Teacher Attrition in Charter Schools

This study focuses on the reasons why teachers are leaving charter schools. It is based on analyses of data collected in surveys of charter school employees from around the country from 1997-2006. The authors found that while overall attrition rates fluctuate from year to year and state to state, as many as one in four charter school teachers leave each year- approximately double the traditional public school rate of 11 percent. Moreover, attrition among new teachers in charter schools is close to 40 percent annually. The authors contend that high attrition, "consumes resources of schools, impedes schools' efforts to build professional learning communities and positive, stable school cultures," and recommend that supporters of charters schools focus efforts on reducing teacher attrition

Teacher Attrition: Exploring the literature on teacher attrition

This paper examines what the literature says about teacher attrition within a social and cultural context. More and more, teachers are leaving the profession, new and old teachers alike. The COVID-19 pandemic has only heightened the teacher shortage in this country. Many states have started initiatives to improve teacher preparation programs, offer scholarships, and school loan forgiveness, however the issues of teacher attrition have more to do with how we are treating current teachers. Many people are leaving the profession due to poor work conditions, low wages, and the lack of respect for the profession from the general public. Making teacher preparation programs easier, faster, or cheaper might increase the number of people entering the profession but it won’t solve the problem. The research reveals that building more robust.mentorship programs can increase support teachers feel and lead to higher retention rates. That is why this project focuses on creating strong mentorship norms within a school system. This topic is important because we need to find the true research based causes of teacher attrition and work to solve it so that we can rebuild one of the most important professions

The Causes and Effects of Teacher Attrition Amongst Secondary Educators

Abstract This paper will examine the research on teacher attrition rates across schools in the United States and around the world. This project examines three themes in the literature on teacher attrition in middle and high school: teacher age and inexperience, workload, and high levels of teacher burnout. Working conditions affect the likelihood of teacher attrition, and without addressing issues in the working environment, more and more teachers will leave the profession. This paper goes on to examine specific causes and effects of teacher attrition by examining data and studies from countries around the world like Chile, Sweden, Australia, Canada, and the United States. The data from the research also has the potential to explore implications for future research and transform practices regarding the prevention of teacher attrition

Lowering Teacher Attrition Rates through Collegiality

Since large numbers of teachers leave the teaching profession to go to work in other fields each year, it is vital to ask ourselves several pertinent questions as to why this is happening. Why are so many qualified teachers leaving the teaching profession? What are the affects of high teacher attrition rates on the public school system? What must be done to lower teacher attrition rates and retain new teachers? Schools must find ways to reduce teacher attrition in order to maintain high quality education for students

Teacher attrition in Zambian schools : an educational management analysis

The purpose of this empirical study was to establish how school managers address the problem of teacher attrition in public secondary schools in Zambia with a view of developing strategies that may be used to reduce teacher attrition in schools. The objectives of the study were to examine how teacher attrition affects the functioning of public secondary schools; find out which factors influence teacher attrition in public secondary schools; and determine and describe which measures are used to sustain teacher retention in public secondary schools. The study adopted a case study design employing mainly the qualitative approach of data collection and analysis. However, quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were also employed to a lesser extent to complement the qualitative aspect. The data were collected through interviews and questionnaires. The sample consisted of 33 participants comprising 30 school managers and three (3) district education board Secretaries from Chongwe, Lusaka and Kafue Districts of Lusaka province. The qualitative data were analysed using thematic analysis while the quantitative data were analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) Version 20 to generate descriptive statistics. The findings revealed that teacher attrition positively correlates to poor staffing levels and poor student achievement (r=0.812). The study further established factors influencing teacher attrition in public secondary schools as being poor working conditions, lack of administrative support, low salaries, low social status accorded to teachers and lack of continuous professional development were among the major causes of teacher attrition. In terms of measures used by school managers in addressing the issue of teacher attrition, these include: high salaries, reduced workload, adequate administrative support, fair promotion and fair treatment, participatory decision making, and creating a positive school climate. Basing on the study findings, the following recommendations are made; that school managers should coordinate organisation climate, that is, they should start with transformation of their individual school’s organisational climate in order to create an enabling atmosphere which reduces teacher attrition. School managers should effect strategies for teacher retention through continuous professional development; they should ensure that all programmes and activities aim at addressing the actual continuous professional development needs of the teachers. School managers should apply sufficient school management support. The MoE provide explicit preparation for school managers by providing and showing them the significance of managing teacher attrition.Educational Management and LeadershipD. Ed. (Education Management

Teacher Attrition and Retention Research in Australia: Towards a New Theoretical Framework

During the last decades, the search to try to understand why Australian teachers prematurely leave their jobs has become an increasing focus of research interest. This article yields significant insights into the history and potential future of the teacher attrition research field. Using a thematic content analysis methodology, a study of the Australian literature reveals that the field in this country is still in its infancy, and is dominated by small-scale, qualitative exploratory studies. Furthermore, it shows the lack of consistency amongst studies discussing teacher attrition, as well as the need for a theoretically informed framework that acknowledges the complex nature of teacher attrition. To fill this void, the authors propose a new theoretical model, arguing that teacher attrition is a complex phenomenon, a product of the interaction of elements from social capital, human capital, positive psychological capital and structural capital intersecting

A Descriptive Portrait of Teacher Attrition at Tennessee Charter Schools

This study offers an analysis of teacher attrition patterns at charter schools in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee. Using survey data from 121 teachers, the study reports teacher opinion regarding four common causes of teacher attrition, examines the role of demography and school organization on future attrition plans, and offers various regression models in an attempt to predict future plans for the teachers within the sample. Overall, teachers reported lukewarm feelings regarding common causes of teacher attrition, and no background characteristic or school organizational structure held significance for future plans.

