| Li Feng
Florida State University
Combating teacher shortages: Who leaves teaching and why?
FINAL REPORT:
Rising school enrollment and policies to limit class size will increase the future demand for public school teachers. It is unlikely that enhanced recruiting efforts alone will be sufficient to meet this increasing demand. Schools must find ways to avoid the loss of teachers to other professions (teacher attrition) and to other schools/districts (teacher migration). Teacher turnover, the combination of attrition and migration, is especially high for new teachers (Hanushek, Kain and Rivikin, 2004; Ingersoll, 2001) and the problems of hiring and retaining teachers are particularly acute for schools serving primarily low-income and minority students.
This study combines data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) survey with the Common Core of Data to study the reasons why new teachers leave teaching and change schools. The longitudinal nature of B&B allows analysis of the movement of individual teachers over time. Four sets of policy variables are included to investigate the reasons why teachers move to a new school or exit teaching: school characteristics, district characteristics, in-service assistance and academic ability. Three separate models are used in the analysis. First, non-parametric Kaplan-Meier survival estimates are used to calculate the length of time a teacher stays at her initial school placement. Second, single-risk discrete survival analysis is employed to determine why new teachers leave their initial school Lastly, estimates from a discrete competing risk model investigate how the factors affecting teacher attrition and teacher migration differ.
The median survival time at the first school is about 5 years. Ten years after starting their first teaching job, only 36% of teachers are still teaching in their original school. Estimates from the single-risk model show that both higher salary and offering of health insurance reduce the likelihood of leaving the first school. In addition, new teachers are more likely to leave schools with a higher percentage of Black students and poor students. However, movers and leavers may depart their initial schools for very different reasons. Estimates from a competing risk model indicate that salary has a significant influence on leavers while increases in the concentration of minority and poor students are associated with moving. A policy simulation indicates that targeted salary increases coupled with improvements in working conditions are needed to reduce teacher migration and attrition.
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