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To strengthen teacher preparation in the Republic of Palau, Public Law 10-32 (enacted in 2018) requires all teachers in the country to hold an associate's degree in education or in the subject area they will teach by the end of 2023. This policy change required many current teachers and those interested in the teaching profession to enroll in an associate's degree program at Palau Community College (PCC), the country's only postsecondary institution. To support policymakers' understanding of how long it takes teachers and teacher candidates to meet the requirements of Public Law 10-32, this study examined the graduation patterns of teacher education students enrolled in associate's degree programs at PCC. The aim of this study is to support PCC and the Palau Ministry of Education's efforts to successfully train, retain, and recruit qualified teachers.

This is the Palauan translation of the publication, "Teacher Certification, Retention, and Recruitment in Palau: Understanding Graduation Patterns of Teacher Education Students at Palau Community College. Infographic. REL 2025-008." To strengthen teacher preparation in the Republic of Palau, Public Law 10-32 (enacted in 2018) requires all teachers in the country to hold an associate's degree in education or in the subject area they will teach by the end of 2023. This policy change required many current teachers and those interested in the teaching profession to enroll in an associate's degree program at Palau Community College (PCC), the country's only postsecondary institution. To support policymakers' understanding of how long it takes teachers and teacher candidates to meet the requirements of Public Law 10-32, this study examined the graduation patterns of teacher education students enrolled in associate's degree programs at PCC. The aim of this study is to support PCC and the Palau Ministry of Education's efforts to successfully train, retain, and recruit qualified teachers.

Research shows that teachers of color can benefit all students, particularly students of color, yet only one in five teachers are individuals of color, compared to more than half of K-12 public school students. Increasing the diversity of educators can not only benefit students, but recruiting, preparing, and retaining more teachers of color who are underrepresented in the current teacher workforce can also help to address educator shortages. These are two critical goals many States, districts, and schools across the country are working to address. This non-regulatory guidance highlights actions that State educational agencies (SEAs), local educational agencies (LEAs, hereafter districts), and institutions of higher education (IHEs) can take to increase educator diversity, as well as Federal funding opportunities available to support these actions. This guidance outlines how financial supports and incentives; strategic investments; positive and supportive learning and teaching conditions for candidates enrolled in educator preparation programs (EPPs) and in-service educators; and the collection, analysis, use, and publication of educator diversity data can develop and sustain a diverse educator workforce. This guidance includes research on how a diverse educator workforce can enhance student success in school and beyond, describes strategies for SEAs and districts to consider as they begin or build on ongoing efforts, and outlines Federal funding sources to support these efforts. In addition, this guidance addresses directives in Title III of Division H of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023.

These appendixes provide the technical details, methods, and results for the accompanying infographic. The importance of the study, including guiding research questions, is addressed in appendix A, while the study's research approach and detailed results are provided in appendix B.

Teacher shortages and lack of teacher diversity have led to growing efforts nationally to recruit teaching assistants (TAs) to be classroom teachers. Substitute teachers are not typically considered in these efforts. We pair longitudinal administrative data from a mid-sized urban district with survey follow-up to address how TAs and substitute teachers contribute to filling staffing shortages and diversifying the teacher workforce. While substitute teachers are rarely included in formal Grow-Your-Own efforts, they bring racial and ethnic diversity to the district in similar ways to TAs yet face fewer barriers to becoming classroom teachers. As a result, they do so at much higher rates and help prevent vacancies in hard-to-staff classrooms.

Four-day school week (4DSW) schedules are growing rapidly across the U.S., with school districts citing perceived benefits to teacher recruitment and retention and student attendance as motivations for adopting the schedule. This study uses panel data from Colorado, one of the states with the highest prevalence of 4DSWs, to investigate the impacts of the 4DSWs on the percentage of teachers with shortage credentials, teacher attrition rates, and student attendance rates. Utilizing a synthetic control difference-in-differences research design, we find 4DSWs have small negative or statistically insignificant effects on teacher recruitment and retention outcomes and find little variation in these effects by school rurality. Examining student attendance outcomes, we estimate a meaningfully small 0.76 percentage point reduction in attendance rates associated with adopting a 4DSW in non-rural schools (equivalent to 46% of these schools' typical yearly fluctuations in ADA) but do not detect an effect in small rural or non-rural schools. These findings suggest that these purported benefits of 4DSWs are not realized in Colorado, warranting concern about the continued use and expansion of this schedule given prior evidence of its negative average impacts on student achievement.

