Research & Insights

The most popular District Trendline posts of 2022, with topics ranging from pay increases for substitutes to building a positive school climate

A review of school districts’ parental leave policies and how these policies can help support and retain teachers

Offering paid family leave is an important way to improve quality of life for educators.

A new RAND Corporation survey asked teachers what would be the most effective strategies to recruit and retain more teachers of color.

New research finds that paraprofessional support, time, caseload, resources, and professional development all play major factors in retention.

A focus on teacher
recruitment without appropriate attention to retention is like trying to
collect water in a sieve.

We examine if and how 148 large U.S. school districts use strategic pay to recruit and retain teachers.

A new working paper provides evidence that newly credentialed teachers earn higher salaries if they enter the classroom, rather than pursuing other job opportunities.

Investing in resources, such as school guidance counselors, that help shape a positive school environment can set the stage for building and sustaining a stronger teacher workforce.

Do teachers who return to the district they graduated from have a competitive edge over other beginning teachers?

An examination of incentives offered by states and large school districts.

Every now and then, conventional wisdom gets it wrong.

A look at the role that the quality and character of school life plays in teacher success and retention.

Teachers faced many difficulties last year due to the pandemic. Concerns about teachers not returning for the 2021-22 school year weren’t unfounded. We looked at the incentives that 148 large school districts in the U.S. used to attract and retain teachers during the Fall of 2021.

Tenure, a hotly debated education policy lever, is often viewed as a component of a teacher’s overall compensation package.

We examine the extent to which beginning teachers are receiving any form of compensating differentials that would help increase teacher retention during the first few years in the classroom.

Many efforts to increase diversity focus on getting more teachers of color to the door of the classroom, with too little attention to what comes after.

A recently published study sheds some light on how teacher evaluation and accountability policies might affect the quantity or quality of new teachers available to schools.

At first blush, this new study appears to confirm the well-established finding that more experienced teachers are not really much more effective than less experienced teachers. However, there’s a novel and surprising twist on this common refrain. There’s one group of teachers who continue to gain effectiveness the more years they are in the classroom.

Teacher turnover has proven to be not only costly for schools, but also detrimental to teacher effectiveness and student learning. Still, some teacher attrition is not always a bad thing, in particular when the teachers who leave are the least effective.

Does removing the stress of a standardized test keep teachers in the classroom?

Unlike any other state, the majority of Texas teachers are prepared by non-traditional programs.

Some sensible solutions sometimes turn out to be counterproductive. A prime example may exist in Washington state, which recently instituted a policy requiring new special education teachers to pursue a second endorsement.

New analysis from Chelsea Coffin and Tanaz Meghjani at the D.C. Policy Center explores some of the teacher workforce data from D.C. public schools, and reports on how key education officials and educators there are thinking about teacher retention and recruitment during the COVID-19 crisis.

As school districts work out next year’s instructional format and take stock of their teacher workforce, districts in a position to hire are also readying themselves for a potentially unprepared influx of novice teachers.