Mentoring has become an extremely popular policy for improving the retention and performance of new teachers, but we know little about its effects on teacher and student outcomes. I study the impact of mentoring in New York City, which adopted a nationally recognized mentoring program in 2004. I use detailed program data to examine the…

The purpose of this study was to examine the (a) perceptions held by high school business education department chairpersons regarding the characteristics of individuals entering and remaining in the teaching profession and (b) characteristics of schools that have been successful in recruiting and retaining business education teachers. The findings…

Teacher mobility has become a common feature of the cross-border flows and transnational networks that constitute globalisation. International and intraregional migration of teachers is an important factor in education provision and management in countries in the Southern Africa region, for example Botswana and South Africa. In an increasingly…

The purpose of this article is to examine whether there were improvements in the percentage of first-, second-, and third-grade students in Reading First (RF) schools in Michigan who performed at or above grade level on a standardized test of reading comprehension. The study reports results for 140 schools that participated in the RF initiative…

This issue of "The Progress of Education Reform" highlights data and research on why teachers leave, how attrition affects teacher shortages across the nation and the importance of working conditions for student performance. It focuses on: (1) reasons for teacher turnover; (2) elements of working conditions related to teacher retention…

This study takes place at a Professional Development School (PDS). This PDS opened as a pre-K-5 public charter school, and as a PDS in collaboration with a local public university in Southern California. This qualitative study examined the challenges of teaching in a new PDS as expressed by the teachers' voices. Interview and survey data were…

It is commonly believed that teacher turnover is unusually high and that this is a sign of failure in the education system. Previous studies have tested this idea by comparing teacher turnover with that of similar professions, but have come to contradictory conclusions. We provide additional evidence by comparing teachers with professionals from…

Administrators in six urban districts were interviewed to understand the nature and extent of their problems with recruiting and retaining high quality mathematics teachers. Findings suggest that the math staffing challenge is quite complex, and administrators have had to make difficult compromises because of deficiencies in the quantity and…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe the reasons current or former tenured special education teachers in a Local Education Agency remain or leave their special education teaching positions through the theoretical perspectives of organizational learning and organizational culture. The paper aims to describe the influence of increased…

Ask any teacher about their life as a teacher and they will begin with their experience of place. "First I taught there and then I moved there", the matter of time often hazy or more peripheral to the story of place. As Deleuze and Guattari (1987) argue, becomings are matters of geography more than history, our lives punctuated by…

Currently, we know very little about the mobility decisions of charter public school teachers and how these compare to the decisions made by traditional public school teachers. In addition, it is unclear whether the teachers who leave charter schools tend to be weaker or stronger than their peers. Using statewide administrative data, I begin to…

This article is concerned with the sustainability of the employment of qualified teachers in the Australian long day care sector in the light of the dual pressures of poor pay and conditions, relative to schools, and the commercialisation of the sector and consequent vested interests in containing staffing costs. Eschewing the usual, narrow focus…

Teachers join the profession hoping to inspire students, but their training does not fully prepare them for the realities of the classroom. What is more, the lifelines administrators provide to new hires are not always reliable. Most veteran teachers mandated by state or local officials to serve as mentors are not given time or money to provide…

A growing body of research confirms the long-held belief of parents, school administrators, and policy makers that teachers are the key component to a good education and that there is substantial variation in teacher quality. This research differs fundamentally from prior work on teachers by focusing directly on differences in student learning…

For an alarming number of new teachers, the school gates have turned into a revolving door. Expert estimates anticipate that nearly half of this year's new hires will leave teaching within the next three years. In addition to the direct, negative impact that teacher flight has on student achievement, districts are waking up to the reality that…