Search

Despite increasing recognition of the importance of high-quality school leadership, we know remarkably little about principal skill development. Using administrative data from Tennessee, Oregon, and New York City, we estimate the returns to principal experience as measured by student outcomes, teacher hiring and retention patterns, and teacher and supervisor ratings of principals. The typical principal leads a school for only 3-5 years and leaves the principalship after 6-7 years. We find little evidence that school performance improves as principals gain experience, despite substantial improvement in supervisor ratings. Our results suggest that strategies intended to increase principal retention are unlikely to improve school outcomes absent more comprehensive efforts to strengthen the link between principal skill development and student and school outcomes.

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) was the largest onetime federal investment in K-12 schools in history, funneling almost $200 billion to states and school districts. We use novel data from Washington State to investigate the extent to which ESSER funding causally influenced spending on school personnel. We argue one cannot infer this directly from ESSER claims data because of the fungibility of school budgets. Thus, we rely on a more direct signal of district hiring decisions: public education job postings scraped from district hiring websites. To address endogeneity concerns, our preferred approach employs an instrumental variables strategy that exploits a formula mechanism used to determine Title I funding for 2020-21 (and thus ESSER allocations in 2022) based on the number of Title I formula-eligible children. We find strong, arguably causal, evidence that public school hiring increased in response to the availability of ESSER funding. Specifically, we estimate that each $1,000 in ESSER allocations caused districts to seek to hire $206 in additional staff, disproportionately teachers. These estimates suggest that roughly 12,000 new staff (including 5,100 teachers) were hired in Washington because of ESSER. In the absence of new funding, school staffing budgets will likely need to contract substantially following the sunset of ESSER.

This brief discusses equity-minded faculty practices and provides resources to support equity-minded faculty hiring. It focuses on the four hiring practices that have been proven to contribute in a positive way to faculty diversity, including: (1) developing equity-minded hiring criteria; (2) equity-themed cluster hiring; (3) equity-minded teaching evaluation; and (4) equity-minded interviews. Practices that can be enacted before, during, and after the search process are highlighted, including aligning institutional and departmental commitments, forming search committees that are representative of diverse constituencies, and ensuring an environment of success for new hires. [Eileen and Harold Brown provided additional funding for this series of briefs.]

In this essay, we explore the consequences of the University of California's policies to address racial disparities and its support for social justice activism as influences on its commitment to academic freedom and other intellectual values. This is a story of the interaction between two essential public university missions -- one civic, the other intellectual -- and the slow effacement of one by the other. The University's expressed commitments to academic freedom and the culture of rationalism have not been abandoned, but they are too often considered secondary or when confronted by new administrative initiatives and social movement activism related to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The experimental use of mandatory DEI statements on a number of the ten UC campuses, within willing academic departments, as initial screening mechanisms in faculty hiring is the most dramatic of the new administrative policies that have been put into place to advance faculty diversity. This policy can be considered the most problematic of a series of efforts that the UC campuses and the UC Office of the President have taken for more than a decade to prioritize representation in academic appointments. Our intent is to encourage a discussion of these policies within UC in light of the University's fundamental commitments to open intellectual inquiry, the discovery and dissemination of a wide range of new knowledge, and a culture of rationalism.

Within the education workforce, two significant challenges are receiving national attention: teacher shortages and the need for diversity among educators. These issues are widely discussed in the news, prioritized in district and state strategic plans, and debated by researchers generally as separate topics addressing separate needs. Yet approaching educator shortages without a commitment to educator diversity overlooks multiple realities that disproportionately impact students and educators who are marginalized and minoritized. Recruitment and retention of teachers who have been racially marginalized and minoritized should be a central component of all efforts to address educator shortages. This report begins with a discussion of the research base related to three critical realities affecting the current educator workforce: (1) Shortages disproportionately affect students who are racially marginalized and minoritized; (2) Educator recruitment and retention are influenced by systemic racism and racial disparities in education; and (3) Educators who are ethnoracially diverse are critical to addressing the needs of today's classrooms. This report highlights integrated approaches that states, education preparation programs (EPP), districts, and other education organizations are implementing to address both teacher shortages and the need for racial diversity in the teacher workforce. These strategies, outlined in Part 2, can serve as models for other education entities seeking guidance on how to better address these challenges simultaneously. [This report was co-produced with the Center for Black Educator Development.]