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 reasons schools use supply teachers and the ways in which they are deployed. Current models for the procurement, management and professional development of supply teachers are also examined.

The Further Education (FE) sector has documented difficulties with recruitment and retention of teaching staff, as many FE colleges report having 'hard-to-fill' vacancies and high levels of churn amongst new starters. Taking Teaching Further (TTF) is a programme designed to address these issues by providing support for FE providers to recruit and train those with relevant knowledge and experience as FE teachers. Taking Teaching Further (TTF) supports further education (FE) providers to recruit those with relevant knowledge and industry experience to retrain as FE teachers. Previous rounds have given funding to support providers, constituting the 'core' TTF offer. In the sixth round (launched in April 2023), in addition to the 'core' TTF offer, a pilot of a new financial incentive (FI) was introduced for TTF recruits in some of the most hard-to-fill subject areas. The FI gives recruits £3,000 at the end of each year of the TTF programme. The 'FI subjects' are: digital; construction and the built environment; engineering and manufacturing; and maths. The Department for Education (DfE) commissioned Verian to assess the feasibility of an impact evaluation of the FI, which would answer the following three key research questions: (1) Does the introduction of the FI significantly increase teacher recruitment in FE settings?; (2) Does the introduction of the FI significantly increase teacher retention in FE settings?; and (3) What, if any, are the unintended outcomes and negative impacts of introducing the FI?

The use of four-day school weeks (4dsw) in the United States has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Previous work examines the impact of 4dsw on student outcomes, but little research to date examines the effect on school employees even though schools in some locales have adopted 4dsw to recruit and retain staff. This paper examines the effect of 4dsw adoption in Oregon, a state with widespread 4dsw use, on teacher and other school staff retention by leveraging a staggered roll-out of the schedule using a difference-in-differences design. We find that adopting a four-day week increased turnover among teachers, but that turnover among non-teaching staff was largely unaffected. The findings suggest that policymakers interested in implementing 4dsw for improved school employee retention should exercise caution and be attentive to the full set of incentives offered to staff.

Our classrooms haven't kept pace with innovation. The Ford Model T represented breakthrough technology in its day--more than 100 years ago--but it wouldn't serve us well today. Likewise, our traditional classroom model from the same era doesn't work well for far too many students and teachers. In fact, as a result of this outdated model, it is more difficult for schools to find and keep great teachers, which ultimately hurts student learning. It's time to reimagine the teaching role. Here's a guide for how to do it.

Further education (FE) plays a key part in the post-16 educational landscape in England in delivering technical and academic education that is vital to the country's supply of skilled workers. Yet, despite this importance, the sector has been facing significant challenges in recent years, including critical staff shortages in some subject areas. Data and research on FE teaching staff shortages, including their main causes, is limited. However, the available research points towards a deterioration in real-terms pay for FE teachers, and the resulting emergence of pay gaps with industry and teachers in other settings, as a likely contributor. This research utilised a mixed-methods research design to build upon existing literature and provide new insights on the FE workforce, including estimates of the magnitude of pay disparities between FE teaching and industry. The research also explores other factors that may impact on recruitment and retention, alongside pay. As this was an exploratory research project, its scope was focussed specifically on the technical education routes where the research suggests both pay gaps for FE teachers relative to 'outside' industry occupations (Lake et al., 2018) and unfilled vacancy rates are the highest (DfE, 2023c): (1) Construction and the built environment, (2) Engineering and manufacturing and (3) Digital. The project involved the collection of interview data from teaching staff and heads of departments in our focus subjects working in general FE colleges.

Professional references are widely used in hiring decisions, yet their effectiveness remains largely understudied. This study analyzes structured ratings collected from the professional references of teacher applicants and conduct an experiment to see whether the ratings influence hiring managers' assessments of applicants and hiring decisions. There is little evidence that providing reference ratings to hiring managers influences their evaluations of candidates or hiring choices in productive ways. However, the analysis suggests that reference ratings are predictive of future job performance independent of other applicant information available to hiring managers. The result is a paradox: reference ratings offer potentially low-cost, high-value information, but hiring managers do not appear to make productive use of them.

