Teaching does not happen in a vacuum. Teachers teach and students learn within a school. The environment within that school can be either conducive to teaching "and" learning or detrimental to both. The school's teaching and learning environment includes, for example, the instructional expertise and leadership available to teachers, the professional and educational supports provided by the school's leadership, the amount of time and types of resources available for teaching and learning, and the social/professional relationships created among other teachers, principals, students, and parents. Despite the extensive body of evidence, state, federal, and national educator preparation program (EPP) accreditation policies attribute the persistence of new teachers almost exclusively to the EPP and ignore the impacts of the employment environment. The purpose of this study is to conduct validity and reliability analyses of the Texas Teaching, Empowering, Leading, and Learning (TELL) employment environment survey to determine how best to summarize teachers' responses. The authors also sought to determine which TELL factors predict a teacher's intention to stay at or leave their current school. Finally, they suggest ways the TELL results can be used by EPPs, new teachers, principals, superintendents, researchers, and policy analysts to use the data to inform decision-making.