"Prioritizing an Integrated Approach to Educator Shortages and Workforce Diversity, Part 1: An Effective Workforce Is a Diverse Workforce" makes the case for integrating policies, programs, and practices that address teacher shortages and those that aim to diversify the teacher workforce. Three critical realities illustrate the ways in which educator shortages and workforce diversity are inextricably linked: (1) Shortages disproportionately affect students who are racially marginalized and minoritized; (2) Educator recruitment and retention are influenced by systemic racism and racial disparities in education; and (3) Educators who are ethnoracially diverse are critical to addressing the needs of today's classrooms. This paper presents strategies and examples for states, districts, and educator preparation programs (EPPs) that want to approach both educator shortage and diversity efforts with an integrated perspective that addresses all points of the talent development continuum. [This report was co-produced with the Center for Black Educator Development.]

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 summarizes findings from a yearlong research project investigating strategies being used by rural districts to address educator shortages, including a diverse set of "grow your own" (GYO) initiatives which involve school districts working with educator preparation programs (EPPs) and other local partners to identify, recruit, and prepare local candidates to become educators. The mixed-methods research design draws upon two statewide surveys (of rural superintendents and local site coordinators of the Educators Rising GYO program), along with site visits to five rural districts, to accomplish two main goals: (1) to identify strategies being used by rural districts to attract, recruit, and hire teachers; and (2) to describe the landscape of GYO initiatives being utilized by rural Wisconsin districts and local partners to address educator shortages. Broadly speaking, the work suggests that rural school districts are not waiting on state or federal policymakers to solve longstanding staffing challenges for them, but instead are actively engaged in implementing a mix of national GYO programs such as Educators Rising and "homegrown" GYO initiatives as one solution to chronic educator shortages. Not surprisingly, a distinct set of both successes and challenges have emerged as rural districts attempt to implement, launch, sustain, and scale up GYO initiatives that meet their needs. [Paper's original version August 2023; revised version September 2023. This work was made possible by a research grant from UW-Madison's Tommy G. Thompson Center for Public Leadership.]

Youth benefit from involvement in the arts. At the same time, youth from families with low incomes are about half as likely to have access to arts instruction as youth from families with more resources, due to cuts in arts education which disproportionally affect schools in under-resourced communities that have been economically and socially marginalized. Arts programming outside of schools is also inequitably distributed, and when the arts are offered in low-cost settings such as multipurpose afterschool programs, the programming tends to focus on arts and crafts rather than the creation of original artwork that develops formative artistic skills. The Youth Arts Initiative (YAI) aimed to address the gap in access to high-quality arts by developing a sustainable and scalable model of arts programming in multipurpose out-of-school time (OST) organizations. From 2019 through 2021, five Boys & Girls Club organizations, with startup resources from The Wallace Foundation, set out to test whether they could develop YAI within the resource constraints of multipurpose OST programs. This report shares early lessons learned by these five OST organizations which were documented by a two-and-a-half-year study. It provides a preliminary roadmap for multipurpose OST organizations seeking to increase the quality of their arts programming and close gaps in access to high-quality arts programming. The findings shared in this report can also be used by organizational leaders to make the case to funders and policymakers that initial investments in a high-quality arts program infrastructure are needed and that those investments will expand access and equity in arts programming for youth.

Teachers of color have a positive impact on all students and make a particularly pronounced difference in the lives of students of color. For students of color, having a teacher of color can increase academic achievement and advanced course-taking, reduce discipline incidents, improve attendance, increase high school graduation and college-going, as well as increase social-emotional outcomes like grit and sense of self-efficacy. The national movement for teacher diversity--driven by both a national reckoning around racial injustice and mounting research on the positive impact that teachers of color have on students--is clearly ascendant. This is a policy area that will require sustained commitment from states to achieve progress and increase the number of teachers of color in the workforce. So to what extent is this commitment reflected in state policies and funding? In National Council on Teacher Quality's first comprehensive scan of state teacher diversity policies, this report takes stock of key trends across 50 states and the District of Columbia. [This report received funding from the Belk Foundation.]

