Using an integrated economic and organizational approach to understand new teacher mobility, attrition and retention

Abstract

Teacher turnover is one of the major issues that concerns policymakers and school administrators. The instability of teachers in schools has a particularly negative impact on school functions and disadvantaged students, and teacher turnover also has great impact on schools and districts' finance. This study focused on new teacher turnover since this is the group most likely to leave the teaching profession. The purpose of this study was to examine teacher mobility and attrition using an integrated model that contained both economic and institutional factors. Data consisted of a sample of 1,259 new teachers constructed from the Teacher Follow-up Survey (2000-01) and Schools and Staffing Survey (1999-00). A principal component analysis was conducted to construct the four dimensions of school working conditions, and multinomial logistic regression was performed to examine the relationship between teacher perceived working conditions, salary satisfaction, alternative opportunity and teacher retention decisions. To address the problem that a complex sampling design might cause bias in the variance estimation and statistical tests, the current study used teacher final weights (TFSFINWT) to compensate for the unequal probability sampling, and estimated variance by using the balanced repeated replication (BRR) method (replicate weights TFRPWT1-TFRWT88) with SAS PROC SURVEYLOGISTIC procedure. Findings from this study indicated that the construct of student behavior problems was associated with teacher mobility and attrition, but it varied in degree. It had a strong influence on teacher attrition but moderate effect on mobility. The construct of supportive administration and principal had moderate effect on teacher mobility but no influence on teacher attrition.