In this policy brief, Heather Hough and Susanna Loeb examine the effect of the Quality Teacher and Education Act of 2008 (QTEA) on teacher recruitment, retention, and overall teacher quality in the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). They provide evidence that a salary increase can improve a school district's attractiveness within their…

For well over a decade school districts across the United States have struggled to recruit and retain effective mathematics teachers. In response to the need for qualified math teachers and the difficulty of directly recruiting individuals who have already completed the math content required for qualification, some districts, including Baltimore,…

The capacity of the nation's public schools to recruit and retain highly skilled teachers is a perennial concern of policy makers and school leaders. Over the past two decades, major policy strategies including the federal No Child Left Behind Act and alternative pathways to teaching, as well as changes in the broader labor market, have altered…

The literature on effective schools emphasizes the importance of a quality teaching force in improving educational outcomes for students. In this article we use value-added methods to examine the relationship between a school's effectiveness and the recruitment, assignment, development, and retention of its teachers. Our results reveal four key…

Arguably the most important educational resource is teachers. Teachers and teaching quality are a central feature of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) which requires a "highly qualified teacher" in every core academic classroom. Many states and large districts also have policies in place to attract qualified teachers to…