A new report from the State Collaborative on Reforming Education (SCORE) found rural school districts in Tennessee face unique challenges that impact both schools and retaining teachers.
These challenges include geographic isolation, constrained financial capacity, and increased workloads due to smaller staff. Additionally, rural districts experience high concentrations of students in poverty, much like their urban counterparts.
To better understand these challenges, SCORE sought the perspectives of rural district leaders across the state to produce the report that focuses on the current state of rural educator markets. It’s the second in a series that explores broader trends behind Tennessee’s educator labor marker challenges.
“Access to highly effective teachers is essential for student achievement, but growing evidence suggests students have unreliable and inequitable access to effective teachers, with many Tennessee school districts reporting high levels of teacher vacancies. Rural districts specifically face unique challenges when it comes to recruiting and retaining talent, leading to lingering vacancies and a growing need to issue emergency credentials to meet hiring needs,” wrote SCORE in the report.
SCORE conducted a survey of school districts across the state, including 17 districts classified as “rural.”
In 2022, those rural districts reported 395 vacancies, which amounts to 39 percent of the state’s total staff vacancies.
According to the report, rural district leaders don’t believe Tennessee has strong policies and strategies in place to support the teaching pipeline.
Additionally, more than 80 percent of rural district leaders expressed concern that Tennessee’s teacher pipeline may not be producing enough educators that meet student needs. This same number of leaders also believed that teacher vacancies are driven by decreased applicants.
More than 75 percent polled do not believe their district has access to the effective educators they need to support students.
The report also found that rural districts have limited capacity and resources to develop and implement effective strategies to attract and retain teachers. Short-term, low-cost interventions were the most effective at addressing vacancies, according to the report, but lacking the resources for long-term implementation means it’s difficult for smaller central office teams to oversee the creation of strong policies that aid retention.
“Teacher shortages in rural communities are more than just a temporary staffing issue and reflect broader challenges that come with rurality — such as geographic isolation and limited resources — and continue to exacerbate the difficulty of attracting and retaining qualified teachers. While state-sponsored initiatives have made strides in addressing teacher shortages more broadly, the perception data we collected indicate these initiatives seem to be falling short of meeting the unique needs of rural districts,” wrote SCORE.
