Since its founding 34 years ago, Teach For America has prepared nearly 70,000 recent college graduates and career-changers to teach in high-poverty schools across the United States. Unlike traditional teacher-preparation programs, it places "corps members" in short-staffed public schools after an intensive summer seminar, before they are…

The study aimed to address rural school principals with unique challenges and responsibilities who have the critical task of attracting and retaining skilled teachers. These schools often face challenges in hiring and keeping quality teachers due to their remote locations, low salaries, and additional workloads. The research focused on identifying…

Teacher shortages continue to be a challenge for state policymakers, and while national media coverage paints a picture of widespread shortages, a closer examination reveals that shortages tend to be concentrated in specific subjects and schools. The primary policy response to shortages is often to recruit more teachers, but research demonstrates…

A large share of Wisconsin's 400+ school districts are rural, and nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools statewide attend rural schools. Persistent challenges faced by rural districts in attracting and retaining educators, however, are contributing to an increasingly dire situation for the state's rural communities. This report…

The LGBTQ+ community is one overlooked and underresearched in education recruitment and retention, as compared with other minoritized groups. A growing teacher shortage is rooted both in recruitment and in retention and can be mitigated by examining policies that support equitable preservice programs and reduce high teacher rates of attrition.…

Teacher shortage in the United States (U.S.) is persistent and severe and manifests more acutely in low-income school districts and mathematics and science subject areas. Strategies to recruit locally trained teachers from within the U.S. have failed to satisfy the increasing demand, and recruitment drives have extended beyond national borders to…

Purpose: The paper discusses a partnership between Huston-Tillotson University (HT), a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) and the Austin Independent School District (AISD), a minority-serving school district, both in Austin, Texas, with a grant provided by Apple Inc. (Apple). The purpose of the partnerships is that valuable…

Considering the enrollment decline in university teacher preparation programs, this phenomenological study explored the experiences of seven southeastern Wisconsin public high school juniors and seniors, who were interested in a pursuing a teaching degree, but have changed their minds and dismissed their original career path. The purpose of the…

This project is a single ongoing case study that focuses on the teaching experiences of two early-career math teachers working in rural schools and the factors that influenced their decision to work in these environments (Yin, 2014). Both teachers are graduates of Clarkson University's STEM Up NY program, a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded…

Teachers are critical to student learning, but adequately staffing classrooms has been challenging in many parts of the country. Even though teacher shortages are being reported across the U.S., teacher shortages are poorly understood. Determining and addressing teacher shortages is difficult due to the lack of data. Neither the federal government…

With the rapid increase of English Learners (ELs) in K-12 schools, school districts are struggling to find ways to meet the needs for EL teachers. One approach to address the shortage is to build teacher capacity by collaborating with higher education institutions where English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher preparation programs are offered.…

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…

This dissertation consists of three papers. In each, I use applied econometric methods and economic theory to study the American teacher workforce. The first paper evaluates a novel policy to address teacher shortages by promoting experienced school staff to be teachers of record. Controlling for demographics and baseline scores, I find that…

The purpose of this post-positivist, mixed methods study was to accurately quantify the teacher staffing trends in public education, especially for rural schooling and to learn how these trends impacted school districts specifically using Wisconsin schools as a case study. In the early 2000's, school districts throughout the nation experienced…

Upcoming changes in the teacher labor supply will have an impact on nations that provide government-based education for their youth. Faced with a significant global shortfall of educators, most countries have taken steps to incentivize teaching as a profession and ensure that qualified teachers are available to students in all locations --…