The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) designated more than $50 million in state reserve funds from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund to support the recruitment and retention of effective and diverse teachers. The teacher recruitment and retention grants helped local education agencies, educator preparation programs, and community colleges across the state to strengthen their existing strategies and experiment with innovative approaches for recruiting and retaining teachers.

Based on learnings from four phases of a comprehensive evaluation, CTAC collaborated with DESE to develop a first-ever Teacher Recruitment and Retention Playbook featuring eight cornerstones: (1) Effective teacher recruitment and retention requires the support of a state system; (2) Statewide campaigns are needed to elevate the teaching profession; (3) Effective teacher recruitment and retention requires collaboration and constituency building; (4) Funding is essential and must be targeted; (5) The tools of public policy need to be used strategically; (6) Funding and policy choices trigger decisions related to teacher development; (7) A state system needs to recognize the critical importance of teacher voice; and (8) Teacher retention requires the alignment of three factors: recruitment, development, and compensation.

These eight cornerstones are the foundations of a system that ensures a supply of new teachers coming into the profession and the retention of high-quality teachers. As research confirms, high-quality teachers are the most important school-level variable in student achievement; therefore, supporting teachers is the best investment a state can make in its future citizens and workforce.