Teachers on the move

Examining rural teachers’ reasons for leaving and different patterns of teacher mobility

Abstract

Teacher shortages are a worldwide concern and may disproportionately affect rural schools. Teacher mobility is an important but under-studied factor in these shortages. Understanding teachers’ reasons for different mobility decisions (leaving the profession; moving to another school) can inform policies to increase retention. This project used a subset of rural teacher data from a statewide exit survey collected from educators in South Carolina, a racially diverse state in the southeastern United States, who left their positions at the end of the 2023-24 school year. The survey, which was developed by the research team in association with a state-funded research consortium, allowed exiting teachers to indicate the relative importance of different factors driving their mobility choices, including personal reasons, job resources, job demands, and policy reasons. A multivariate multiple regression revealed that teachers working in rural distant schools placed lower importance on job demands and policy reasons for exiting than teachers in rural fringe schools. A logistic regression model analysis revealed that differences in teachers’ perceptions of job resources, job demands, and personal reasons were statistically significantly related with different mobility choices, and that job demands were most strongly associated with leaving the profession completely. Ultimately, the findings from this study may highlight community assets that rural schools can leverage to retain teachers more effectively in the future.