Summary:
The combined goals of recruiting and retaining effective teachers are often difficult to realize due to fluctuating student enrollments and class-size targets, teaching-load norms or requirements, and budgetary and resource constraints. While schools and districts market and recruit bright new teachers to the field, they too, struggle to maintain enticing career development standards that would retain the most effective teachers in the district (Guirano, Santibanez, & Daley, 2006). With the high turnover in schools, student achievement suffers. Teacher attrition has grown by 50% over the past fifteen years. The national teacher turnover rate has risen to 16.8%. In urban schools, it is over 20% and, in some schools and districts, the teacher dropout rate is actually higher than the student dropout rate. School districts fall into a chronic cycle of hiring and replacing teachers whereas the funding to develop effective teachers is financially strained (NCTAF, 2003). Human Resources is challenged by the startling facts of staffing highly effective teachers in hard-to-staff positions. FULL MANUSCRIPT AVAILABLE AT: http://cnx.org/content/m41321/latest/