Strategies for Recruitment and Retention of Secondary Teachers in Central U . S . Rural Schools

Note: This study was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) under Contract ED-06-CO-0023 (Regional Education Laboratory Central administered by Mid-continent Research for Education and Learning). The content of the publication does not necessarily reflect the views or policies of IES or the U.S. Department of Education nor does mention of trade names, commercial products, or organizations imply endorsement of the U.S. Government.

In successful recruitment, certified teachers accept teaching positions; in successful retention, teachers not only stay in the profession but remain at one location for an extended period of time. Teacher recruiting and retention seem to be related; analyses of the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) have consistently shown a high correlation between difficulties with recruiting and with retention, meaning that schools reporting recruiting difficulties are nearly twice as likely to have above-average turnover rates as well (Ingersoll, 2001;Luekens, Lyter, & Fox, 2004;Strizek, Pittsonberger, Riordan, Lyter, & Orlofsky, 2006).

Recruiting and Retaining Faculty Present Challenges
to Rural High Schools While many schools have been struggling to meet the highly qualified teacher component of NCLB, the need to attract and retain teachers presents unique challenges to rural districts in particular (Elfers & Plecki, 2006). Although national-level data revealed that rural schools had a lower teacher turnover rate (14.0%) than urban (15.2%) and suburban (15.6%) schools (Ingersoll, 2001;Luekens et al., 2004) and a lower percentage of teaching vacancies (66.6% compared to 71.9% for all public schools), these vacancies may negatively impact a small or rural school more than a larger school. According to the SASS data, rural high schools average nearly half as many full-time teachers per school as compared to schools in larger, less isolated communities (27.6 teachers, as compared to 47.7 for urban fringe and 53.8 for large/mid-size city). If a math teacher leaves, for example, there may be no math department until another teacher is hired.
Rural schools experience many of the same challenges as urban schools, such as high concentrations of children in poverty, but often face additional obstacles to teacher recruitment and retention. These include lower salaries, small school population, and remote locations, which can serve to further hinder the recruitment and retention of highly qualified teachers (Boe, Bobbitt, Cook, Whitener, & Weber, 1997;Ingersoll & Rossi, 1995). In fact, in acknowledgement that the standard teacher-quality reforms enacted by NCLB were not easily achieved in rural schools, a 2004 amendment to NCLB gave rural teachers who are highly qualified in at least one subject area three additional years to become highly qualified in the other subjects they teach (U.S. Department of Education, 2004).

Winter 2010
Although teacher recruitment and retention have always been a challenge, NCLB's highly qualified teacher mandate has increased qualification requirements so that multi subject teaching positions common to small rural schools demand more teacher training than typical single-subject positions, effectively creating disincentives to teach in small rural schools. A theoretical argument has been made that this, in turn, has made recruitment and retention more challenging for small rural schools and districts throughout the nation (Reeves, 2003).
In small rural schools, it is common for a single teacher to be responsible for a broad discipline in  Boe, et al., 1997) found that school size was a significant factor in retention; in fact, schools with fewer than 300 students had higher turnover rates than those with 300 students or more. issues of recruitment and retention that included data on the success of strategies utilized. They surveyed all 1,583 principals in Minnesota's public school system. Principals at small rural schools utilized three common strategies to fill high needs positions: alternative licensure, training paraprofessionals, and placement above entry on salary scale. This survey also included a question asking the principals to rate the success potential for several additional strategies. The principals of small rural schools agreed or strongly agreed to the potential benefits of scholarships and/or loan forgiveness for students willing to teach in high needs areas, funding for mentorship programs, and early recruitment programs.
More recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO, 2004) surveyed rural and non-rural superintendents about strategies used in recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers. Significantly fewer superintendents from small rural districts (28%) established partnerships with higher education institutions, as compared to those in larger rural districts (48%); further, fewer superintendents from small rural districts encouraged paraprofessionals to complete the coursework required to achieve certification (45% for small rural and 69% for large rural). Several of the small rural school superintendents remarked in follow-up interviews that the travel distances reduced the potential efficacy of these strategies.
The findings of this research, and of extant research reviews promising strategies for recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers, can be aggregated into three approaches: grow-your-own teachers, use targeted incentives in recruiting, and maximize federal funding opportunities.