Managing teacher attrition in Sekgosese East Circuit, Mopani District in Limpopo

This research was aimed at investigating the management of teacher attrition in Sekgosese East Circuit. Teacher attrition is an on-going problem experienced by various countries, including South Africa. Although teacher attrition was always part of the departmental policy of age retirement, schools suffer as a result of it. In this study, ‘attrition’ refers to the number of teachers leaving the profession due to resignation, retirement, death, medical incapacity and retrenchment for operational reasons. Teacher attrition is regarded as a voluntary, involuntary and a continuous phenomenon. The current study focused on answering questions based on the nature of teacher attrition, the causes of attrition, the effects of attrition on learners, staying teachers and management, how attrition was managed by principals as well as the statutory bodies that may be involved in retaining teachers. The study used the qualitative method to investigate the management of teacher attrition in schools. The qualitative method was selected because it deals with participants in their natural setting, which was exactly what was done in this study. Both convenient and snowball sampling were used to sample six principals in the area under study. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from the participants in their natural setting. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed, analysed and categorised into themes. The findings revealed that teacher attrition in Sekgosese East Circuit occurs in the form of death, retirement and resignation. Teachers resign due to a number of reasons. It was found that resignation occurred as a result of the low salaries they are paid, loans which accumulated into more debts and because teachers seek greener pastures. The findings revealed that attrition was detrimental to learners’ performance. In schools that were affected by teacher attrition, learners spent three to four months without a teacher due to the slow pace of the Department of Education in replacing teachers. Principals revealed that they liaise with the Department of Education for replacement of teachers. Principals also revealed that attrition is not good for them as school managers. They rely on sourcing teachers from elsewhere and overloading remaining teachers who even have to teach those subjects in which they did not specialise. The recommendation was that the Department of Education speed up the replacement of teachers by introducing on-line application for resignation or retirement so that the two processes may run concurrently.Educational Management and LeadershipM. Ed. (Education Management

Factors Influencing Teachers Attrition in the United Arab Emirates

Factors Influencing Teacher AttritionIn the United Arab EmiratesAli S. Al Kaabi, PhDUniversity of Pittsburgh, 2005The purpose of this study was to examine the factors associated with high attrition rate among the UAE citizen teachers who teach in public schools grades 1-12. The factors that this study investigated are: personal factors, economic factors, teacher preparation, employment factors, and social-cultural factors. The study was guided by five research questions. Data for this study was collected through two methods: a survey questionnaire that was sent to the sample of this study was 594 UAE citizen teachers in the public schools, and a constructed interview with five educational zone directors. To analyze the quantitative data descriptive statistics (means, percentage, and standard deviations), and Chi-Square Test were applied to examine the relation between the most important factors and teachers gender, qualifications, and years of experience. Qualitative analysis was applied to interpret the data obtained from the interviews with five educational zone directors and open-ended questions from the last part of the questionnaire.The result of this study indicated that the most important factors associated with teacher attrition are: (a) The personal factors that have the highest effect on teacher attrition are "stress" with mean (3.31), and "accountability" with mean (3.19). (b) The economic factor that has the highest effect on teacher attrition is "incentives" with mean (3.23). (c) The employment factor that has the highest effect on teacher attrition is "paperwork" with mean (3.07). (d) The social-cultural factor that has the highest effect on teacher attrition is "social appreciation" with mean (3.07). The result indicated that teacher preparation factors are the least important factors associated with teacher attrition with a very low mean (2.10)

I Just Feel Worn Out”: Constraints to Teacher Agency throughout COVID-19

COVID-19 created serious and long-lasting difficulties within educational systems resulting in higher rates of teacher attrition in the U.S. Teacher agency, which is the teacher’s capacity to act professionally, is a predictor of teacher attrition. The school environment, through policies and practices, can inhibit teacher agency, and the constraint of agency promotes teacher attrition. As school structures shift to address new post-pandemic needs, there is an increased need to understand how school structures throughout the pandemic inhibited teacher agency and drove teacher attrition. We examine how school systems constrained the agency of three veteran high school teachers from March 2020 through their resignation in May 2022. The participants shared how their agentic constraints in the remote (reduced instructional time, optional student web cameras, changes to grading policy) and hybrid/ in-person (addition of common assessments, administrative responses to new student behaviors) learning environments led to growing feelings of disenfranchisement and directly motivated their resignation. Campus administrators also experienced limited agency and could not effectively address the teachers’ barriers during COVID-19. Implications are discussed