Filling open teaching positions in schools is a perennial challenge for principals. New research from West Virginia University has found one factor that makes a big difference in how well leaders can solve this problem: their relationship to the communities where their schools are located.
Researchers followed eight principals in six school districts across West Virginia during the summer and fall of 2020 and categorized school leaders into one of three groups: Returner Principals, whose schools are in the communities where they grew up; Seasoned Principals, who have at least three years of experience in a community they aren’t originally from; and New-to-Place Principals, who are in their first two years of leading a school.
According to the study, returning and seasoned principals, who often had closer connections to the communities in which they worked, were better able to leverage local relationships and find unique solutions to staffing challenges than their new-to-place colleagues.
These established leaders used a wide array of strategies to fill open positions, including asking retired teachers to return to school, even sometimes for only part of the day, or recruiting recent college graduates who had not yet received their teaching certification. In one instance, a principal saw that a graduate of their high school had applied for a teaching job in a different district and contacted the applicant directly to encourage them to take a job at their alma mater.
These actions don’t automatically lead to successful long-term teacher placements, explained the study's lead author, professor of higher education at West Virginia University, Erin McHenry-Sorber, and in some cases the principals who took on uncertified, inexperienced candidates in a pinch eventually let them go. Such relationship-based interventions, however, can be an important emergency measure for schools.
Teacher shortages have grown in West Virginia, and the country as a whole, and often have a bigger impact on rural school districts. One school leader in the study reported having seven different substitutes move through a 1st grade classroom in the first two months of school.
“We tried the best we could to get that position filled, and it just didn’t happen. . . . The effects, I’m sure, are still lingering,” he said.
But even with a largely rural state like West Virginia, not all school districts experience challenges like teacher turnover the same way, says McHenry-Sorber.
“People outside of West Virginia tend to think of [these communities] as monolithic places. That’s really false. Rural places are really different from each other and have unique challenges and strengths,” she says.
Within the study, different factors affected teacher shortages in each district. For example, communities with more attractive natural features and bigger tourist economies, called “returner destinations” in the report, had less trouble filling open teacher positions. Districts on borders with other states also faced challenges because local teachers cross the border in search of higher salaries and even different COVID-19 protections. Nearly half of the state’s counties touch a border and in the 2019-2020 school year, West Virginia ranked 46th in terms of average teacher pay.
Having leaders who understand the dynamics of the local community, therefore, is critical, says McHenry-Sorber.
Lessons for Leaders
Leaders can draw a few takeaways from the researchers’ findings. First, the impact of principal transiency is profound, and districts could benefit from exploring “grow-your-own" pipelines that encourage teachers within a school community to pursue leadership while staying in the district. That said, McHenry-Sorber explains that administrators may want to avoid pulling too many teachers out of the classroom and into administrative roles at once, since that risks contributing to the very teacher shortages principals are trying to address.
Second, principals at all levels of experience could invest more in building relationships with community members in and around their schools. Understanding the local dynamics of any new town can be difficult, however, so the researchers suggest engaging in community-based mentorship with local stakeholders. If the new principal doesn’t know who to call when they’re in a bind filling a vacant teaching position, a mentor from the neighborhood could help arrange some introductions.
There’s a “need for place-based mentoring for principals, which would help them figure out who the most important connections are and how to leverage those relationships,” says McHenry-Sorber.
The study also suggests that teacher education programs could place intern educators across the state, particularly in hard-to-staff areas, to help counter the uneven effects of teacher shortages based on region.
Overall, the research confirms what many school communities already know well: Leaders have a monumental impact on their students and staff. Making sure they have the resources and skillset to succeed has positive reverberations for everyone in the building.
“One broad takeaway from our work is how central the role of principals is in responding to these kinds of challenges,” says McHenry-Sorber.
