Recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers in rural areas

Future of Children

Volumn 17, Issue 1, 2007, Pages 155-174

  Monk, David H ^a  

^a PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; COMPENSATION; COST; ECONOMIC ASPECT; GOVERNMENT; HUMAN; INCOME; PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT; QUALITY CONTROL; RURAL AREA; RURAL POPULATION; SALARY; SCHOOL; STUDENT; TEACHER; TRAINING; UNITED STATES; WORK ENVIRONMENT;

CULTURAL DIVERSITY; HUMANS; PERSONNEL SELECTION; PERSONNEL TURNOVER; PUBLIC POLICY; RURAL POPULATION; SCHOOLS; TEACHING;

EID: 34248376965     PISSN: 10548289     EISSN: 15501558     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/foc.2007.0009     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. Daryl Hobbs, "Foreword," in Rural Education and Training in the New Economy, edited by Robert M. Gibbs, Paul L. Swaim, and Ruy Teixeira (Iowa State University Press, 1998), p. viii.
2. See www.census.gov/population/www/estimates/aboutmetro.html.
3. Mark A. Grey, "Secondary Labor in the Meatpacking Industry: Demographic Change and Student Mobility in Rural Iowa Schools," Journal of Research in Rural Education 13, no. 3 (1997): 153-64.
4. David L. Brown and Thomas A. Hirschl, "Household Poverty in Rural and Metropolitan-Core Areas of the United States," Rural Sociology 60, no. 1 (1995): 61;
5. Don E. Albrecht, Carol Mulford Albrecht, and Stan Albrecht, "Poverty in Nonmetropolitan America: Impacts of Industrial, Employment, and Family Structure Variables," Rural Sociology 65, no. 1 (2000): 87-103;
6. Leif Jensen, Diane K. McLaughlin, and Tim Slack, "Rural Poverty," in Challenges for Rural America in the Twenty-First Century, edited by David L. Brown and Louis E. Swanson (Penn State Press, 2003), pp. 118-31.
7. Jensen, McLaughlin, and Slack, "Rural Poverty" (see note 4), table 9-1, p. 122.
8. Gregory C. Malhoit, "Providing Rural Students with a High-Quality Education: The Rural Perspective on the Concept of Educational Adequacy" (Washington: Rural School and Community Trust, 2005), p. 11;
9. Lorna Jimerson, The Competitive Disadvantage: Teacher Compensation in Rural America (Washington: Rural School and Community Trust, 2003).
10. See, for example, Jane L. Collins and Amy Quark, "Globalizing Firms and Small Communities: The Apparel Industry's Changing Connection to Rural Labor Markets," Rural Sociology 71 (2006): 281-310;
11. Thomas A. Lyson and Amy Guptill, "Commodity Agriculture, Civic Agriculture and the Future of U.S. Farming," Rural Sociology 69, no. 3 (2004): 370-85.
12. Kai A. Schafft and others, "The Community Context for Rural Youth Educational and Residential Aspirations," paper prepared for the annual meeting of the Rural Sociological Society, 2006.
13. See also Georgeanne Artz, "Rural Brain Drain: Is It a Reality?" Choices 4 (2003): 11-15;
14. and Bradford Mills and Gautam Hazarika, "The Migration of Young Adults from Non-Metropolitan Counties," American Journal of Agricultural Economics 83 (2001): 329-40.
15. Robert M. Gibbs, Paul L. Swaim, and Ruy Teixeira, eds., Rural Education and Training in the New Economy: The Myth of the Rural Skills Gap (Iowa State University Press, 1998).
16. Ibid.
17. I shall use the term consolidate broadly to include various types of centralization, annexation, and related phenomena. For an overview of this important historical feature of school districts, see David H. Monk and Emil J. Haller, Organizational Alternatives for Small Rural Schools (1986) (ERIC Document 281 694).
18. The NCES classified districts as rural if they were in local code 7 (rural, outside a metropolitan statistical area) or local code 8 (rural, inside a metropolitan statistical area). The NCES has revised these codes and has developed a more refined set of categories. For more information, see http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/rural_locales.asp.
19. Carla McClure and Cynthia Reeves, "Rural Teacher Recruitment and Retention: Review of the Research and Practice Literature," Appalachia Educational Laboratory (November 2004).
20. Richard M. Ingersoll, "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages," American Educational Research Journal 38, no. 3 (2001): 499-534.
21. Robert M. Gibbs, "The Challenge Ahead for Rural Schools," Forum for Applied Research and Public Policy 15, no. 1 (2000): 82-87.
22. Elizabeth J. Greenberg and Ruy Teixeira, "Educational Achievement in Rural Schools," in Rural Education and Training in the New Economy, edited by Gibbs, Swaim, and Teixeira (see note 9), table 2.6, page 32.
23. William S. Carlsen and David H. Monk, "Differences between Rural and Nonrural Secondary Science Teachers: Evidence from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth," Journal of Research in Rural Education 8, no. 2 (1992): 1-10.
24. National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Digest of Education Statistics, 2004, table 63.
25. Gibbs, "The Challenge Ahead for Rural Schools" (see note 15); Dale Ballou and Michael Podgursky, "Rural Teachers and Schools," in Rural Education and Training in the New Economy, edited by Gibbs, Swaim, and Teixeira (see note 9), 3-21.
26. Emil J. Haller, "High School Size and Student Indiscipline: Another Aspect of the School Consolidation Issue?" Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 14 (1992): 145-56.
27. David H. Monk, "Secondary School Size and Curriculum Comprehensiveness," Economics of Education Review 6, no. 2 (1987): 137-50.
28. Gibbs, "The Challenge Ahead for Rural Schools" (see note 15).
