Teacher hiring and retention
The Effects of Economic Conditions on the Labor Market for Teachers
Prior research has found that economic downturns have positive effects on new teacher quality, but has not been able to determine the extent to which this relationship arises from a supply response (increased quantity or positive selection of teaching candidates) vs. a demand response (selection… more →
Information Frictions and Teacher Turnover
Many decentralized matching markets experience high rates of instability due to information frictions. This paper analyzes these frictions in a particularly unstable U.S. market, the labor market for first-year school teachers. We develop and estimate a dynamic, partial equilibrium model of… more →
A Profile of Career and Technical Education Teachers in the 21st Century
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThough Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers are pivotal to students’ academic and career outcomes, research describing CTE teachers remains scant. In this study, we use nationally-representative data to describe changes in the nation’s CTE teacher workforce during a period of… more →
Who becomes a teacher when entry requirements are reduced? An analysis of emergency licenses in Massachusetts
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe COVID-19 pandemic disrupted teacher candidates’ capacity to complete licensure requirements. In response, many states temporarily reduced professional entry requirements to prevent a pandemic-induced teacher shortage. Using mixed methods, we examine the role of the emergency teaching license… more →
Disparate Teacher Effects, Comparative Advantage, and Match Quality
Topics: MethodsDoes student-teacher match quality exist? Prior work has documented large disparities in teachers' impacts across student types but has not distinguished between sorting and causal effects as the drivers of these disparities. I propose a disparate value-added model and derive a novel measure of… more →
“Refining” Our Understanding of Early Career Teacher Skill Development: Evidence From Classroom Observations
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentNovice teachers improve substantially in their first years on the job, but we know remarkably little about the nature of this skill development. Using data from Tennessee, we leverage a feature of the classroom observation protocol that asks school administrators to identify an item on which the… more →
OK Boomer: Generational Differences in Teacher Quality
We document that recent generations of elementary school teachers are significantly more effective in raising student test scores than those from earlier generations. Measuring teachers’ value-added for Black and white students separately, the improvements in teaching for Black students are… more →
Investigating the “Draw of Home” and Teachers’ Career Decisions
Research shows that teachers seek out jobs close to home, but previous studies have been unable to test whether proximity to home is related to retention in the teaching profession. We leverage a unique dataset from Teach For America (TFA) linking individuals’ preferred teaching locations,… more →
Follow the Leader: Principal Characteristics and Teachers’ Labor Market Decisions
Amid heightened concerns of teacher shortages, we document the role of principals in shaping teachers’ labor market decisions. Using teacher transfer applications from a large urban school district, we find that teachers are most likely to seek transfer away from schools with less-experienced… more →
Should I Stay or Should I Go (Later)? Teacher Intentions and Turnover in Low-Performing Schools and Districts Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeacher turnover is a perennial concern that became more salient during the COVID-19 pandemic as teacher-reported intentions to leave teaching escalated. The extent to which these teacher reports may translate into actual turnover remains an open question—especially given the pandemic context.… more →
Breaking Bad/GoodPatterns and Consequences of Public School Teachers’ Multiple Jobholding
Stagnating teacher salaries and the widening gap between public school teachers and similar workers have led to growing concerns that teachers will seek out additional employment—possibly impacting their instructional practice in the process. Using data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and… more →
Identification of Non-Additive Fixed Effects Models: Is the Return to Teacher Quality Homogeneous?
Topics: MethodsPanel or grouped data are often used to allow for unobserved individual heterogeneity in econometric models via fixed effects. In this paper, we discuss identification of a panel data model in which the unobserved heterogeneity both enters additively and interacts with treatment variables. We… more →
Revolving School Doors? A Longitudinal Examination of Teacher, Administrator and Staff Contributions to School Churn
Non-teaching staff comprise over half of all school employees and their turnover may be consequential for school operation, culture, and student success, yet we lack evidence documenting their attrition. We use 11 years of administrative data from Oregon to examine mobility and exit among… more →
Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentEfforts to attract and retain effective educators in high poverty public schools have had limited success. Dallas ISD addressed this challenge by using information produced by its evaluation and compensation reforms as the basis for effectiveness-adjusted payments that provided large… more →
Teacher Turnover During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Teachers' levels of stress and burnout have been high throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, raising concerns about a potential increase in teacher turnover and future teacher shortages. We examine how the COVID-19 pandemic affected teacher turnover in Arkansas from 2018-19 to 2022-23 using… more →
Uncovering the sources of gender wage gaps among teachers: The role of compensation off the salary schedule
Public teacher compensation is largely determined by fixed salary schedules that were designed to avoid payment inequalities based on demographic characteristics. Yet, recent research shows female teachers earn less than their male peers after controlling for experience, education, and school… more →
Teacher Retention in Early College High Schools and Texas STEM Academies: Understanding the Positive Impacts of College and Career Readiness School Models
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentA stable learning environment is critical to high school reforms aimed at promoting postsecondary educational success. High teacher attrition can disrupt stable learning environments by uprooting student-teacher relationships and harming school climate. Educational leaders need greater… more →
A Bad Commute: Does Travel Time to Work Predict Teacher and Leader Turnover and Other Workplace Outcomes?
Research suggests that longer commute times can increase employee turnover probabilities by increasing job stress and reducing job attachment and embeddedness. Using administrative data from a midsized urban school district, we test whether teachers and school leaders with longer commute times… more →
Teacher Shortages: A Framework for Understanding and Predicting Vacancies
We develop a unifying conceptual framework for understanding and predicting teacher shortages at the state, region, district, and school levels. We then generate and test hypotheses about geographic and subject variation in teacher shortages using data on unfilled teaching positions in Tennessee… more →
Preferences, Inequities, and Incentives in the Substitute Teacher Labor Market
We examine the labor supply decisions of substitute teachers – a large, on-demand market with broad shortages and inequitable supply. In 2018, Chicago Public Schools implemented a targeted bonus program designed to reduce unfilled teacher absences in largely segregated Black… more →