1. FACTORS OF
EMPLOYEE
RETENTION:
TEACHERS
Anne Koutoufas
HRD­880
Spring 2009

2. Factors Involving Teacher
Retention:
Monetary compensation
Working conditions
Personal satisfaction
Purpose of presentation:
To discuss the findings regarding teacher
retention. These include compensation, working
conditions, and personal satisfaction.
(for the purpose of this discussion, teacher attrition and turnover refer
to teachers leaving the profession for another career or teachers
resigning—not the transfer of teachers to another school or school
division.)

3. Teacher Quality versus Teacher Retention
Little research on what characterizes a
quality teacher
Little research to differentiate between
teacher retention and quality teacher
retention
Due to costs and time, any teacher turnover
can be detrimental to a school division

4. Basic principal—you stay in a profession if it
is more attractive than others
To stay in teaching, the opportunity costs
—what you lose when you chose teaching—
must be outweighed by the rewards of
teaching
*Here’s a chance for a school
division’s HR Department to
develop policies that will not only
attract new teachers, but
outweigh the opportunity costs
that have been encountered.

5. Teacher Turnover:
Who Stays—Who Goes
Attrition rates are higher for younger beginning
teachers
Attrition rates are lower for older beginning
teachers
More females leave the profession than males
More Caucasian teachers leave than any other
racial group
Hispanic teachers have the least amount of
attrition
Not surprising that younger teachers leave—that is not
far off statistics for any other career. Women leaving do
so for pregnancy or childrearing reasons. No reasons were
given other than career opportunities for the difference
in racial groups

6. Those with higher ability had higher

attrition from teaching
Those from more selective institutes of

higher learning had higher attrition
Math and science teachers had highest

attrition
Teachers who were certain of their future

as teachers from the beginning had least
All these groups most likely
amount of attrition opportunities for
had more
career choices and for higher
pay

7. S C H O O L AN D D IS TR IC T
C H AR AC TE R IS T IC S
Size, location, wealth, student

population were often key
Higher poverty schools had higher

turnover
Higher turnover for schools with low

achievement scores

8. School and District Characteristics
Charter schools had higher
turnover
Schools in the West have a
higher turnover
Small town schools have a
higher turnover
The guess is that there is a good
amount of stress teaching in a
charter school due to high
expectations and the newness of
the program. Small town
teachers often leave for more
money.

9. S c ho o l a nd
D is tr ic t
C h a r a c te r is ti
cs
Suburban schools have more
retention than all others
Higher salaries make a
difference
This bears out the
Better working conditions make
market theory that the
a difference
more attractive the
conditions and salary,
the more people will stay

10. •Higher salaries do make a difference
•Targeted compensation makes a difference
•Better working conditions make a difference
Working conditions include class size, class make-up, discipline,
autonomy of teachers to make decisions, an open door policy of
the principal, scheduled collaboration, and mentoring programs.
The targeted compensation refers to focusing on keeping those
teachers in high need areas, such as math or science, rather
than offering significant raises to all teachers, the majority of
whom would stay anyway. Signing bonuses are a part of this.

11. CO CLU
N S
ION
Efforts to retain teachers must start at the beginning
of employment with programs such as mentoring.
Teachers must feel valued and that what they do and
what they are offered outweigh what they could gain
from other employment.
Human Resource Department must have up-to-date,
extensive data on teacher turnover in order to make
effective policy.