The diversity of California's teaching force continues to lag behind its student population. While students of Color make up 78% of the state's K-12 population, Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers (TOCIT) comprise just 34% of the teaching workforce (California Department of Education, 2018), a statistic that has dominated the teacher shortage narrative. Although there is promise in the fact that teacher education program (TEP) enrollment is more diverse than the state's current educator workforce, it's still 27% less diverse than the state's K-12 students. As demand for greater representation increases, so have the initiatives to recruit and retain more racially diverse teachers. In the past few years, California has spent billions in an effort to diversify its teacher workforce, including Assembly Bill 520, which allocated $15 million to be distributed to school districts to develop and implement programs that diversify teaching staffs, and Assembly Bill 130, which appropriated $350 million over the next five years to create or expand Teacher Residency Programs, a pathway that has been shown to recruit and retain higher numbers of TOCIT (California Legislative Information, 2023). This study sets out to (1) explore how current policies, structures, practices, attitudes, and ideologies across the pipeline and profession impede the recruitment and retention of TOCIT, and (2) better understand the racialized experiences and perspectives of pre-service and in-service Teachers of Color and Indigenous Teachers. The following paper is based on a mix of qualitative and quantitative data collected from system leaders in teacher preparation, pre-service teachers, in-service teachers, and former teachers over the course of approximately one year: spring 2021 to summer 2022.

CADRE interviewed researchers to learn about their most effective strategies for recruiting and retaining participants for STEM education research. While there are no shortcuts to successful recruitment, a sustained commitment to understanding and addressing the needs of a district and its teachers is key to long-term success. In this new brief, CADRE share practices that have proven successful for experienced researchers.

Local teacher recruitment through "grow-your-own" programs is a prominent strategy to address workforce shortages and ensure that incoming teachers resemble, understand, and have strong connections to their communities. We exploit the staggered rollout of the Teacher Academy of Maryland career and technical education certificate program across public high schools, finding that exposed students were more likely to become teachers by 0.6 percentage points (pp), or 47%. Effects are concentrated among White girls (1.4pp/39%) and Black girls (0.7pp/80%). We also identify positive impacts on wages (5% on average/18% for Black girls), countering a prevailing narrative that teaching leaves one worse off financially relative to other labor market opportunities.

In 2021, TNTP published "Missing Out: Arkansas' Teacher Shortage and How to Fix It," describing teacher shortages in Arkansas, programs the state had in place to address shortages, and the extent to which teachers and potential teachers were aware of and interested in these programs. Since that report was published, Arkansas has sustained existing and created new programs to address teacher shortages, implementing the recommendations the authors identified in "Missing Out" as well as additional policies included in the Literacy, Empowerment, Accountability, Readiness, Networking, and School Safety (LEARNS) Act, signed in March of 2023. In this paper, the authors highlight the promising statewide initiatives that Arkansas has undertaken in recent years to strengthen its teacher pipeline. While it will take time to see the full impact of these new initiatives, the state's supportive licensure pathways and competitive financial value proposition for teachers position Arkansas as a state to learn from, and one that has gone from "Missing Out" to "Moving Up" in the recruitment and retention of effective teachers.

This document includes the "FY 2023 Annual Performance Report" (APR) and "FY 2025 Annual Performance Plan" (APP). The APR provides narrative and data on the Department of Education's (Department's) progress toward the strategic goals and objectives outlined in its "Fiscal Years [FYs] 2022-2026 Strategic Plan" (ED625432), and the APP details the Department's planned strategies and activities to achieve those strategic goals and objectives.

Mounting evidence supporting the advantages of a diverse teacher workforce prompts policymakers to scrutinize existing recruitment pathways. Following four cohorts of Maryland public high-school students over 12 years reveals several insights. Early barriers require timely interventions, aiding students of color in achieving educational milestones that are prerequisites for teacher candidacy (high school graduation, college enrollment). While alternative pathways that bypass traditional undergraduate teacher preparation may help, current approaches still show persistent racial disparities. Data simulations underscore the need for race-conscious policies specifically targeting or differentially benefiting students of color, as race-neutral strategies have minimal impact. Ultimately, multiple race-conscious policy solutions addressing various educational milestones must demonstrate significant effects--approximately 30% increases--to reshape the teacher workforce to align with student body demographics.

