Tennessee’s teachers now have the opportunity to tell education leaders what's needed to improve their schools.The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) launched its annual Tennessee Educator Survey in partnership Monday with Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) at Vanderbilt University.

K-12 teacher shortages — one of the most disputed questions in education policy today — are an undeniable reality in some communities, a newly released study indicates. But they are also a hyper-local phenomenon, the authors write, with fully staffed schools existing in close proximity to those that struggle to hire and retain teachers.The paper, circulated Thursday through Brown University’s Annenberg Institute for School Reform, uses a combination of survey responses and statewide administrative records from Tennessee to create a framework for identifying how and where teacher shortages emerge.