The Science and Mathematics Alliance for Recruiting and Retaining Teachers (SMARRT) is a collaborative partnership pursuing aggressive strategies to recruit high quality minority teachers to teach in high-need schools in urban school districts. This partnership is dedicated to recruiting, preparing, and retaining high quality teachers with strong…

This comprehensive review of 16 nationally representative public opinion polls conducted between 2000 and 2006 provides insight into how teachers, school administrators, parents, and the general public view the teaching profession. It looks specifically at issues of teacher availability, recruitment, and retention for at-risk and hard-to-staff…

Teachers make the greatest impact on students--what they learn, how they learn it, and what they do with it. Decades of research clearly demonstrate that a quality teacher, more than any other factor, enables students to overcome obstacles to learning like poverty and can even erase the achievement gap. The problem is that many teachers lack the…

This mixed methods study gathered information about the experiences of beginning special education teachers, their systems of support, and their intent to continue their careers in the field. Individual open-ended interviews were conducted with 8 first and second year special education teachers to obtain their perceptions of their first year of…

This digest examines the spread of mentoring in the United States, obstacles to realizing the potential of mentoring as a vehicle of reform, needed research, and selected issues of policy and practice. While the education community understands that mentors have a positive effect on teacher retention, the question of what mentors should do, what…

This report presents analyses of the retention, mobility, and attrition of the Texas teaching force in the 1992-93 school year by teacher characteristics and school conditions. The characteristics of teachers who stay in the teaching profession and those who leave are examined by gender, age, ethnicity, years of teaching experience, salary, degree…

Strategies for teacher retention are presented, including successful approaches and elements for operating a state system for personnel recruitment and retention in special education. Such initiatives as the Utah Mentor Teacher Academy; the Texas Teacher Recruitment, Retention and Assistance Program; and the Kansas Recruitment/Retention Project…

This study used existing databases to analyze, from a national perspective, the specific components of retention, transfer, and attrition of special education teachers (SETs) in comparison with general education teachers (GETs). The study used data from the 1990-1991 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the 1992 Teacher Followup Survey (TFS).…

This report examines the patterns of teacher attrition among full-time teachers in Indiana from 1965 to 1987. The study's objectives were to assess the current state of teacher supply and demand in Indiana, recommend policies to ensure an adequate supply of certified teachers, and provide the Indiana State Department of Education with the…

Pressure to upgrade education standards, especially from the six national goals for U.S. education set forth in President Bush's America 2000 program, has affected teacher education. In addition, other pressure has come from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards' plan to certify teachers nationally after 1993-94; the National…

Findings of a study that determined factors of beginning teachers' work and career choice commitment and retention are presented in this paper. The data consisted of a nationally representative sample of first-year K-12 public and private, full- and part-time teachers derived from the 1987-88 Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS). The final subsample…

The term efficacy is broadly defined as the power to produce effect. Since 1977, with the advent of the concept of self-efficacy, research has attempted to establish the type and strength of the relationship between the concept and the education profession. The purpose of this document is to provide a conceptual, theoretical, and integrated review…

This handbook addresses questions that school administrators may have about support assistance programs for new teachers. Following an introduction, the guide is organized into five sections. The first section describes the Elementary Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Chapter 2. Section 2 examines support needs of new teachers in critical shortage…

The Maryland State Department of Education Task Force on Recruiting Minorities for Professional Staff Positions was charged by the State Superintendent in August 1987 with developing a systematic state plan of action to increase the number of minorities in professional positions throughout Maryland's public schools. The group specifically…

This report describes a project which examined special education teacher stress and burnout during the trainee (N=358) and inexperienced teacher (N=357) periods. The project's two goals were: (1) documentation of the relationships among teacher background, preparation, organizational variables, and occupational stress and burnout variables through…