The shortage of teachers is an immense challenge for schools in Illinois, as well as throughout the United States. Districts are changing and adapting their practices to recruit new teachers, but similar changes and efforts need to be implemented to retain the teachers currently in our schools. This research study gave a confidential survey to the…

The rise in numbers of non-tenure track faculty (NTTF) and the impact on student success is not a simple causal relationship. Rather, it is a complex formula of academic supports, strategic staffing, and professional socialization that drives student retention and, inevitably, graduation. At the center of the administration, policies, students,…

Many Head Start programs have closed classrooms due to staff shortages, with up to 30% of teacher positions unfilled. Reducing the elevated teacher turnover rate in Head Start centers is critical to maintaining program effectiveness and controlling costs; however, a limiting factor may be differences in administrators' and teachers' perceptions of…

This action research study implemented an intervention, the Learn at Work program, for operational employees in facilities management at William & Mary earning less than $19 an hour. One of eight dimensions in the Workplace Inclusion Scale, developed by Lennox et al. (2022), is "access to opportunity" (p. 27). This study's…

High rates of teacher turnover and attrition (Diliberti & Schwartz, 2023), coupled by declining enrollment in teacher preparation programs (Partelowe, 2019) have created teacher vacancies and shortages in public schools across the nation (Darling-Hammond et al., 2023). Teacher turnover and attrition negatively impact student growth and…

For children facing adversity, described in this study as developmental trauma, there is evidence for an increase in high-risk behaviors, diseases, and disabilities. Positive relationships between adults and children have shown to be beneficial for children's development and can be crucial to their ability to succeed. Drawing on attachment,…

This dissertation examines the school-level impacts on student achievement in the state of Pennsylvania from the economic inputs provided to students and schools. I conduct a comprehensive review of prior literature on Pennsylvania education funding, the issue of equity versus adequacy, academic spending per pupil, and teacher compensation, as…

This case study seeks to examine the exit-decisions of "invested leavers," teachers who have taught for five or more years and then left the profession for reasons other than retirement. As traditional studies of teacher attrition tend to focus on new teachers, (teachers in their first five years of teaching), their findings may not help…

This qualitative comparative case study explores the teacher retention system practices of rural and small city school districts in New York State that have low entry-level teacher turnover rates. This research problem addresses the need to examine the system practices employed by districts with high rates of teacher retention in supporting and…

The purpose of this quantitative study is to test the relationship between degree choice and post-graduate outcomes for students in the United States by describing the relationship between a selected major and post-graduate outcomes including employment sector, salary for women and men. As college costs rise, and enrollments fall for the first…

The researcher employed a quantitative, exploratory study with causal-comparative and correlational elements to investigate teacher morale related to experience, gender, and student reading achievement to carry out the research. The "Purdue Teacher Opinionnaire" measured teachers' morale in elementary schools. AimswebPlus was the…

The three chapters of this dissertation use tools of applied microeconomics to study topics related to education and regulation. The first chapter, "Where Doctors Work," studies how openings and closures of medical schools in the United States have affected the geographical distribution of doctors. The principal contribution is the…

Nationwide, teacher retention is a growing problem, resulting in a decrease in expertise and affecting student success. Historically the emphasis has been on recruiting and retaining teachers in the first five years of their teaching career. Recent statistics show that teachers with more experience are choosing to leave the profession. To address…

This dissertation contains three empirical papers that quantify how institutional status hierarchies in postgraduate education relate to professionals' employment and earnings outcomes. Chapter 1 examines the effects of postgraduate educational program status hierarchies on earnings among recipients of postgraduate professional degrees in…

I use rich administrative data and several quasi-experiments in Texas to study which students benefit most from college grant aid and why. For "extensive-margin" students, grant aid causes enrollment in college, and therefore has potentially large benefits relative to these students' no-college counterfactual. In contrast,…