Keeping School: Teacher Transfers within a Large District

For some time, we have known that nothing matters more to student achievement than access to skillful teaching, a practice that often takes a number of years to develop (Lee, Smith, & Croniger, 1995). Yet, education remains a profession plagued by high turnover rates. Murnane, Singer, Willett, Kemple, and Olsen (1991) found that many newly trained teachers leave the profession early in their career, long before their retirement years, and Ingersoll (2003) estimated that approximately 46% of the new teachers have left the profession within their first five years. Clearly, not every departing teacher represents the loss of a highly desirable instructor, but overall the effort that goes into the recruitment and training of replacements has a negative impact on schools and achievement. Moreover, as Darling-Hammond notes (1997), a high percentage of teachers who leave the profession are those with the characteristics associated with superior teaching-cognitive breadth and depth, adaptability, and creativity. There has been considerable research on the causes for teacher turnover. Futernick (2007) found that teachers leave the profession because of inadequate systems such as too little planning time, too few textbooks, and lack of administrative support. Ingersoll (2003) found that teachers leave the profession because of job dissatisfaction issues associated with low salaries, lack of support from the school administration, lack of student motivation, student discipline problems, and the lack of teacher influence over decision-making. Ingersoll suggested that the demand for new teachers is not driven by student enrollment or expected teacher retirement, but primarily from attrition and early retirement. He further suggested that the key issue is to retain high quality teachers who enter the profession. Blazer (2006) found that turnover is greater in high poverty schools and schools with high percentages of minority students. She concluded that workplace conditions were related to teachers' decisions to transfer or leave the profession. "It appears that many teachers may leave high poverty schools with minority, low-performing students because of the poor working conditions often associated with the schools these students attend" (p. 17). Chapman and Hutcheson (1982) suggest that people search for environments that will allow them to exercise skills and abilities while maintaining personal values. They proposed that if teachers do not work in such an environment, then they would seek situations that are more desirable. It is not surprising, therefore, that Chapman and Green (1986) found that principals' leadership styles and district policies can have significant influence on retention and, correspondingly, on transfer decisions. Most of the research on teacher turnover has focused on those who leave the profession altogether (Hafner & Owings, 1991; Ingersoll, 2002), but there is also considerable movement between and within school districts. In large districts, policies and union contracts often facilitate easy voluntary transfers, and considerable movement might be expected in such situations. While individuals who transfer, rather than leave teaching, may not represent a loss to a district as a whole, each teacher must be replaced at the school he or she left and the subsequent burden upon school leaders is much the same. If the factors affecting teacher transfer were better understood, leaders could take proactive steps to minimize the loss of valued teachers within a building and, consequently, improve student achievement. Participants In this study we investigated the motivational factors associated with teacher transfers from one school worksite to another school worksite within the same large Western district (>60,000 students). Within this district the historic rate of transfers was approximately 200 per year, and for the two year window (2004/052005/06), 353 teachers were identified, who could be contacted, represented the population of the study. …