Over 90% of schools are reporting that there is a serious teacher shortage problem. For public education to continue to produce educated, productive students, educators must keep the best and most highly qualified teachers in the profession. The purpose of this study is to investigate the perceived factors that affect teacher shortage and ways to…

The teacher shortage will be a major hurdle for school leaders over the next several years with declining enrollments in teacher preparatory programs and many teachers changing professions in their first five years. The "2021 Illinois Educator Shortage Survey," authored by Shereen Oca Beilstein and Tom Withee, and sponsored by several…

The problem addressed in this study is teacher retention and attrition, and the importance of this study is related to the teacher shortage. Districts have limited access to quality educators, and to maximize student learning, districts should work to maximize their retention rates and reduce attrition rates of high-quality educators. The purpose…

Teachers contribute more to reading and math outcomes than any other factor of schooling. However, teacher shortages are pervasive. How can schools and districts recruit high-quality educators, hold onto to the ones they already have, and reflect the diversity of their students? This infographic highlights innovative models beyond the traditional…

Region 9 Comprehensive Center (R9CC) and Illinois State Board of Education (ISBE) collaboratively collected and analyzed teacher workforce data to identify barriers for recruiting and retaining an effective and diverse teacher workforce. R9CC and ISBE used the Teacher Shortage Tool from the Center on Great Teachers and Leaders to identify equity…

Approximately half of a million educators move or leave the profession each year with an estimated 41% of all educators exiting within the first five years. Additionally, agriculture teacher preparation programs are not producing enough graduates to meet current demands with 1,476 agricultural teacher vacancies existing in 2016 and only 772…

An estimated 17% to 30% of new teachers in the U.S. leave the profession within their first 5 years of teaching. Some challenges that prompt new teachers to leave the field include stress, lack of appropriate support, and feeling unprepared to handle behavioral and academic issues among their students. Research supports the finding that teachers…

For any labor market to function properly, clear information is needed to guide decision making; its absence invariably leads to less than optimal decisions and inefficiencies. While the broader labor market is riddled with imperfect information, the teacher labor market is particularly vulnerable--largely for the lack of the most basic…

In recent years, the benefits of bilingualism through dual language (DL) education models have been well documented. Despite evidence of bilinguals' heightened cognition and achievement, Midwestern English language learners (ELLs) are relegated to language programs that do nothing to enhance or maintain students' native language. This descriptive…

This brief is the first in a series of reports examining the teacher shortage dilemma. It considers what the research says about teacher shortages and highlights recent state task force findings. Designed to guide state leaders in policy decisions, the briefs that follow examine five strategies states are using to address shortages: (1)…

More than 60 years after the ruling in "Brown v. Board of Education" was handed down, its promise remains unfulfilled. In many respects, America's public schools continue to be "separate and unequal." Indeed, the growing re-segregation of American schools by race and ethnicity, compounded by economic class segregation, has…

Critical to any comprehensive plan for addressing personnel shortages in the field of special education is the gathering of data on supply and demand at the state and local education agency (LEA) levels. Many states now conduct regular supply and demand studies in order to inform decisions regarding the recruitment, preparation and retention of…

This report reveals that about 100 Chicago schools suffer from chronically high rates of teacher turnover, losing a quarter or more of their teaching staff every year, and many of these schools serve predominantly low-income African American children. In the typical Chicago elementary school, 51 percent of the teachers working in 2002 had left…

This report presents the Illinois edition of the National Council on Teacher Quality's 2008 "State Teacher Policy Yearbook." The 2008 "Yearbook" focuses on how state policies impact the retention of effective new teachers. This policy evaluation is broken down into three areas that encompass 15 goals. Broadly, these goals…

This paper was developed for the Illinois State Board of Education as part of a year long project to address the issue of personnel shortages in special education. Recommendations from a number of state committees and professional organizations were analyzed and additional input obtained from various professionals in regular and special education.…