Teachers have the largest in-school impact on student achievement. We also know that teacher quality has a greater impact on student outcomes than any other factor, including race, socioeconomic status, and prior academic record.
In fact, according to researchers Hanushek and Rivken, "having three years of good teachers (85th percentile) in a row would overcome the average achievement deficit between low-income kids on free or reduced-price lunch and others."
Yet many districts across the United States (and in many countries across the world) are struggling—really struggling in some cases—to find enough effective teachers to fill their vacancies each year. According to an October 2018 jobs report from the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), there are 389,000 fewer teachers in the K-12 workforce than are needed to keep up with a growing student population.
There are a number of reasons why school districts are finding teacher recruitment and retention to be a challenge in recent years, including the strong labor market and historically low unemployment rates, more occupational choice, poor perceptions of teaching and the education field from society, and dwindling pipeline of candidates from schools of education.
While many of these challenges are beyond the control of districts, there is hope. By prioritizing recruitment and retention in a new, systemic way, districts and schools can experience increased success in finding and retaining those teachers their students desperately need.
Designed for school and district leaders, this practical playbook guides learners through the effective characteristics of a teacher recruitment and retention system, including year-long, multi-stakeholder, multi-channel, relationship-driven, and equity-driven.
The playbook is a collection of some of the most effective strategies and tactics from other schools and districts across the United States that are working to attract, screen, hire, and retain the teachers that districts need most, including:
- opportunities to learn, assess, and reflect on current practices that work and gaps to address;
- concrete, proven next steps for building a year-round, multi-stakeholder recruitment system that will attract more effective teachers;
- ideas and templates for a 21st century recruitment campaign that will attract different generations of teacher candidates;
- a variety of proven levers for improving support, growth, and leadership opportunities for retaining teachers; and
- 50+ pages of appendices with templates, forms, and guides for components leaders to use right away to meet their recruitment and retention challenges.