Leaving Schools Behind: The Impact of School Student Body and Working Conditions on Teacher Retention and Migration

ABSTRACT

This 5-year study investigated transfer and retention behavior for 76 science and mathematics teachers in the United States. Counter to the research literature, a bivariate correlation analysis showed that poverty, minority composition, and passing state exams did not impact a decision to transfer schools after the 1st year of teaching, although almost 1 in 5 teachers transferred to a different school and 11% left teaching altogether. A binary regression analysis showed that larger numbers of school discipline infractions increased the likelihood of transferring to a new school by a factor of 45.423. These findings expose the need not only to fill the science and mathematics teacher pipeline but to find ways to prevent public school systems from losing their most valuable asset, their teachers.

KEYWORDS:

• teacher attrition
• teacher migration
• teacher retention
• teacher transfer