High-quality early learning experiences (i.e., developmentally appropriate, play-based instruction with clear learning goals) have positive long-term effects on student outcomes. As California rolls out Universal Transitional Kindergarten (UTK), district leaders focused on meeting state requirements for hiring qualified staff and finding appropriate facilities, and thus have been unable to focus on quality. The state can take the following actions to incentivize and support districts to broaden their focus for UTK: set a vision, establish goals, and measure progress in terms of enrollment, key implementation features, and student outcomes for preschool through third grade; align resources and support to advance high-quality implementation of UTK at scale; and publicly communicate key aspects of implementation and outcomes, enabling communities to monitor whether their districts are serving them well.

Ensuring students' equitable access to talented educators remains a national priority. Congress established the Teacher and School Leader (TSL) Incentive competitive grant program in 2015 to help address this goal, providing financial support to selected school districts to improve their systems for hiring, supporting, and retaining educators, particularly in high-need schools. Grantees can use TSL funds flexibly, for either or both of the two main components of those systems: basic infrastructure for generating and managing data, and a set of strategies that use these data to improve their educator workforce. However, the TSL program requires applicants to already be using two specific data-driven strategies that research has shown to be promising: performance-based compensation and personalized support and feedback to educators. As part of the 2017 competition, the program also incentivized the use of grant funds to address equity and educator diversity. With those initial 3-year grants having now drawn to a close, this report provides the first comprehensive review of the activities 2017 TSL grantee districts prioritized with their TSL funds, and how well these activities aligned with the key aspects of the program. The report is based on interviews conducted near the end of the grant period for the 24 districts that were part of the 2017 TSL cohort and is part of a broader evaluation of TSL required by Congress. [For the Study Highlights, see ED627049.]

We use publicly available, longitudinal data from Washington state to study the extent to which three interrelated processes--teacher attrition from the state teaching workforce, teacher mobility between teaching positions, and teacher hiring for open positions--contribute to "teacher quality gaps" (TQGs) between students of color and other students in K-12 public schools. Specifically, we develop and implement an agent-based model simulation of decisions about attrition, mobility, and hiring to assess the extent to which each process contributes to observed TQGs. We find that eliminating inequities in teacher mobility and hiring across different schools would close TQGs within 5 years, while just eliminating inequities in teacher hiring would close gaps within 10 years. On the other hand, eliminating inequities in teacher attrition without addressing mobility and hiring does little to close gaps.

Charter schools and inter-district public school choice are a growing part of the public school system. Theoretically, competition for students might lead to competition for effective and diverse teaching faculties. This study assesses how competition from school choice relates to the distribution of teacher characteristics across school contexts, exploiting within-school temporal variation in exposure to competition from school choice -- both charter schooling and inter-district school choice. I also test whether the relationship between school choice and teacher characteristics differs between charter schools and traditional public schools, or in areas with less restrictive collective bargaining agreements. Using student- and teacher-level data from 2012-13 to 2018-19, I find that growth in choice-based competition was associated with changes in the teacher workforce that were primarily positive (e.g., an increase in teacher experience and the proportion of teachers with at least a master's degree) and primarily occurring in charter schools, with very little indication of larger systemic effects in the TPS sector.

The 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) is a nationally representative survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State-level data are also available for public schools, principals, and teachers. NTPS collects data on core topics including teacher and principal preparation, classes taught, school characteristics, and demographics of the teacher and principal labor forces. The survey is developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education, and data are collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. This report presents basic estimates from the Public and Private School Data Files of the 2020-21 NTPS, the third collection of NTPS. The purpose of NTPS is to collect data to provide a detailed picture of U.S. elementary and secondary schools and their staff. Items about how schools first adapted to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic during the spring of 2020 were included in the School, Principal, and Teacher Questionnaires. In addition, an item was included at the beginning of each questionnaire asking about the current effect of COVID-19 on instruction at the school at the time the survey was completed during the 2020-21 school year. This First Look report provides descriptive statistics and basic information from the 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey Public School and Private School Data files. [For the Summary report, see ED624615.]

