A doctoral project focusing on teacher turnover: The story of four districts on the west coast of Florida

Teacher turnover is a major challenge facing many school districts and states. Teacher turnover affects school finances and can negatively impact student achievement. The financial costs of teacher turnover is staggering. There are also other costs associated with teacher turnover. The cost to school culture and climate, morale and the cost of lower student achievement are also effects of teacher turnover. The rate of teacher turnover in Florida is particularly high compared to other states. The rate was higher than the national average in 2007.;The purpose of this project was to study teacher turnover in four districts on the west coast of Florida and to understand how these districts are dealing with teacher turnover compared to what the literature outlines. In addition, this project sought to identify practical solutions to the problem of teacher turnover. For this project, the foundational literature on teacher turnover was reviewed. Four human resources school officials on the west coast of Florida were interviewed to determine how they view and combat teacher turnover. The interviews were conducted and analyzed for themes, trends and patterns. Numerical data from the Florida Department of Education was reviewed to determine the rate of teacher turnover in all of the 67 counties in Florida compared to four districts on the west coast of Florida.;The findings of this project reveal that teacher turnover continues to be a problem in Florida for some districts although all of the districts in this project have programs to combat teacher turnover. The districts involved in this project have relatively low levels of teacher turnover. The human resources officials interviewed for this project offered several reasons for this low rate of turnover. Despite the fact that the four districts studied in this project have low levels of teacher turnover, recommendations and conclusions were drawn regarding ways to reduce teacher turnover.