The K-12 teacher workforce is relatively large--each year, nearly 4 million teachers are employed in U.S. elementary and secondary schools. Turnover in these schools is high relative to earlier periods--16% of teachers left their school in the 2021-2022 academic year. In addition, there is evidence that teacher quality standards have been lowered in order to fill open positions. The problem of teacher turnover raises a number of recruitment and retention issues of interest to policymakers. The Higher Education Act (HEA) is the main federal law containing policies designed to address these issues. Title II of the HEA authorizes grant support for schools that prepare new teachers. Title IV of the HEA authorizes financial support to encourage people to stay in the teaching profession in the form of student loan forgiveness and other benefits. Congressional consideration of potentially reauthorizing the HEA is ongoing, with the introduction of numerous bills to amend current law and address teacher recruitment and retention. This report describes the history of federal teacher recruitment and retention policy, current policies in this area, and related issues that may arise as Congress considers reauthorizing the HEA.

While the U.S. population has become increasingly diverse, college faculty may not reflect those same levels of diversity. Little is known at the national level about the relationship between faculty diversity and student outcomes. Separately, faculty have reported experiencing discrimination at colleges. GAO was asked to review faculty diversity and employment discrimination at colleges. This report examines (1) selected aspects of diversity among faculty, (2) efforts by colleges to recruit and retain a diverse faculty, and (3) how Education and EEOC process employment discrimination complaints at colleges. GAO analyzed Education data on faculty and students from fiscal years 2003-2021, national workforce data from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics ranging from calendar years 2014-2021, Education complaint data from fiscal years 2011-2022, and EEOC complaint data from fiscal years 2011-2021 (each set was the most recent available). GAO also conducted literature reviews; reviewed relevant federal laws, regulations, and policies; and interviewed agency officials and selected higher education experts.

The challenges of recruiting, strengthening, and retaining the child care and early education (CCEE) workforce are well documented. Members of the CCEE workforce typically have low levels of formal education and compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. The Building and Sustaining the Child Care and Early Education Workforce (BASE) project conducted an environmental scan to identify and review strategies that are currently being implemented across the country to build, advance, and sustain the CCEE workforce in the face of these challenges. In particular, the research team sought to understand the context in which these strategies are implemented and how that might influence their operation. The team also examined how strategies reach or are tailored to prospective and current CCEE educators. This brief summarizes important themes that emerged from the environmental scan, which was conducted between March 2021 and January 2022. The conclusions presented draw from a combination of activities, including a review of the literature, assessment of recommended sources and materials submitted in response to an open call for information, as well as interviews with key informants from the agencies responsible for putting strategies into place. [This report was written with Lisa Rau.]

High-quality, stable child care and early education (CCEE) can have lasting, positive impacts on children. However, the challenges of recruiting, strengthening, and retaining the CCEE workforce are well documented. CCEE educators typically have low levels of formal education and compensation; limited opportunities for education, training, and professional development; inconsistent working conditions; and high levels of stress and burnout. Additionally, the CCEE sector is well known for high turnover rates, which can strain remaining educators and decrease the quality of care they offer. Turnover can also lead to diminishing returns on an organization's professional development investments. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated these issues. The Building and Sustaining the Child Care and Early Education Workforce (BASE) project conducted an environmental scan and a literature review to identify and document existing knowledge about the CCEE workforce and strategies to strengthen it. One of the main themes identified from this effort was a need for more and better data on the workforce dynamics of CCEE educators. In particular, data are needed on who enters, advances in, stays in, and exits different roles, settings, and types of CCEE care or leaves the field altogether--as well as when, how, and why they do. This information is important for understanding workforce dynamics and informing the development, evaluation, and improvement of strategies that effectively build and sustain a qualified and stable CCEE workforce. For this reason, the BASE project team conducted a data scan to summarize the landscape of existing data sources that may address these gaps and identify areas where future data collection may be most useful. This brief summarizes the findings from the data scan.

The Building and Sustaining the Child Care and Early Education Workforce (BASE) project aims to increase knowledge and understanding in child care and early education (CCEE) by documenting factors that drive workforce turnover and by building evidence on current initiatives to recruit, advance, and retain a stable and qualified CCEE workforce. As part of the BASE project, the study team completed a literature review and an environmental scan designed to identify and document existing knowledge about the CCEE workforce and strategies to strengthen it. The team also completed a data scan that documented and assessed the strengths and weaknesses of a range of potential data sources for examining workforce dynamics and addressing key gaps in the research identified by the literature review and environmental scan. This brief uses data from one of the sources identified in the data scan: state CCEE workforce registries. Using data from Montana's Early Care and Education (ECE) Workforce Registry, the brief addresses the following research questions: (1) What are the characteristics of the Montana ECE workforce? (2) What are retention rates in the ECE field, and how are they associated with teacher, job, and provider characteristics? and (3) How many teachers earn credentials over time, and how is credential attainment associated with teacher, job, and provider characteristics? This analysis illustrates the potential use of this type of data source for the broader field and how similar data sources might be improved to provide further insights.

