Although the percentage of teachers of color in the workforce has grown significantly over the past 30 years, it still does not reflect the diversity of the national population or students. Teachers of color also have higher turnover rates than White teachers, highlighting the need for strategies to retain teachers of color as well as recruit more…

Schools across America are filled with educators who are skilled in their craft but stressed with their work, which is leading to alarming rates of burnout, turnover, and attrition. Much of the existing professional literature addressing public education largely identifies financial limitations as the driving force behind these challenges, but…

Rural teacher recruitment and retention is a matter of interest for the state of Alabama as policymakers look to understand teacher shortages in rural schools across the state. How teachers are prepared to teach in rural schools is an essential part of rural teacher recruitment and retention. Preservice teachers need exposure to rural contexts as…

This article describes the collaborative efforts of various state and national agencies working together to recruit and retain agriculture teachers in the states of Kentucky, South Carolina, and Ohio. We contrast multiple measures of recruitment and retention in these states with those from the comparator states of Arkansas, West Virginia, and…

As the COVID-19 pandemic shut down schools across the country in 2020, Washington state's emergent charter sector was growing. During this time, charter enrollment was growing by 28% each year, on average, and the number of schools in operation doubled from eight to 16. The new schools that opened were planned long before the pandemic. But even…

Background/Context: School districts across the United States face persistent difficulties recruiting and retaining teachers (García & Weiss, 2019; Schmitt & deCourcy, 2022). Over the last decade, every state in the south has faced a growing teacher shortage, with some facing shortages in all grades and subjects (U.S. Department of…

A 2017 report estimates that by 2025, Millennials will dominate the workforce. This shift is affecting the teaching profession, and for Alabama to continually compete on a global scale, the teaching workforce will need to be sustained. Alabama, along with the rest of the nation, is suffering the consequences of a teacher shortage in critical…

The purpose of this study is to share how African American/Black male K-12 novice educators navigated their own educational journey to become K-12 educators in an urban school district in central Alabama. An urban school district was identified from findings from the Census Bureau and had a school that sat inside an urbanized area and inside a…

When public schools closed their doors in the spring of 2020, an estimated 3 million students went missing from formal schooling of any sort. During the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, a mixture of public confusion and mistrust of guidelines coming from state and federal authorities led to a churn of reopening and reclosing schools. However,…

Districts across the country are facing severe shortages of teachers--especially in certain subjects (math, science, special education, career and technical education, and bilingual education) and in specific schools (urban, rural, high-poverty, high-minority, and low-achieving). The severity of the teacher shortage problem varies significantly by…

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the strategies used to recruit and retain teachers in remote rural school districts, from the perspective of the superintendent, the principal, and the teacher. Data was collected from interviews of superintendents, principals, and teachers, conducted in three remote rural school districts in…

Each year, governors take the stage to highlight accomplishments and outline policy priorities for their states. In an effort to provide up-to-date information on education policy trends, Education Commission of the States tracks all education policy proposals and accomplishments featured by governors in these State of the State addresses. At the…

In 2013, Alabama adopted the Alabama Accountability Act, an education reform measure that includes two new school choice programs that extend a lifeline to Alabama students trapped in failing public schools. One program offers a tax credit to help offset the cost of tuition for families who move their children from public schools designated as…

Virtual bug-in-the-ear technology presents one tool that allows practitioners and university educators to use to attract, prepare, and retain high-quality teachers. The experience of Project TEEACH--which stands for Transforming Elementary Educators into Advocates, Change Agents, and Highly Qualified Special Educators--based at the University of…

Rural educational issues cannot be addressed by a one size-fits-all approach to school improvement, but current research offers some solutions and insights into turning around low-performing rural districts and schools. Of the four possibilities set forth by the U.S. Department of Education, the transformation model holds the most promise for…