Effective recruitment and retention strategies of teachers remain elusive for school districts. This study examines the pilot implementation of a year-long teacher residency program throughout four high-needs districts. This program embeds eight residents in these schools and provides various teacher preparation supports to support these beginning…

Public school campuses in rural South Texas are struggling to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. Districts now have flexibility in hiring certified teachers, but the need for teachers continues to grow annually. The challenge lies in attracting teachers to smaller school districts, when there are larger districts throughout the State of…

This study examines the retention rates of new teachers in Texas given their initial certification type and initial school setting. The 5-year persistence rates of 175,664 teachers from 2000 to 2015 are analyzed using logistic regression to calculate the probability of new teacher persistence at the school, district, and state level. Main findings…

There are few areas where American teachers are as united as they are in their dissatisfaction with their professional learning and advancement opportunities. The lack of meaningful offerings affects states' ability to attract, develop, and retain strong teachers, which in turn impedes schools' ability to help students fulfill their potential.…

Nationally, many school districts are facing a teacher workforce sustainability crisis, and job retention for novice teachers of color is a key area of focus for educational leaders and policymakers. In this study, we draw on nine years of administrative data from Texas K-12 public schools to better understand how teacher-principal ethnoracial…

This research investigates whether teachers' unions influence student academic achievement in Southern states that prohibit collective bargaining. Our data are from the School and Staffing Survey and the Stanford Education Data Archive. We measure the strength of teachers' unions by union membership rate and meet-and-confer status of a district…

The study aimed to address rural school principals with unique challenges and responsibilities who have the critical task of attracting and retaining skilled teachers. These schools often face challenges in hiring and keeping quality teachers due to their remote locations, low salaries, and additional workloads. The research focused on identifying…

This article presents a mixed method study utilizing teacher and student demographic and student attendance data from seven hundred and two public schools in central Texas along with follow-up qualitative data gathered through semi-structured interviews conducted with the top 1% of principals identified as having the most diverse group of faculty…

This paper presents a mixed method study examining the relationship between teacher advanced degree attainment and student achievement. This study utilizes teacher demographic data along with standardized test scores from 702 public schools in south central Texas. First, OLS regression analyses were employed to measure the relationship between the…

For years, policymakers, districts, and scholars have pushed for the inclusion of more Black male teachers in US public schools; however, their even smaller subset--Black male special education teachers--has been ignored, particularly by scholars. The results of this study provide insight into the recruitment and retention of Black male special…

This qualitative study investigated what factors kept teachers committed to teaching in one rural east Texas school district despite the perceived educational inequalities of rural districts compared to suburban and urban districts. When it comes to teacher retention, rural school leaders cite school environment and community lifestyle…

Recent scholarship has highlighted the phenomenon of urban public school closures and their effects on student academic outcomes. However, we know little about the broader impact of closures, particularly on teachers who are also displaced by closure. We assess labor market outcomes for over 15,000 teachers in nearly 700 Texas schools displaced by…

To understand the social experiences of rural teachers recruited by cohort-based alternative pathway programs in the United States, I interviewed 17 rural teachers recruited by Teach For America (TFA). While many new rural teachers experience social isolation early in their careers when teaching in communities in which they did not grow up, these…

Strengthening teacher supply is a key policy objective for K-12 public education, but understanding of the early teacher pipeline remains limited. In this descriptive analysis, we leverage the universe of applications to a large public university in Texas from 2009 to 2020 to examine the pipeline into teacher education and employment as a K-12…

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…