Strategies for Longitudinal Analysis of the Career Paths of Beginning Teachers: Results From the First Through Fourth Waves of the 2007–08 Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study (NCES 2013-336)

To learn about the early career patterns of beginning teachers, NCES undertook the BTLS, which is a nationally representative longitudinal study of public school teachers who began teaching in 2007 or 2008. The BTLS provides researchers with the opportunity to examine the career paths of beginning teachers as well as factors that may influence those paths.

The purpose of this R&D report is to develop a strategy for the longitudinal analysis of the BTLS data that can be used to better understand teacher attrition, retention, and mobility. NCES may use this strategy to analyze and present data on all five years of the BTLS in their future reports. The R&D report has 3 research objectives: (1) define the concept of a career path for beginning teachers that can be implemented with all waves of the BTLS; (2) operationalize the assignment of a career path using this definition (i.e., examine methods for assigning career paths); and (3) investigate the best approach for analyzing the relationships between beginning teachers' career paths and selected teacher and school characteristics.