Principals, with their unwavering dedication, manage a diverse array of responsibilities, including overseeing the instructional program, daily operations, school governance, budgets, human resources, and school maintenance. They also strive to foster an inclusive environment that ensures a free and appropriate public education (FAPE) for students…

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…

California Bay Area school districts are experiencing a teacher shortage that threatens to further widen the opportunity gap for schools with the neediest student populations. Financial incentives, administrator support levels, appropriate and consistent professional development, and mentoring are often cited as areas that cause teachers to leave…

Teachers are prematurely leaving the profession at substantially high rates. The purpose of this research was to (a) collect and analyze factors linked to retention and potential attrition (i.e., how often a teacher considers leaving the profession), (b) provide specific and updated data on the causes of this problem along with potential…

The sustained shortage of school-based agricultural educators necessitates novel research into variables impacting teacher career commitment. In the current study, a previously unexplored variable in the prediction of career commitment within school-based agricultural education was considered, teacher connectivity. Four elements of teacher…

In the United States, K-12 students are likely to go through school without learning from a single teacher of Color (TOC), yet research shows that all students, especially students of Color, stand to benefit from having TOCs. Therefore increasing the diversity of the teaching working force has gained public concern in the past few years,…

The purpose of this grounded research study was to discover the significant supports that help teachers remain in teaching. The researchers surveyed 60 teachers and interviewed 10 teachers who received significant support in the first years of their teaching experience. The researchers were interested in knowing if the level of assistance and…

The purpose of this study was to identify successful strategies for the preparation, recruitment, and retention of women of color superintendents. The superintendents selected for this study were women of color who worked in urban districts in California, and had had the traditional experience of being a teacher, site administrator, and district…

Many first-year teachers who enter teaching are not prepared to fulfill all of the daily teaching requirements. This is especially true of teachers assigned to Title I classrooms where the teaching challenges are often magnified. Although first-year teachers in Title I classrooms may have different learning needs than their non-Title I…

California is in the midst of a severe special education teacher shortage that threatens the state's ability to improve outcomes for students with disabilities, who often have the greatest needs but receive the least expert teachers. To help policymakers address the shortage, the Learning Policy Institute conducted an analysis of the special…

This is a policy brief for "California's Special Education Teacher Shortage." California is in the midst of a severe special education teacher shortage that threatens the state's ability to improve outcomes for students with disabilities, who often have the greatest needs but receive the least expert teachers. To help policymakers…

Teacher shortages that most severely affect schools serving the least advantaged children have been part of the California education landscape for the last half decade. This brief describes how key teacher supply and demand factors vary across the state, and it provides potential policy solutions to mitigate ongoing shortages. The brief also…

When California students returned to school in fall 2019, hundreds of thousands returned to classrooms staffed by substitutes and teachers who were not fully prepared to teach. In recent years, California has experienced widespread shortages of elementary and secondary teachers as districts and schools seek to restore class sizes and course…

This brief is the first in a series of reports examining the teacher shortage dilemma. It considers what the research says about teacher shortages and highlights recent state task force findings. Designed to guide state leaders in policy decisions, the briefs that follow examine five strategies states are using to address shortages: (1)…

The work of mentoring matters. Whether one is looking at the broad-scale enactment of induction programming or the individualized attention focused on new teachers' learning and development, mentors play a pivotal role in new teacher retention and development. As a result, mentors are in a good position to interpret and enact induction policy at…