Pay-for-performance plans have become popular as school districts search for ways to improve teacher quality and student academic achievement. There is a need to develop systems that are sensitive to the market and are performance based whereby higher performing teachers receive greater financial compensation and recognition. The sense of…

This paper seeks to provide a rationale for further researching the everyday events that keep teachers motivated or that discourage them. We put forward the idea that routine Affect Triggering Incidents (ATIs) are an important area for researchers to investigate in terms of how they impact teacher motivation and resilience. Two groups of…

District Awards for Teacher Excellence (D.A.T.E.) is a state-funded program in Texas that provides grants to districts for the implementation of locally-designed incentive pay plans. All districts in the state are eligible to receive grants, but participation is voluntary. D.A.T.E. incentive pay plans were first implemented in Texas districts…

This research synthesis aims to more fully understand the current teacher retention crisis in the United States through a re-conceptualization of what is meant by a teaching career. Currently, research is divided into two broad categories: traditional research on teacher retention and traditional research on teachers' professional lives. This…

One goal of Missouri's Career Ladder program (CL) is to help school districts that have difficulty retaining teachers, particularly those that are small and rural, by offering their teachers opportunities to earn extra pay for extra work and professional development. This report seeks to estimate the effect Career Ladder Program has had on…

Induction support for new teachers is widespread, particularly in the form of mentoring, but research evidence of effectiveness is limited. The majority of existing research has focused on the impact of induction on teacher retention. Of greater interest is the potential impact on student achievement, and on which forms of support are the most…

This retrospective, longitudinal study compares the career paths of graduates of Harvard University's master's-level teacher education program (TEP) before and after it adopted an urban emphasis in 2001. I surveyed all graduates of TEP, 1985-2006, which yielded a sample of 636. Using discrete-time survival analysis, I examined where respondents…

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 =…

Increasing student achievement and narrowing the achievement gap are challenges that states and districts continue to confront as they strive to develop talent that will contribute to our nation's economy. Some strategies to produce authentic improvement in learning are not entirely a mystery. A preponderance of research in recent years provides…

Special educators are a high risk group, prone to low job satisfaction, low self-efficacy, and increased stress and burnout. The attrition rate of special educators is particularly high, contributing to an overall shortage of qualified teachers throughout the United States. While the problems of special educators are widely discussed in the…

This study seeks to empirically ground the debate over mathematics and science teacher shortages and evaluate the extent to which there is, or is not, sufficient supply of teachers in these fields. The authors' analyses of nationally representative data from multiple sources show that math and science are the fields most difficult to staff, but…

Preparing all students to succeed in today's increasingly global economy and complex world requires a shift from a teacher-centric culture to learner-centered instruction, according to a new report from the Alliance for Excellent Education. This report examines the characteristics of learner-centered instruction and the support that educators and…

Teach For America (TFA) aims to address teacher shortages by sending graduates from elite colleges, most of whom do not have a background in education, to teach in low-income rural and urban schools for a two-year commitment. The impact of these graduates is hotly debated by those who, on the one hand, see this as a way to improve the supply of…

Teacher quality research and the study of teacher effects received renewed attention and emphasis with Sanders and Rivers' (1996) startling finding that teacher effects are both additive and cumulative, persisting up to an estimated two years after the student has left the teacher's classroom. Sanders and Rivers estimated that a student receiving…

We examined the five most recent years of data (2003-2004 through 2007-2008) from the Texas Academic Excellence Indicator System regarding new teachers employed at high school campuses. We specifically focused on the extent to which differences were present between high school campuses with the highest new teacher percentages and high school…