A team of researchers at UAA and UAF led by Dr. Dayna DeFeo will collaborate on a four-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to learn more about factors that contribute to retention of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) teachers in high-need schools. The project, “Sufficient COmpensation for Retention and Equity” (SCORE), will examine how compensation, working conditions and other factors encourage teachers to stay.

Compensation (including benefits like insurance, retirement plans, and leave days) is often used to attract teachers into different jobs, but when teachers make decisions about whether to take a job or stay in a job, other considerations – including working conditions – matter too. SCORE researchers will work with data from the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development (DEED) and the Alaska Department of Labor to follow individual teacher employment patterns in the K-12 system and in the private sector in Alaska.

The project team will:

  • describe and analyze the factors that influence teacher decisions, using a variety of data, including interviews and classroom observations
  • describe how strong these factors are, relative to one another, and how well they explain teacher decisions
  • highlight examples of high-need schools that have leveraged compensation and working conditions to achieve better-than-expected STEM teacher retention

Ultimately, SCORE is expected to enhance the understanding of the degree to which working conditions and compensation can predict STEM teacher retention, quantify the frequency of movement of STEM educators between classrooms and private industry, and identify best practices tied to high teacher retention patterns.

This work has the potential to inform policy at the state and school district level by allowing leaders and lawmakers to design compensation systems that are most effective in promoting teacher retention.

The project team includes:

Dr. Dayna DeFeo,  Director of the Center for Alaska Education Policy Research and Research Assistant Professor of Education Policy at ISER
Dr. Matthew Berman, Professor of Economics, ISER
Dr. Sarah Gerken, Professor, UAA Department of Biological Sciences
Dr. Douglas Cost, Assistant Professor of Education, UAF

 

The SCORE project, officially titled “Collaborative Research: Examining the Role of Compensation and Other Factors for Retention of Teachers in High-need Schools” is a nearly $800,000 award within the National Science Foundation’s Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program. Grant numbers: 2050440 and 2050559

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2021, its budget is $8.5 billion. NSF funds research in all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and other institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 50,000 competitive proposals for funding and makes about 12,000 new funding awards.