Eliminating Educator Shortages: Resources to Support and Retain High-Quality Teachers

What this playlist is: 
This playlist provides EED grantees with resources centered on teacher and school leader recruitment and retention practices at the educator preparation and school district levels. Recruitment and retention strategies constitute two components of human capital management systems (HCMS). These strategies include a range of practices that institutions of higher education and school systems leverage to attract and retain pre-service and career teachers and school leaders. The figure below represents these practices and emphasizes the ways in which recruitment and retention operate as a system aligned to educator competencies (the knowledge, skills, and behaviors) sought in ideal candidates. Further, recruitment and retention practices are linked in another way: without a strong, well-articulated retention system, recruitment efforts will fall short of attracting effective teachers and school leaders searching for strong, inclusive systems of support and opportunity in their work environments.  

Who should use this playlist?
All EED grant work centers on recruiting and retaining (e.g., preparation, early career support, ongoing development) effective educators. Project directors, human resource professionals, and strategic leaders in grantees’ home and partnership organizations should use this playlist to explore a range of recruitment and retention practices utilized within the Effective Educator Development Program community to inform their own strategic efforts to educator recruitment and retention.

First, assemble and convene the HCMS Alignment Team (for more background, consult the HCMS Design Playlist, Resource 1) to focus on these two specific components of an HCMS. This team works across departments, divisions, and organizations, and may include additional team members focused on a specific recruitment or retention practice.

• Districts: The team should include representation from human resources, evaluation and accountability, research and evaluation, and information technology departments, along with teacher and/or principal union leaders.  
• Universities, non-profit, or education service agencies: Your team will be a combination of members from your organization and your partner district(s). If you are a university assessing your own recruitment and retention strategies, then members from your own organization are necessary, including the relevant administrators and departments. 

Resources are grouped into two entry points:  

• Teacher Recruitment and Retention Practices
• School Leader Recruitment and Retention Practices

Grantees should select an entry point to explore based on the focus of their grant work. Teams are prompted to keep an eye toward considering how what they learn about other grantee work impacts their work – especially how lessons learned from the field impact their own planning. Each resource features directions on how to use the resource, reflection questions to consider, and suggested next steps teams can take to transfer new learning into action.

Entry Point 1: Teacher Recruitment and Retention Practices

1. Teacher Recruitment & Retention: Attract and Keep Your Most Effective Educators (Chapter 1)
2. Teacher Recruitment & Retention: Attract and Keep Your Most Effective Educators (Chapter 5)
3. Strengthening the Educator Workforce: Recruiting, Supporting, and Retaining Teacher Candidates from Traditionally Underserved Groups
4. Preparation and Support for Teachers in Public Schools: Reflections on the First Year of Teaching
5. Micro-Credential Engagement Briefs: Bite-Sized, Tailored, and Job-Embedded: Communicating the Value and Variety of Micro-Credentials in Education and Designing a Rigorous Micro-Credential Assessment Process to Verify Mastery of Competencies: Key Considerations

Entry Point 2: School Leader Recruitment and Retention Practices

1. Building Principal Pipelines: A Job that Urban Districts Can Do
2. Coaching Principals to Develop Their Capacity as Instructional Leaders: Insights from Two SEED Grants
3. A Better Way to Prepare Principals: Impact of a Competency-Based Fellowship on Aspiring Principals’ Growth into Leadership
4. Micro-Credential Engagement Briefs: Bite-Sized, Tailored, and Job-Embedded: Communicating the Value and Variety of Micro-Credentials in Education and Designing a Rigorous Micro-Credential Assessment Process to Verify Mastery of Competencies: Key Considerations