Equitable Access

This article—published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities—examines how four states implemented new technologies (at either the state or regional level) in order to revamp their approach to recruiting and retaining special education teachers and specialists. Though limited data are available, all of these technologies appear to have had a positive impact on states’ recruitment and retention efforts.

This research study, published by the U.S. Department of Education and Mathematica Policy Research, analyzes the effect of providing high-performing teachers selective transfer incentives to move to a struggling school. In particular, it analyzes the Talent Transfer Initiative experiment, which was implemented in 10 school districts in seven states. The study found that the transfer incentive successfully attracted high-performing teachers and had a positive impact on teacher-retention rates during the payout period.

The T3 (Turnaround Teacher Teams) Initiative at Teach Plus represents an innovative approach to recruiting, developing, and supporting teachers to serve in high-need schools. The T3 Initiative currently partners with schools in Massachusetts and Tennessee. The initiative creates cohorts of highly effective and experienced teachers, supports them in becoming turnaround specialists, and places them in teams in the schools in which they are most needed.

School districts play a primary role in helping principals maximize their responsibilities of improving teaching and learning. This report, published by the Wallace Foundation, emphasizes two key tasks that school districts need to do to best develop and cultivate the most highly qualified principals. Evidence finds that schools districts need to build a large corps of well-qualified candidates and also need to support leaders on the job. The report details how doing so can lead to more successful outcomes. 

This publication focuses on teacher recruitment strategies that will better staff urban and rural districts, which are often hard to staff. Furthermore, this report, authored by the National Comprehensive Center for Teacher Quality, examines ways to recruit the most highly qualified teachers.