Linking school organizational characteristics and teacher retention: Evidence from repeated cross-sectional national data.

Teacher labor markets have strong implications for learning outcomes and equity for students, and yet schools that need teachers the most often face high turnover. Using repeated cross-sectional nationally representative data, this study examines the relationships between school organizational characteristics and teacher turnover and identifies what may be done to positively influence the teacher workforce. I find school organizational characteristics may indeed reduce teacher turnover, but this varies based on the type of organizational characteristic as well as the specific form of turnover. Policy and practical implications from the study are discussed. • Some school organizational characteristics can potentially influence teacher turnover. • Better administrative support, stronger teacher cooperation and more effective principals may help to retain teachers. • School factors have a more pronounced relationship with turnover in low-income schools than more affluent schools. • These results are robust to a variety of modeling choices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]