Grow-Your-Own
This approach refers to training local people who are most likely to return to the area and fill a need. Some examples of this approach include: a) providing additional training to local paraprofessionals; b) retraining service-oriented people (e.g., military and Peace Corps); and c) partnering with teacher preparation programs (Crews, 2002)  positive correlation between location of current teaching position and location of hometown, high school or college (Boyd, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2005;Boylan, et al., 1993;Davis, 2002;Monk, 2007;Yeager, Marshall, & Maximizing Federal Funding Opportunities This approach supports the two previously mentioned approaches by using additional funding available to rural schools to address the provisions of NCLB. For example, some small rural schools reported using Title I funds to pay for teacher professional development (GAO, 2004). Title II funds have been used to increase the number of highly qualified teachers in rural districts as well. In addition, some rural schools have used Title VIII funds to cover tuition costs for paraprofessionals seeking teacher certification.
One more recently approved source of supplemental funding for rural schools was implemented in 2004, the Rural Education Achievement Program (REAP). The rural administrators surveyed by the GAO reported using REAP funds to help teachers and paraprofessionals meet the highly qualified teacher provision of NCLB, and also to recruit highly qualified teachers (an additional source of incentive funds discussed above). Another federal program was created in conjunction with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the E-Rate program. Rural districts reported using E Rate funds to support the creation of distance learning opportunities for teachers and students teachers to meet the requirements of the highly qualified teacher component of NCLB and students to be provided advanced high school coursework options.
In addition to these three approaches, researchers have also recently studied comprehensive and on-going teacher induction programs ( (Smith & Ingersoll, 2004). A recent study evaluating the success of an induction program introduced to both rural and non-rural schools reported similar results, even though more of the rural teachers moved to a different district after the first year (Harris, Holdman, Clark, & Harris, 2005 utilize to support either a grow your-own and/or maximize federal funding opportunities approach (for example, administrators can use federal REAP dollars to fund teacher certification coursework for aides). For the current study, these items were placed in both categories for analysis.

Phase Two
In order to form the groups of high schools that had either been successful or unsuccessful with teacher recruiting and retention, we first obtained the restricted data set of the [2003][2004] Schools and Staffing Survey, which included information on 88,113 schools and 43,244 teachers. From the complete data set, teachers in rural (locale codes 7 and 8) high and combined schools in Central Region states (1454 teachers in 280 schools) were selected from the Teacher Questionnaire, and their survey data was matched to their schools in the School Questionnaire. Schools that had reported teacher vacancies that year (n = 210) were identified. Those that were not able to fill the vacancy or reported that they had managed the vacancy by means other than hiring a teacher were placed in the unsuccessful group.
All others were coded successful because they had been able to hire teachers to fill their vacancies.
To ensure that schools in both groups were employing highly qualified teachers, a variable from the Teacher Questionnaire was created for each teacher describing whether or not they held a certification for the subject(s) they were teaching (the best measure available for highly qualified). Schools were then ranked within their groups according to their proportion of teachers certified in-area.
The schools in the bottom quartile in both the successful and unsuccessful groups were eliminated from the study, leaving 158 schools. By including only those schools in both groups that had some portion of qualified teachers, the comparison could focus primarily on teacher recruitment and retention of fully qualified teachers.
Next, a variable was created to capture teacher retention for each school, based on the number of years the participating teachers had reported teaching there. Previous research has consistently shown a high positive correlation between difficulties with recruiting and with retention (Ingersoll, 2001;Luekens et al., 2004;Strizek et al., 2006). Therefore, the current study sought to create two disparate groups: one with schools successful in both recruiting and retaining teachers, and one with schools unsuccessful in both recruiting and retaining teachers. In order to maximize the contrasts that could be found in the planned group comparisons, median splits were conducted such that the lower-retention schools were excluded from the successful recruiting group, and higher-retention schools were dropped Table 1 Districts from SASS Data Represented in Analysis from the unsuccessful recruiting group. This left schools ranking in the top 50 percent on retention in the successful group, and schools ranking in the bottom 50 percent on retention in the unsuccessful group. Therefore, the final two  The successful and unsuccessful school districts were compared on the SASS School District Questionnaire items that aligned with the three approaches to recruiting and retaining qualified teachers. Chi-square tests of association were utilized to determine whether the two groups differed in using recruiting and retention strategies addressed in the SASS.

