Factors relating to teachers’ intention to change school: A multilevel perspective

Abstract

The high turnover rates in public schools, especially in those hard-to-staff schools, remains a growing problem and has become the largest component of teacher supply problems in the US school system. The purpose of the study was to examine the individual and school organizational factors that were associated with teachers’ intentions to change school by using the dataset of the US TALIS 2013 administrated by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. The results of the multilevel models showed that although the variance in teacher turnover intentions was, to a substantial degree, explained by the individual variables, the school organizational-specific effects have notably contributed to the outcome as well. Additionally, the analysis of the cross-level interaction has detected both direct and indirect effects of disadvantaged schools on teacher transfer intention. The implications for teacher retention policies have been discussed as well.