Teacher Retention: Teacher Characteristics, School Characteristics, Organizational Characteristics, and Teacher Efficacy

ABSTRACT The researcher utilized block-entry regression analysis to determine the impacts of teacher characteristics, school characteristics, organizational characteristics, and teacher efficacy on retention in teaching from 782 teacher surveys. Findings indicated that 83.50% of participants planned to teach until retirement. Wald statistics indicated that years teaching experience, socioeconomic status (SES), salary and workload, parent and student, and technology all made statistically significant contributions to the model. Contrary to existing literature, the findings indicated that teachers in the lowest SES schools were more likely to continue teaching until retirement than teachers in the highest SES schools. The data seemed to indicate that schools in this study interested in increasing teacher retention rates should consider increasing salaries, reducing their workloads, and strive to improve parent and student participation and cooperation levels.