Publications

Published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities, this brief highlights best practices—from across the country—for utilizing technology and social media (including Facebook and Twitter) to recruit and retain special education teachers and specialists.

Published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities, this case study researches the approaches three states have taken to “grow their own” special education personnel. Grow Your Own programs enable local education agencies (LEAs) to recruit and train special education employees from their own communities, often targeting high school students with an expressed interest in education careers, paraprofessionals, and/or rural educators seeking a career change. Approaches from Arizona, South Carolina, and Utah are highlighted.

Published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities, this brief focuses on the collaboration between district personnel preparation partnership programs and institutions of higher education to boost the recruitment and retention of special education personnel. The report finds that key components of a successful program include collaboration among partners, tailoring programs to meet unique needs, offering flexible methods of course delivery, and reaching out to nontraditional teacher candidates.

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 article—published by the National Center to Improve Recruitment and Retention of Qualified Personnel for Children with Disabilities—provides a set of guidelines to help state-level leaders address the needs of special education teachers and specialists. The document outlines the essential elements necessary to build personnel capacity and highlights best practices in the field.

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.

Based on a review of the existing literature, this report (published by the RAND Corporation) provides a set of recommendations designed to help districts and states create conditions that foster principal success. Key recommendations include matching the correct candidate to the correct school, ensuring that resources are available to new principals, instituting high-quality evaluation systems for principals, and providing school leaders with greater autonomy. 

This report, produced by The New Teacher Project (TNTP), documents the perspectives of 117 of America’s best teachers, with the hope that their feedback can be used to strengthen the profession. The report highlights the following key findings: (1) Teachers have a tumultuous relationship with their profession; (2) Teachers value a wide range of measures to determine success in the classroom; and (3) Teachers do not attribute much of their success to formal preparation programs.

This report, published by the Fordham Institute, studies data from North Carolina to determine how “right-sizing” a classroom—i.e., giving the most effective teachers the most students—could affect academic achievement. The report finds that when the best teachers teach larger classes and the weakest teachers teach progressively smaller classes, student learning improves (across all students, not just those who move class). 

Published by the National Network of State Teachers of the Year (NNSTOY) and the Center for Educator Effectiveness at Pearson, this report provides a vision of teacher career pathways designed to attract and retain excellent Generation Y teachers. The report reviews recent initiatives that promote teacher role differentiation, and, based on the findings, recommends strategies for creating the necessary conditions to develop sustainable teacher career pathways and make teaching a more attractive career option.