29. According to Jimerson, rural districts that lie in between the boundaries of urban and rural areas can face the greatest pressures to compete in recruiting and retaining teachers. Jimerson, The Competitive Disadvantage (see note 6).
30. Boyd and others, "The Draw of Home: How Teachers' Preferences for Proximity Disadvantage Urban Schools," Working Paper 9953 (Cambridge: National Bureau of Economic Research, March 2003).
31. Ibid.;
32. Susanna Loeb and Michelle Reininger, "Public Policy and Teacher Labor Markets: What We Know and Why It Matters" (Michigan State University, Education Policy Center, April 2004).
33. Gibbs, "The Challenge Ahead for Rural Schools" (see note 15).
34. Robert Strauss, "Who Gets Hired to Teach? The Case of Pennsylvania," in Better Teachers, Better Schools, edited by M. Kanstroom (New York: Fordham Foundation, 1999), pp. 117-19.
35. Douglas N. Harris and colleagues, "When Supply Meets Demand: Principal Preferences and Teacher Hiring" (Florida State University), paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, San Francisco, 2006.
36. Ingersoll, "Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages" (see note 14).
37. NCES, Schools and Staffing Survey, 2003-04, Public School, BIA School Data Files, tables 2 and 3.
38. Grey, "Secondary Labor in the Meatpacking Industry" (see note 3).
39. For a compelling example, see Michael Brunn, "The Social Organization of Diversity: The Changing Faces in Rural America," paper presented at the annual meeting of the Northern Rocky Mountain Educational Research Association, October 2002 (ERIC Document 469 367).
40. Recall the findings of Gibbs, "The Challenge Ahead for Rural Schools" (see note 15);
41. and Ballou and Podgursky, "Rural Teachers and Schools" (see note 19).
42. Robert Coles, Children of Crisis: vol. 2, Migrants, Sharecroppers, Mountaineers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971),
43. and J. Moon, executive producer, New Harvest, Old Shame (Los Angeles: Corporation for Public Broadcasting, 1990),
44. as cited in Paul E. Green, "The Undocumented: Educating the Children of Migrant Workers in America," Bilingual Research Journal 27, no. 1 (2003): 51-71.
45. Green, "The Undocumented" (see note 34).
46. Kai A. Schafft, "Poverty, Residential Mobility and Student Transience within a Rural New York School District," Rural Sociology 71, no. 2 (forthcoming).
47. Gibbs, "The Challenge Ahead for Rural Schools" (see note 15).
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. Jonah E. Rockoff, "The Impact of Individual Teachers on Student Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review 94, no. 2 (2004): 247-52;
51. and Douglas N. Harris and Tim R. Saas, "The Effects of Teacher Training on Teacher Value-Added" (Florida State University), paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Education Finance Association (2006).
52. McClure and Reeves, "Rural Teacher Recruitment and Retention" (see note 13), p. 10.
53. Angela Maria Branz-Spall and Roger Rosenthal, with Al Wright, "Children of the Road: Migrant Students, Our Nation's Most Mobile Population," Journal of Negro Education 72, no. 1 (2003): 55-62.
54. NCES, "Distance Education Courses for Public Elementary and Secondary School Students: 2002-2003," available at http://nces.ed.gov/ pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2005010 (September 18, 2006).
55. See Monk and Haller, Organizational Alternatives for Rural Schools (note 11), for an overview of New York State's history.
56. For a critical assessment of recent reorganization efforts in West Virginia, see Cynthia Reeves, "A Decade of Consolidation: Where Are the $avings?" (2004), a Challenge West Virginia document available at www.challengewv.org/resources.html.
57. Private foundation support, in particular from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has spurred interest in and creation of small high schools in recent years. For additional information, see Anne C. Lewis, "Washington Commentary: High Schools and Reform," Phi Delta Kappan 85, no. 8 (2004): 563;
58. and Tom Vander Ark, "The Case for Small High Schools," Educational Leadership 59, no. 5 (2002): 55-59.
59. Dana Balter and William Duncombe, "Teacher Hiring Practices in New York State School Districts" (Maxwell School, Syracuse University, January 2005), available at www-cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/faculty/duncombe/.
60. Richard Ingersoll and J. Kralik, "The Impact of Mentoring on Teacher Retention" (Denver: Education Commission of the States, 2004).
61. McClure and Reeves, "Rural Teacher Recruitment and Retention (see note 13), p. 12.
62. Grey, "Secondary Labor in the Meatpacking Industry" (see note 3).
63. Boyd and others, "The Draw of Home" (see note 24);
64. Loeb and Reininger, "Public Policy and Teacher Labor Markets" (see note 25).
65. McClure and Reeves, "Rural Teacher Recruitment and Retention" (see note 13), p. 9.
66. Rhonda Barton, "Challenges and Opportunities of NCLB for Small, Rural, and Isolated Schools" (Portland, Ore.: Northwest Regional Lab, 2003) (ERIC Document 482 267);
67. Cynthia Reeves, "Implementing the No Child Left Behind Act: Implications for Rural Schools and Districts" (Northcentral Regional Lab, 2003) (ERIC Document 475 037);
68. and Lorna Jimerson, "The Devil Is in the Details: Rural-Sensitive Best Practices for Accountability under No Child Left Behind," Rural Trust Policy Brief Series on Rural Education (Washington: Rural School and Community Trust, 2004).
69. Reeves, "Implementing the No Child Left Behind Act" (see note 52).
70. For more on the secretary's task force and the virtual town hall meeting that it sponsored, see http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/ods/ruraled/index.html.