers in New York City public elementary and middle schools and explores whether teachers who transfer among schools, or leave teaching entirely, are more or less effective than those who remain. We find that the first-year teachers who are less effective in improving student math scores have higher…

Teach For America (TFA) recruits high-achieving college graduates to teach for 2 years in the nation's low-income schools. This study is the first to examine these teachers' retention nationwide, asking whether, when, and why they voluntarily transfer from their low-income placement schools or leave teaching altogether. Based on a survey of three…

One way to improve struggling schools' access to effective teachers is to use selective transfer incentives. Such incentives offer bonuses for the highest-performing teachers to move into schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In this report, we provide evidence from a randomized experiment that tested whether such a policy intervention…

This study explored barriers to utilizing information and communication technologies (ICT) for teaching and learning in the country of Jordan as indicated by participating stakeholders: students, teachers, and administrators. Jordan is a developing country in the heart of the Middle East with both tremendous opportunity as well as significant…

One way to improve struggling schools' access to effective teachers is to use selective transfer incentives. Such incentives offer bonuses for the highest-performing teachers to move into schools serving the most disadvantaged students. In this report, we provide evidence from a randomized experiment that tested whether such a policy intervention…

In education, teacher experience is probably "the" key factor in personnel policies that affect current employees: it is a cornerstone of traditional single-salary schedules; it drives teacher transfer policies that prioritize seniority; and it is commonly considered a major source of inequity across schools and, therefore, a target for…

In the spring and summer of 2008, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) partnered with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to investigate the impact of the school district's policies and practices on the ability of schools to build and maintain strong instructional teams. TNTP's analysis included the following components: (1) Analysis of teacher…

Of the school-level factors that have an impact on student learning, one of the most powerful appears to be the effectiveness of the individual teacher. The most effective teachers are, therefore, one of the most important tools schools and systems have at their disposal to lift the achievement of socio-economically disadvantaged students and…