Giving Compass' Take:

• McDowell County schools in West Virginia are facing chronic teacher shortages and turnover, creating a challenge for district leaders to improve academic achievement without workforce stability. 

• How would community support and parent engagement help the McDowell County schools? What are ways that education philanthropists can get involved from a funding standpoint? 

• Read about the harmful effects of teacher turnover on students. 


Principal Kristy East’s days are grueling, but they’re not an anomaly. To be an educator in McDowell County requires a level of dedication and selflessness that few people can muster, resulting in chronic teacher shortages and high turnover.

If we had roads and highway systems, if we had sewers and water systems, if we had amenities for young people to come in and do, I think they would be more apt to stay. I had one text me the other day saying, ‘I wish I was back there, but I just can’t do it. I have two kids, I don’t have childcare.

The county has 254 teachers; according to district administrators, it needs about 25 more, to fill vacancies in special education, elementary education, math, science and the arts. Instead, McDowell averages losing about a dozen teachers a year — a number that can include up to nearly half its new teachers — perpetuating the gap.

Another 25 teachers — 10 percent of its workforce — are eligible to retire and could leave at any time. McDowell superintendent Nelson Spencer says the constant churn of teachers is one reason the district remains in the basement, ranking last among the state’s 55 school districts.

Read the full article on McDowell schools by Peggy Barmore at The Hechinger Report