In 2022, the Boston Opportunity Agenda, the Birth to Eight Collaborative and the City of Boston's Office of Early Childhood partnered in the development of this survey of hundreds of early education professionals in the city of Boston, and then expanded its reach to total more than 600 respondents across the state. In it, educators and administrators shared their demographics and educational background, as well as elements of their work experience, wages, and more. Taken together, the data portray a diverse workforce of dedicated professionals who also must manage low wages and long hours in a system that seeks to attract thousands of new workers to replace retiring workers and meet the need for more available early education seats.

Tennessee's State Board of Education developed Educator Diversity Policy 5.700 to promote the recruitment and retention of educators from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Accordingly, districts throughout the state develop annual diversity goals that reflect the racial and ethnic diversity of their student population and strategies for achieving the goals. Region 5 Comprehensive Center (R5CC), in consultation with leaders from the Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE), developed a rubric based on the policy to assess the quality and effectiveness of the goals and related recruitment and retention strategies. Although the rubric was designed to meet the needs of education leaders in Tennessee, the tool can be used by education leaders in any state or district to ensure high-quality goals that enhance efforts to diversify the educator workforce. The "Diversity Goal and Strategy Assessment Toolkit" supports education leaders' reflection on and improvement of state or district efforts to recruit and retain educators from different backgrounds. It also provides guidance for using the Diversity Goal Rubric.

In November 2022, California established the Arts and Music in Schools Act to fund arts education programs in TK-12 public schools. With funding from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, SRI Education led an inquiry to estimate the number of new arts teachers required to fulfill the promise of the act. This brief presents funding allocations and teacher costs to calculate new teachers needed by region and county. It also provides information on the current state of the arts teacher workforce and arts teacher credentialing programs.

Teachers are the most important school-related factor impacting students' academic outcomes. To meet the needs and potential of all students, North Carolina must be able to recruit and retain high-quality teachers. North Carolina continues to experience challenges with vacancies and positions filled with teachers who are not fully certified in nearly all grade levels and subject areas. This report aims at identifying and amplifying actionable and replicable models for recruiting, preparing and retaining a diverse, highly effective educator workforce in North Carolina. This report was created with the input of the initial cohort of the North Carolina Educator Pipeline Collaborative which includes school districts, universities, and community colleges working in partnership to strengthen the educator pipeline in their communities.

Over the last decade, California leaders have made tremendous progress on supporting kids in some crucial areas. They have vastly increased the percentage of children enrolled in health insurance and made paid family leave available for most workers. They have also invested in free school meals, committed to universal transitional kindergarten, and significantly cut school suspensions among students of color. On too many issues, however, California has failed to significantly improve outcomes for kids, allowing unacceptable racial and economic disparities to stagnate and in many cases grow. That lack of progress is why low grades are seen all across the 2024 Report Card. What's particularly disturbing is that California continues to trail far behind other states on a number of important indicators of child well-being. Despite the relatively high tax burden, the progressive leanings, and the enviable 5th largest economy in the world, California is far from a leader when it comes to kids. That's not only a threat to the state's collective future, but to the entire country as well since California is so often a bellwether for the nation. The issues in this report must be the top priority issues for state policymakers. The report card is organized into the following sections: (1) Health; (2) Education; (3) Family Supports; (4) Child Welfare; and (5) Cross-Sector Issues.

New Leaders developed the Transformational Leadership Framework (TLF) to pinpoint practices commonly found in schools that were significantly advancing student achievement and in what sequence principals and their teams implemented those practices to deliver consistent and equitable outcomes for students. The TLF is based on: (1) More than 100 site visits and case studies of schools that achieved dramatic gains; (2) An extensive review of available research on effective schools and leadership; and (3) The collective knowledge of the New Leaders staff and program participants. The Framework is organized to show how specific school leader actions have influenced and enabled schoolwide practices that have collectively yielded sustained improvements in student achievement. [This report was adapted from "Breakthrough Principals: A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Stronger Schools."]