The 2020-21 National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) is a nationally representative survey of public and private K-12 schools, principals, and teachers in the 50 states and the District of Columbia. State-level data are also available for public schools, principals, and teachers. NTPS collects data on core topics including teacher and principal preparation, classes taught, school characteristics, and demographics of the teacher and principal labor forces. The survey is developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) within the U.S. Department of Education, and data are collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. This report presents basic estimates from the Public and Private School Data Files of the 2020-21 NTPS, the third collection of NTPS. The purpose of NTPS is to collect data to provide a detailed picture of U.S. elementary and secondary schools and their staff. Items about how schools first adapted to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic during the spring of 2020 were included in the School, Principal, and Teacher Questionnaires. In addition, an item was included at the beginning of each questionnaire asking about the current effect of COVID-19 on instruction at the school at the time the survey was completed during the 2020-21 school year. This Summary presents selected findings from the First Look report. [For the Full Report, see ED624616.]

With support from the William Penn Foundation, RFA sought to further examine and understand Black teacher attrition and retention in Philadelphia, and promising strategies and initiatives that can promote the retention of Black teachers in the city and elsewhere. In totality, the project includes qualitative research that centers the perspectives of a small sample of current and former teachers in the Philadelphia area who identify as Black--which is the focus of this report--and a national scan of select teacher diversification initiatives and the particular strategies they employ. The present report shares the storied experiences and actionable recommendations of a sample of 30 current and former Black teachers, organized by salient themes, providing clear and direct insight into factors that contribute to Black teacher attrition as well as ways to retain current teachers. This report describes the study's methodology, presents findings regarding the unique challenges faced by Black teachers, discusses what sustains and retains Black teachers in the profession, and shares their recommendations for increasing Black teacher retention. It concludes with reflections on the implications of these findings and opportunities for future research to further inform policies and practices that best support Black teachers.

The role a school and its teachers play in a child's life is undeniable. Both influence how children understand the world they live in, their place in that world, and their perceptions of future possibilities. Schools where students have opportunities to engage with multicultural curriculum materials, experience culturally responsive and sustaining school climates, and learn in classrooms led by teachers from racially, ethnically, and linguistically diverse backgrounds are especially impactful. Furthermore, students of color who have teachers of color are also less likely to experience exclusionary discipline practices and are more likely to improve their academic performance and graduate high school. Increasing teacher diversity is thus an effective strategy for creating more equitable learning environments and outcomes for all students. Increasing teacher diversity is of particular importance to the charter school sector as charter schools are more likely to serve students of color than traditional public schools. This publication is designed to support charter school leaders' efforts to achieve educational equity by focusing on one key strategy--building a pipeline of teachers of color through effective recruiting, hiring, and sustaining strategies. This report is divided into the following sections: (1) Section 1 provides an overview of the research on the importance of having a diverse teacher workforce; (2) Section 2 features strategies Drew Charter School and DSST are successfully implementing to recruit, hire, and sustain teachers of color; and (3) Section 3 highlights key strategies for recruiting, hiring, and sustaining teachers of color.

The Center for Universal Education (CUE) at Brookings has been investigating efforts to scale and sustain evidence-based initiatives leading to large-scale improvements in children's learning. CUE has been implementing a series of collaborative action research initiatives called Real-time Scaling Labs (RTSL), in partnership with local institutions in several countries. The goal of these RTSLs is to generate evidence and provide practical recommendations around the process of scaling in global education--encouraging a stronger link between research and practice. This report focuses on one of the scaling labs in Jordan, launched in 2019 in collaboration with the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ), the MoE, and INJAZ. The lab focused on this partnership-led process of implementing, adapting, and scaling the National Financial Education Program (FEP) in grades 7-12 across the country. While this report is focused on the story of the FEP, it also serves as a case study into larger questions of how an evidence-based initiative can achieve progress toward national sustainable scale, with lessons that are transferable beyond FEP and Jordan. Section one of the report provides a brief background on the case, including an overview of the education ecosystem, movement to promote greater financial inclusion in Jordan, and brief descriptions of key actors and initiatives engaged with FEP. Section two details the story of implementing, adapting, and expanding FEP in Jordan to date--exploring critical factors, opportunities, and challenges related to its design, delivery, financing, and enabling environment. [This report was written with Jenny Perlman Robinson, Maya Elliott, and Omar Qargha. For the Summary Findings, see ED626288.]

