Situated against teacher demand problems worldwide, rising teacher turnover and declining teacher education enrollment have rendered the state of South Carolina a region commonly described as facing a "teacher shortage crisis." This paper reports results from an evaluation of the Rural Recruitment Initiative (RRI), a state-level teacher…

Teacher hiring is a critical lever for improving school outcomes. However, the availability of supply is a significant barrier that affects principals' processes for teacher staffing. Drawing on sensemaking theory and concepts of fit, this study investigates how principals make sense of recruitment and hiring in a local labor market with severe…

News headlines across the country continue to include policy updates, new strategies, and other information relating to the continuing teacher shortage in the United States. School-based agricultural education is not immune to the teacher shortage. Agriculture teacher shortages have been documented for more than a century. Extensive research has…

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…

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 COVID-19 global pandemic impacted the United States' educational landscape by intensifying the teacher shortage. In particular, significant help is wanted in filling public school vacancies in specialty areas, which has resulted in non-instructional staff teaching in classrooms and impacting school operations. Federal, state, and local…

This report draws on insight from a nationally representative survey of schools in England, a convenience sample of nearly 1,500 supply teachers and qualitative research with 60 supply teachers, 22 leaders, and seven supply teacher providers conducted in 2023. It explores individuals' motivations for entering the supply market, along with the…

Teacher shortages have intensified across several OECD countries, making this an urgent priority for education systems. Between 2015 and 2022, the share of students whose principals reported shortages rose from 29% to 46.7% on average across the OECD. Simultaneously, rapid technological advances, such as artificial intelligence (AI), and broader…

In 2021, California made major new investments to advance its commitment to early childhood education through universal preschool. One important investment was extending state funding for transitional kindergarten (TK), previously just for older 4-year-olds, to all 4-year-olds by 2025-26. To ensure the quality of new preschool investments,…

The demand for high quality teachers in P-12 public school districts in California outweighs the supply. A 2018 report by the Learning Policy Institute states that 88% of teacher demand is a result of attrition (Darling-Hammond et al., 2018). The issue of teacher retention is examined through the conceptual framework of new teacher mentoring.…

This paper examines a sampling of messages available to potential teacher candidates when searching online and querying, "How do I become a teacher?" Methodology used was discourse analysis of online search results using critical questions informed by Ellsworth's (1997) notions of mode of address. Results reported here are from targeted…

California will need a stable, high-quality teacher workforce to weather the COVID-19 crisis and support student learning in the coming years. However, persistent and worsening teacher shortages threaten the state's ability to meet that need. Teacher shortages, which are often most acute in high-need fields and high-need schools, more severely…

The critical shortage of foreign language teachers in the United States is well documented, and it was recently reported by ACTFL (2017) to be the worst on record. Exacerbating this shortage is declining enrollment in foreign language teacher training programs that serve as a pipeline to the profession. Even more troublesome, in response to…

There is widespread concern about the shortage of secondary school teachers in England. Recruitment to initial teacher training regularly fails to meet its intake targets. The secondary school pupil population is increasing. Teacher vacancies have risen, and more teachers are reportedly leaving the profession prematurely. Despite considerable…

The recruitment, development and retention of teachers and school leaders is a crucial underpinning for a successful education system. Ensuring there are sufficient numbers of high-quality teachers employed in schools is necessary for the school system to deliver a high-quality education for all children and young people, particularly as the…