Causes of Teacher Attrition of First, Second, and Third Year Teachers in Rural Middle Schools

Early attrition from teaching bears enormous costs. High attrition means that schools must take funds urgently needed for school improvements and spend them instead in a manner that produces little long-term payoff for student learning (Kain & Singleton, 1996). Keeping highly qualified teachers should always be at the top of the priority list of administrators (Darling-Hammond, 2003). The purpose of this study was to identify some of the possible factors that cause teacher attrition for teachers that are within their first three years of teaching in rural middle schools. The participants of this study were teachers in their first three years of teaching in 6 school districts located in the west central and southern regions of the state of Mississippi. Teachers and administrators were selected from within these school districts to participate in a survey that addressed the following areas that could possibly affect rural middle school attrition: (1) salary; (2) class size; (3) student behavior in the classroom; (4) social activity within the rural area; (5) administrative support; (6) obtaining suitable housing in the rural area; (7) teacher preparedness; (8) working conditions; and (9) the social economic status of the rural school district and its ability to provide adequate resources for effective instruction to the teachers. Teachers and administrators in the targeted school districts who provided interesting or consistent answers were given followup interviews for the purpose of clarification. Answers were then analyzed and calculated to reflect the answers the teachers have given via averages from the Likert scale system. The limitations of this study were that the study was conducted in only the west central and southern portion of one state so the conclusions and findings of the study may not be able to be interpreted on a nationwide level. The findings and recommendations of this study were determined by the answers given by the teachers and the administrators.