Date of Award
Fall 9-19-2018
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctorate of Education, Ed.D.
College
College of Education
Department
Education
First Advisor
Floralba Arbelo-Marrero, Ed.D.
Second Advisor
Patricia Akojie, Ph.D.
Third Advisor
David J. Alba, Ed.D.
Abstract
Educational leaders are concerned about teacher retention rates. More teachers are leaving the profession and fewer colleges are enrolling students into their teacher preparation programs (Sawchuk, 2016). This study focused on potential correlations between the dependent variable of teacher retention and 3 independent variables: induction and mentoring programs, incentives, and a school’s socioeconomic status. The author conducted the study in a school district in Florida that contained low-performing schools with high-minority at-risk populations. Data collection involved emailing a survey based on Giacometti’s (2005) instrument to 1,359 members of the district’s teacher’s union, with 401 completing the survey. The author used Qualtrics survey software to collect the data and the Statistical Package for Social Science (version 25) to analyze the data. Cronbach’s alpha permitted assessment of the internal consistency of the questions within each domain, and point biserial correlation, Kendall’s tau-b correlation, and a chi-square provided tests of the correlations. The author found no significant correlations between any of the independent variables and teacher retention. The results of the study indicate the need to further study the variables that play a role in teacher retention rates.