Teacher Attrition and Mobility Over Time

We use 35 years of data on public school teachers in Washington to calculate several different measures of teacher attrition and mobility. We explore how these rates vary over time and their relationship with the state unemployment rate. Annual rates of teacher attrition from the workforce have been between 5% and 8% for each of the past 35 years, and there is a strong negative relationship between unemployment rates and these rates of attrition. This history suggests that teacher attrition is likely to increase as the economy recovers after the pandemic, but this increase is likely to be modest.

Greener than ever? A look at the newest teachers in our public schools

Drawing on nationally representative data from the 1988 to 2018 school years, the authors provide an overview of some of the key changes in the characteristics of first-year teachers in the U.S., including racial/ethnic identity, education levels, subject area, and certification status. The data also show that new teachers have become increasingly more likely, compared to experienced teachers, to work in schools with a greater fraction of students of color, which has consequences for equitable teacher assignments and teacher attrition.

Effectiveness of Automation in Evaluating Test Results Using EvalBee as an Alternative Optical Mark Recognition (OMR): A Quantitative-Evaluative Approach from a Philippine Public School

Within this study, the authors want to address the problem of overworking of teachers in Philippine schools due to their excessive clerical responsibility, which could lead to teacher attrition. The authors propose to automate the process, particularly the evaluation of student test results since it could improve human well-being by reducing the burden of manual labor. Automation using OMR has not been widely applied in Philippine schools due to cost issues. The authors want to observe whether an alternative OMR - EvalBee - can meet the evaluation standard even though it is free of charge. The study employed a quantitative-evaluative research method. Validated questionnaires on paper and a Google Form survey were used to collect relevant data in a secondary public school in the City Schools Division of Cabuyao – Southville1 Integrated National High School. Statistical tools such as the mean, standard deviation, t-test, and Cohen's d were used in this research to determine the effectiveness of using alternative OMR in evaluating examinations. This study shows that alternative OMR is efficient, accurate, and reliable, despite the fact that it is free, and recommends it be used as part of the teachers' standard method of test evaluation.

Why should an ethics of care matter in education?

When a black 2nd-year student educator gets chased away from a school whilst doing his teaching practice for hair ‘not setting an appropriate example to learners’, the incident elicits questions about the rights of student educators during teaching practice, as well as the extent to which universities and schools care for, support and prepare student educators for the realities of schooling in South Africa. I situate the article in Transformation in Higher Education and the discourses of moral education concerning universities’ preparation of student educators in conjunction with schools in South Africa. The purpose in this article is to critically evaluate the neoliberal regulatory environment that frames education in general and how this has led to ‘uncaring’ environments in which student educators must operate during the execution of their teaching practice. I applied an ethics-of-care- approach to conceptually discuss the central role that care should play in the professional development of student educators. A decline in the level of care for student educators during teaching practice by universities and schools has an increasingly negative impact on their professional preparation which might lead to increased teacher attrition and discourage new entrants to the profession. To achieve the kind of care among teachers we envisage through education, universities and schools will have to re-examine the role of care for student educators during teaching practice.

Mindfulness and Connection Training During Preservice Teacher Education Reduces Early Career Teacher Attrition Three Years Later

Early career attrition from teaching disrupts school continuity, precludes many of those who leave the profession from achieving expertise, and drains limited economic resources from educational systems. Because low resource schools experience higher levels of teacher attrition, the phenomenon also contributes to inequitable educational opportunities for socioeconomically disadvantaged students. Although reducing premature attrition is an important policy objective, rates of teacher attrition have remained elevated and stable for at least the last two decades. In a cluster randomized controlled trial design (N=98), we examined the impact of a nine-week meditation-based intervention (MBI) that was integrated into undergraduate preservice teacher education on persistence in the teaching profession three-years later. Participants assigned to the MBI were six times more likely to still be teaching three-years into their career (Odds Ratio=6.05, 95% CI[1.83, 25.37], p=.002). Benefit-cost analysis indicated that integrating a MBI into preservice teacher education incurs minimal costs on the teacher education program but yields substantial predicted savings to educational systems with $2.6 return on every dollar invested. Implications for teacher education and teacher learning are discussed.