| SungHyun Cha
Florida State University
Interaction effects among salaries, working conditions, and teacher support policies on teacher turnover in a structural equation model
Teacher turnover has been a critical issue over the past decades, which has a direct impact on teacher supply and demand as well as an impact on distributional equity of the quality of education. As a means of attracting and retaining qualified teachers, a growing number of states and districts are turning to financial incentives, holding teachers accountable, and implementing induction/mentoring programs for beginning teachers as well as a variety of professional development programs. Reviews of relevant literature bring up an important aspect of teacher turnover, which has not been adequately explored, in that salaries, working conditions, and teacher support policies should be considered together in a single model in order to better understand what factors and to what degree they affect teacher turnover intentions and furthermore how these factors interact with each other. Using the 1999-2000 Schools and Staffing Survey and 2000-2001 Teacher Follow-up Survey, this study aims to investigate main effects and interaction effects among salaries, working conditions, and teacher support policies on teachers' job satisfaction and turnover intention through developing a structural equation model that each single regression equation is incorporated. Furthermore, this study seeks to examine whether such relationships vary across individual teacher characteristics and investigate the moderating effect of school/district specific characteristics. The study will address the following questions: 1) In examining salaries and working conditions, which is more important in affecting job satisfaction and turnover intention?, 2) What are the interaction effects among salaries, working conditions, and teacher support policies on job satisfaction and teacher turnover intention?, and 3) How do main effects and interaction effects differ according to characteristics of individual teachers (e.g., age, gender, and education level,), school characteristics (e.g., type of school and location), and school district characteristics (e.g., poverty level), actual turnover behavior (e.g., stayers, movers, and leavers)? Findings of the study will be useful for educational policymakers and communities to design more appropriate and effective education policies to attract and retain excellent teachers by providing information of what factors are more influential and how they are interrelated.
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