Do school location and demographics of the students make it difficult for administrators to recruit and hire teachers?
Many assume that hard-to-staff schools are hard to staff because teachers do not want to teach at schools with a high percentage of low-income or minority students. In “Defining and Identifying Hard-to-Staff Schools: The Role of School Demographics and Conditions,” Darlene Opfer concluded that demographics do not play a substantial role. She wrote,
The analyses showed that school demographics such as poverty, student ethnicity, and school location are not predictive of difficulty in hiring in general. School conditions such as central office help in hiring are more important than the demographic characteristics typically associated with a school being hard-to-staff.
In other words, blame the school bureaucracy, not the kids.
