RE: Question 1: Attracting and Retaining Teachers

     In a large, state-wide teacher survey commissioned by the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning and conducted by SRI International for the recent report The Status of the Teaching Profession 2001, teachers reported that "proximity to home" was the highest-rated reason for job taking, followed by assignment (grade level/subject areas offered) and salary (offered a higher salary).  Other reasons for job-taking in descending order included: Prefer the population of students, Prefer the schools' philosophy, More support for professional learning, and Had more resources.
     But the challenges inherent in recruitment and hiring appear to be different in "resource rich" and "hard-to-staff" districts. In resource rich districts -- those that have few teachers to hire annually and many applicants -- the focus is on finding an appropriate match between the teacher candidate and the district or school environment.  Recruitment and hiring in hard-to-staff districts are completely different tasks.  In some cases, there are not enough applicants to fill all open positions.  In large, urban settings it is more likely that there will be higher concentrations of first-year teachers who do not hold a preliminary credentials. For the first time, about half (51%)of all first-year teachers in California have not completed a preparation program.  
     If proximity to home is a key factor in considering which job to take, there appear to be some important implications for boosting the local community's capacity to identify prospective teachers, strengthening the links between local community colleges and four-year institutions, and bulding stronger networks between and among local agencies (45% of teachers found their teaching jobs through word of mouth).  Further, because the field of teacher preparation is changing rapidly in response to the changes in the teacher candidate pool (those in credential programs are also likey to be employed as the teacher of record at a local school), building capacity at the local level through partnerships between local school districts and higher education institutions (Recommendation 3.0) seems on point in this regard.