Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages : An Organizational Analysis

Contemporary educational theory holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. This theory also holds that these school staffing problems are primarily due to shortages of teachers, which, in turn, are primarily due to recent increases in teacher retirements and student enrollments. This analysis investigates the possibility that there are other factors those tied to the organizational characteristics and conditions of schools that are driving teacher turnover and, in turn, school staffing problems. The data utilized in this investigation are from the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Followup Survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The results of the analysis indicate that school staffing problems are not primarily due to teacher shortages, in the technical sense of an insufficient supply of qualified teachers. Rather, the data indicate that school staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a "revolving door" where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement. Moreover, the data show that the amount of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared to that associated with other factors, such as teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing other jobs. The article concludes that popular education initiatives, such as teacher recruitment programs, will not solve the staffing problems of such schools if they do not also address the organizational sources of low teacher retention. Disciplines Other Education Comments Reprinted from American Educational Research Journal, Fall 2001, Volume 38, Issue 3, pages 499–534. Publisher URL: http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017/13673 NOTE: The author, Dr. Richard M. Ingersoll, asserts his right to include this material in ScholarlyCommons@Penn.   This analysis investigates the possibility that there are other factors—those tied to the organizational characteristics and conditions of schools—that are driving teacher turnover and, in turn, school staffing problems. The data utilized in this investigation are from the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Followup Survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The results of the analysis indicate that school staffing problems are not primarily due to teacher shortages, in the technical sense of an insufficient supply of qualified teachers. Rather, the data indicate that school staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a “revolving door”—where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement. Moreover, the data show that the amount of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared to that associated with other factors, such as teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing other jobs. The article concludes that popular education initiatives, such as teacher recruitment programs, will not solve the staffing problems of such schools if they do not also address the organizational sources of low teacher retention. RICHARD M. INGERSOLL is Associate Professor, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania, 3440 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. His specializations are the sociology of organizations, occupations, and work and the sociology of education. E-mail: rmi@gse.upenn.edu Few educational problems have received more attention in recent times than the failure to ensure that elementary and secondary classrooms are all staffed with qualified teachers. In the early 1980s, a series of highly publicized reports began to focus national attention on the coming possibility of severe teacher shortages in elementary and secondary schools (e.g., Darling-Hammond, 1984; National Commission on Excellence in Education, 1983; for reviews of this debate, see Boe & Gilford, 1992; Haggstrom, Darling-Hammond, & Grissmer, 1988; National Academy of Sciences, 1987). These studies predicted a dramatic increase in the demand for new teachers primarily resulting from two converging demographic trends—increasing student enrollments and increasing teacher attrition due to a “graying” teaching force. These reports held that subsequent shortfalls of teachers would, in turn, force many school systems to resort to lowering standards to fill teaching openings, inevitably resulting in high levels of under-qualified teachers and lower school performance. The inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers (hereafter referred to as school staffing problems) has since been cast as a major educational problem, received widespread coverage in the national media, been the target of a growing number of reform and policy initiatives, and been the subject of a substantial body of empirical research (for a review of this issue, see National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, 1997). The dominant policy response to school staffing problems has been to attempt to increase the supply of available teachers through a wide range of recruitment initiatives. Some programs, such as “troops-to-teachers,” are designed to entice professionals into mid-career changes to teaching. Others, such as “Teach for America” seek to lure the “best and brightest” into teaching. A wide range of alternative licensing programs are designed to ease entry into teaching. Finally, financial incentives, such as signing bonuses, student loan forgiveness, housing assistance, and tuition reimbursement have all been instituted to aid recruitment (Clinton, 1999; Feistritzer, 1997; Kopp, 1992; Hirsch, Koppich, & Knapp, 2001). Concern over shortages has also provided the impetus for empirical research on teacher supply and demand. In particular, over the past two decades a substantial body of empirical analysis has focused on teacher turnover—the departure of teachers from their teaching jobs (e.g., Grissmer & Kirby, 1987, 1992, 1997; Heyns, 1988; Murnane, 1981, 1987; Murnane, Singer, & Willett, 1988). This article also examines teacher turnover, but from a different perspective than most previous empirical studies on this topic. Existing research has generally sought to explain teacher turnover as a function of the characteristics of individual teachers. Moreover, most research has focused on narrow subsets of the total turnover and interorganizational mobility of teachers. This analysis attempts to extend existing theory and research by examining teacher turnover from an organizational perspective. The theoretical perspective of this analysis, drawn from the sociology of organizations, occupations, and work, holds that teacher turnover and, in turn, school staffing problems cannot be fully understood without closely Ingersoll