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…

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…

The purpose of the study was to measure what factors impact the stress levels of probationary teachers who may or may not be new to the field of education, to determine what demographic characteristics are related to higher levels of stress, to determine what coping resources were successful in reducing stress, and to compare the stress levels and…

This article reports that with the poor economy endangering more novice teachers' jobs, researchers and policymakers have begun to question the human-capital costs of "last hired, first fired" layoff policies. Such layoffs, those experts argue, do not consider teacher effectiveness, meaning that teachers who make vital contributions to school…

The Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS) is a follow-up of a sample of the elementary and secondary school teachers who participated in the previous year's Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). The TFS sample includes teachers who leave teaching in the year after the SASS data collection and those who continue to teach. The objective of TFS is to provide…

This study was designed to estimate the magnitude of retention, migration, and attrition of music teachers; the transfer destinations of those who migrated; the career path status of those who left; and the likelihood that former music teachers would return to teaching. Data, which were analyzed for music (n = 881) and non-music teachers (n =…

Education reformers routinely call on school districts to stop hiring teachers based on seniority, which they argue interferes with effective staffing, especially in disadvantaged schools. The few researchers who have empirically studied the issue, however, disagree about whether seniority-based hiring is systematically associated with staffing…

Staffing each classroom with an effective teacher is the most important function of a school district. Doing so requires strategic personnel policies and smart practices. This analysis reviews the Seattle Public Schools' teacher policies linked most directly to teacher effectiveness. Ten policy goals frame the analysis. Each of these goals is…

In the winter and spring of 2008, The New Teacher Project (TNTP) partnered with San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) 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 reveals that schools struggle to build and maintain…

Staffing each classroom with an effective teacher is the most important function of a school district. Doing so requires strategic personnel policies and smart practices. The National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), working with its local partner, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, undertook an analysis of the Boston Public…

Teacher transfers from one worksite to another have a significant impact upon the schools they leave. Researchers and school leaders have proposed a number of solutions to attempt to address teacher transfers, but the rate of teacher transfers remains high. Thus, a better understanding of the motivational factors related to teachers' decisions to…

Connecticut has the largest achievement gap in the country, an unacceptable disparity in achievement of children who are poor and/or minority with children who are middle class and/or white. Hartford, its capital city, is the site of some of the state's most concentrated poverty and racial isolation. All but a small percentage of the district's…