How Do Hard-to-Staff Districts Use State Policy Funds for Teacher Recruitment and Retention?

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: Examining Teacher Pipelines

Abstract

This descriptive explanatory study examines a state policy initiative, the Rural Recruitment Initiative (RRI), designed to ameliorate the teacher staffing shortage experienced by districts facing the most severe teacher need in South Carolinas. This comprehensive examination focused on the districts’ state funded initiatives and how they integrate with the districts’ other talent management efforts. While the results of our fixed-effects regression (from 2010 to 2017) suggest that for the last five years, the state has been experiencing a growing teacher turnover rate on an annual basis, those districts that receive RRI funds appear to see less escalation in turnover across time than those that do not.

Authors

• Henry Tran, University of South Carolina, Columbia

• Douglas Smith, Iowa State University