Economic Approaches to Teacher Recruitment and Retention

The quality of teaching in a school results from a range of factors, including available resources, curriculum, and instructional leadership; but it is also driven by the individuals who teach in each classroom. The staffing of teachers in schools, in turn, is a product of both recruitment and retention practices. This article describes how the choices of teachers and the actions of schools and districts influence who enters the profession and who stays. The article then identifies common policy approaches for advancing recruitment and retention goals, and it summarizes the current research, discussing the effectiveness of these policies. The article focuses on teacher labor markets in the United States.

The supply and demand model provides a simple framework for considering recruitment and retention. Wages and nonpecuniary job attributes combine to determine the supply of individuals interested in teaching in a given school, district, or state. A large body of research suggests that, like other workers, potential and current teachers respond to wage changes, although research on the degree of this response is not conclusive. Nonpecuniary components of teaching that influence the supply of teachers include working conditions, school location, and ease of entry into the occupation and the school. Feelings of success in the classroom also appear to be important for the retention of teachers already in the workforce.

The demand for teachers and the institutional constraints within which these demands are expressed also affect the teacher workforce. The number and characteristics of teachers demanded constitute a function of many factors, including student enrollment; teacher turnover; and the ability and willingness to pay for teachers. Institutional constraints, such as the skill and efficiency of hiring authorities; available information on the quality of individual teachers; budget timing; certification and licensure policies; tenure policies; and teacher contract provisions, can all affect the ability of districts to recruit and retain teachers.

This article addresses in more detail supply- and demand-side factors affecting this workforce, and concludes with a discussion of policies aimed at improving recruitment and retention.

This article was originally published in the International Encyclopedia of Education by Elsevier and ScienceDirect.