Most research about how to improve the teacher workforce has focused on interventions designed to improve incumbent teachers, far less attention has been directed toward teacher hiring processes and whether districts can make better hiring decisions. Using data from Spokane Public Schools and Washington state, we describe the findings from a study analyzing measures of the predictive validity of teacher applicant quality measures obtained from professional references. We find that professional reference ratings of prospective teachers are significantly predictive of teacher quality as measured by inservice performance evaluations and teacher value added in math. These findings are driven by applicants with at least some teaching experience and vary by rater type (e.g., principal or university supervisor); the magnitude of the relationship between the ratings of applicants and teacher performance is much smaller and not statistically significant for applicants that do not have teaching experience. Overall, the evidence suggests that obtaining explicit ratings of teacher applicants from professional references is a low-cost way to contribute to the applicant information available to hiring officials and has potential for improving hiring outcomes.

Since districts are often competing with each other and other higher-paying professions for new hires, it is imperative to consider ways to better engage and appeal to candidates. For human resource (HR) professionals and administrators to improve their efforts, they need to know how to cultivate effective relationships with potential new hires. Relationship-based recruitment provides for more connection with a candidate than the typical application and interview process of recruiting and hiring. Through this "high-touch" recruitment process, districts build relationships with candidates before a job is posted so candidates can learn more about a district or particular school prior to applying. By establishing a relationship with potential applicants early in the recruitment process, district administrators and teachers also learn about the possible fit of the candidate. This brief was developed in collaboration with the Indiana Department of Education to outline best practices for cultivating relationships with potential new hires. It goes over relationship-based recruitment and what it looks like to have an ongoing relationship-based recruitment with potential new hires for districts.

Salaries are one of the most powerful policy levers states and school districts can use to attract qualified, effective, and diverse teachers. What role do states play in supporting strategic use of salaries? This report examines the state teacher compensation policies that influence districts' potential strategic use of teacher pay. It analyzes three types of state policies that aim to attain three purposes: (1) Differentiated pay: To attract teachers to traditionally hard-to-staff subjects or schools; (2) Performance pay: To reward high-performing teachers; and (3) Pay for prior work: To compensate teacher candidates for prior experience relevant to teaching. With the influx of federal Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funds, some states have designed new or expanded already existing initiatives aimed to attract or retain teachers to hard-to-staff positions. The analysis in this report includes these state strategies, while acknowledging that they might only remain in place temporarily while ESSER funds remain available. [For the the second report in this three-part series, "State of the States 2021: Teacher Preparation Policy," see ED611532.]

This study uses 2019 data from the University and College Academic Staff System to examine gender differences in tenure status among faculty in Canadian universities. It also uses the Survey of Postsecondary Faculty and Researchers to examine feelings of fairness in hiring and promotions. (1) In 2019, almost 6 in 10 full-time university faculty members in Canada were men. Male university faculty are older and more likely to be full professors than women; (2) Female faculty are less likely to be in tenured positions than male faculty. In 2019, less than two thirds (63%) of female faculty held such positions, compared with three quarters (75%) of their male counterparts; (3) Once multiple factors associated with tenure were considered (including time since completion of the highest degree and the highest level of education), the gender gap in tenure was reduced. However, women remained less likely to be in tenured positions than men (68% versus 71%); (4) Female faculty were less likely to feel that hiring was fair and equitable at their institution. Specifically, around 20% of women surveyed disagreed or strongly disagreed that hiring was fair and equitable at their institution, compared with 12% of men; (5) Women (23%) were also more likely than men (14%) to state that they disagreed or strongly disagreed that promotions were fair and equitable at their institution; and (6) Other groups that were less likely to feel that hiring was fair and equitable included faculty belonging to racialized groups, faculty members with a disability and sexual minority female faculty. In addition, faculty members with a disability and women who belong to racialized groups were less likely to feel promotions were fair and equitable. [This study was funded by Women and Gender Equality Canada (WAGE).]