Phase Three
Interviews with rural high school principals were then conducted to obtain descriptive information from schools that have been successful at recruiting and retaining teachers. As we were not allowed to re-contact the principals in the SASS restricted data sample, we contacted state education administrators who would be familiar with rural teacher recruitment and retention in high schools in their state. These state-level administrators were contacted via e-mail and/or phone and were asked to nominate five rural high or combined (7-12) schools each would consider to be consistently successful in recruiting and retaining teachers. These lists were obtained in six of the seven states, and researchers attempted a contact with one principal in each state from the list selecting the initial principal and subsequent attempts in random order until an interview was completed for that state." After the interview was complete, the researcher started with the list for the next state. In the seventh state, online database information from the state education agency was used to identify seven rural high schools with high teacher retention, and then the principal was contacted by telephone in the same way as in the other states. The seven interviews were conducted in November and December, 2007.
The principals were asked the same questions by one researcher in each structured interview regarding 1) their use of the strategies and benefits addressed in the SASS questionnaires, 2) their own recruiting strategies, 3) their beliefs about factors affecting secondary teacher retention in their district, and 4) their perceptions of reasons for success.

Based on information
in the review of literature, the principals were also asked whether their school offered a new teacher induction program and whether they considered themselves to be in an isolated location. Individual statements from each principal interview were organized under the five category headings. All of the statements fell into at least one of the categories. Once the statements were categorized, the researchers looked for commonalities among the statements placed in each category. For example, one principal said he was able to recruit his own former students, another said that students come back to teach there since it s home, and a third said that two of five new hires were former students. Therefore, three principals were considered to recruit, in part, by attracting back their own former students. The information in each category was summarized in this way by emphasizing topics mentioned by more than one principal.

Results
The findings begin with a descriptive analysis of SASS data on recruiting in different locales in the Central Region, then describe the results of dividing the schools into successful and unsuccessful groups and comparing them on strategies and benefits, and then present the outcomes of the follow-up principal interviews.

Phase One
For the schools in large or mid-size cities, recruiting difficulties were found primarily in special education, while schools in urban fringe areas and large towns reported difficulties with English/language arts (although the percentage reporting those recruiting problems was small at 13.2%). However, schools in small towns reported having recruiting trouble with all subjects except for music, and the two rural locales (locale codes 7 and 8) together reported recruiting difficulties in all subjects except vocational/technical education and special education. Also, in the two rural locales, smaller schools had more recruiting difficulty than larger schools, with small isolated schools (fewer than 200 students, outside CBSA) reporting the greatest recruiting difficulties. Therefore, rural schools and small towns, particularly small rural schools, did report greater recruiting difficulties than did other locations.

Phase Two
Chi-square tests of association were conducted on School District Questionnaire items 14a-d and on items 28a-h.
There was a different pattern of response between successful and unsuccessful schools on Item 14a, signing bonuses significantly more unsuccessful locations reported giving signing bonuses, X(1) = 9.85, p < .01. Responses were not significantly different for Items 14b (loan forgiveness) or 14c (relocation assistance). For Item 14d (finder's fee), all respondents from both groups answered no to the item, so no chi-square result was produced. Responses to School District Questionnaire Items 28a-28h were not significantly different between the groups for any of the items, indicating that benefits offered were not related to schools' success in recruiting and retaining teachers as measured by these surveys. Of the three approaches (grow-your-own, targeted incentives, and using federal funding opportunities) to recruiting and retaining highly qualified teachers results from relevant SASS items revealed that the rural school districts in this sample were seldom using any of these approaches. When they were, the only difference between the two groups was that the unsuccessful group was using one targeted incentive (signing bonuses) more than the successful group. Given these results, the interviews with the principals became a valuable source of detail and insight.

