Examining the Educator Workforce in Rural Wisconsin
Problem
Rural Wisconsin schools face persistent challenges attracting and retaining educators.
Rural school districts comprise nearly three-fourths of Wisconsin’s 420+ local districts and educate nearly half of all students statewide. Yet, they face persistent and increased difficulty attracting and retaining educators. As one of the largest employers in many rural communities, rural schools both prepare students for college and careers and help drive local economic development. Given this interdependence, it is vitally important for rural districts to have a pipeline of high-quality educators who will not only come to rural communities but will remain in them.
The Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership is invested in identifying partnerships, processes, and mechanisms that advance equitable educational opportunities for Wisconsin’s rural students, including through the preparation, recruitment, and retention of exceptional rural educators.
Solution
NORC examined Wisconsin’s current and future rural educator workforce in two phases.
NORC partnered with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research to develop a two-phase examination of current and future rural educators that builds on our earlier study documenting strategies to address educator shortages in rural Wisconsin schools.
Phase one used longitudinal datasets to establish a descriptive profile of the state’s current rural educator workforce, including demographic trends (such as teacher diversity) and where rural educators were trained.
In phase two, we collaborated with multiple University of Wisconsin campuses to identify initiatives that Wisconsin’s 40+ approved educator preparation programs and other entities employ to recruit, prepare, and support rural educators. This phase also included:
- A statewide inventory of programs, practices, and initiatives that support the development of the rural educator workforce
- Site visits to three University of Wisconsin campuses to better understand the perspectives of faculty, staff, students, and rural teachers
Result
The study identified programs that support future rural educators and opportunities for further investment.
In a comprehensive “state of the union” report on Wisconsin’s rural educator workforce, we showcase programs that attend to various components of the rural educator pipeline, including pre-college efforts to increase college access and affordability, paid student teaching opportunities, and professional learning engagements that help retain current rural teachers. The report also offers a statewide picture of who teaches in rural Wisconsin schools, including where they went to college and how the rural teacher workforce has declined over time, and provides recommendations for expanding and sustaining supports for current and future teachers in rural Wisconsin.
We also participated in a Rural Teacher Workforce Summit, hosted by the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership, that brought together state and local policymakers, representatives from educator preparation programs, and rural school district leaders to discuss promising practices for increasing the supply and retention of highly qualified educators in rural Wisconsin schools.
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Project Leads
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Jenny Seelig
Senior Research ScientistCo-Principal Investigator
Other Project Leads
Bradley Carl
Scientist at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research
Co-Principal Investigator