Phase Three
The seven principals were not a representative sample but were identified in order to provide descriptive material about rural recruitment and retention. The seven interviewed principals had faculties ranging from 10 to 33, with a mean of 23.3 (SD = 7.8). Vacancies for the 2007-2008 school year ranged from zero to six. The vacancies occurred in various subject areas: mathematics, computer technology, language arts/English, science, music/band, art, agriculture, counseling, social studies, and business. The most common causes for the vacancies were retirement (n = 4) and leaving for another position in the same school or district (n = 4). In this sample of schools successful in recruiting, all of the vacancies were filled, although three principals reported that mathematics and science vacancies were the most difficult.
Three of the seven schools had one teacher, a new hire for that year, who was not yet highly qualified in the subject they taught: one each in music, art, and business.
Six of the twelve strategies captured in the SASS surveys were not used by these principals: 1) signing bonuses, 2) relocation assistance, 3) a finder's fee for new teacher referrals, or subsidies for 4) housing, 5) meals, or 6) transportation. With reference to the grow-your-own and use of federal funding approaches, all but one principal mentioned that teachers had access through federal funding to training at no cost to become highly qualified; four schools also offered tuition reimbursement for courses beyond those strictly necessary to become highly qualified. The three principals who mentioned student loan forgiveness said that it was offered through a Department of Education program because their school qualified as high poverty. With reference to the targeted incentives approach, the four principals reporting generous insurance benefits and three principals reporting generous retirement benefits said that their districts covered more of the costs of these benefits than did other districts in their state. Although few of the principals mentioned using half of the recruiting strategies addressed in the SASS, some principals were aware that other schools did use those techniques out of necessity. One principal said, In my last school, they had signing bonuses and they paid for your tuition, up to $45 a credit hour....We don t have to do that here because we aren t that desperate yet.
Although several of the schools did use the strategies and offer the benefits addressed in the SASS School District Questionnaire, none of the principals perceived that their success in teacher recruiting and retention was related to any of these aforementioned strategies. In response to this, principals were then asked to describe their recruiting and retention strategies, and explain the other factors that they perceived were helpful to their success. Two over-riding themes appeared in the principals' open responses: targeting teachers from rural areas and promoting the school and community assets.
Recruiting Teachers from Rural Areas The principals described hiring practices focusing on developing and hiring teachers who are from rural areas, as they would be more likely to accept the job and then stay at the school. Specifically, six out of seven principals reported recruiting teachers who were from their surrounding community or a similar rural area, and thus would be comfortable in the rural school setting. Three of those six principals also mentioned hiring their own graduates, although only one said that he specifically recruited former students in cases where positions were hard to fill. One advertised locally for teacher candidates with the needed subject-area degree but no teaching certificate. He then hired the most promising applicants and used NCLB funding to offset the tuition expenses of attending a nearby university to complete coursework to obtain the necessary credential.

Conclusions
According to the data generated by the 2003-2004 SASS Questionnaires, small towns and rural areas in the Central Region did in fact have relatively more difficulty in recruiting teachers than did larger communities. Therefore, rural principals and district administrators are in need of strategies for teacher recruitment and retention. However, when the successful and unsuccessful school districts were compared on the strategies and benefits included in the SASS, the results showed very little difference between the two groups. The only difference was with signing bonuses, which were reported as being offered significantly more often in the unsuccessful group than the successful group.
Within the limitations of this one-year look, therefore, neither signing bonuses nor any of the other strategies and benefits examined in this large national data set would seem to lead to successful recruiting.
The responses of the seven interviewed principals were congruent with the outcome of the group comparisons in that they also did not report relying on many of the strategies and benefits addressed in the SASS. All of the principals denied using six of the strategies/benefits (signing bonuses, relocation assistance, finder s fees, or subsidized housing, transportation, or meals). However, there was some alignment between many of the approaches they did use and the three approaches investigated in previous research. Their grow-your-own approach involved hiring graduates or other people from the general area who would be comfortable in the rural environment; they focused more on turning rural residents into teachers, rather than turning teachers into rural residents. Their use of federal funding opportunities was related to grow-your-own in that they used federal money to enable new and current teachers to become highly qualified. These principals also utilized targeted incentives such as higher pay or grant opportunities.
Beyond the three approaches synthesized from previous research, the principals of rural school also made a strategic point of promoting to applicants the assets of their particular school or community, such as small class sizes, few discipline problems, a desirable (if often isolated) location, While overall the approaches for recruiting and retention were in line with those found in previous research, rural principals' unique implementation of the strategies to support the approaches may not have been adequately captured in the SASS data, as they were perceived by the interviewed principals to be minimally responsible for success. It may be that the existing rural-specific challenges in teacher recruitment and retention are most successfully addressed with rural-specific solutions.

Content Footnotes
'We chose to complete only one interview per state in order to stay under nine, the limit beyond which OMB (Office of Management and Budget) approval must be sought.