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Teacher hiring and retention
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 →
The Rise and Fall of the Teaching Profession: Prestige, Interest, Preparation, and Satisfaction over the Last Half Century
We examine the state of the U.S. K-12 teaching profession over the last half century by compiling nationally representative time-series data on four interrelated constructs: occupational prestige, interest among students, the number of individuals preparing for entry, and on-the-job satisfaction… more →
The Effects of High-performing, High-turnover Teachers on Long-run Student Achievement: Evidence from Teach For America
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentAn increasing share of new teachers enter the profession through alternative certification programs. While these programs increase teacher supply in areas facing critical shortages, they also increase instability in local teacher labor markets via high teacher turnover. A fundamental question is… more →
School Segregation, Teacher Sorting, and the Distribution of Teachers
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceThe distribution of teaching effectiveness across schools is fundamental to understanding how schools can address disparities in educational outcomes. Research and policy have recognized the importance of teaching effectiveness for decades. Five stylized facts predict that teachers should be… more →
Can a Commercial Screening Tool Help Select Better Teachers?
Improving teacher selection is an important strategy for strengthening the quality of the teacher workforce. As districts adopt commercial teacher screening tools, evidence is needed to understand these tools’ predictive validity. We examine the relationship between Frontline Education’s… more →
Blurred Boundaries: A Day in the Life of a Teacher
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe burnout, stress, and work-life balance challenges faced by teachers have received renewed interest due to the myriad disruptions and changes to K-12 schooling brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, even prior to the pandemic relatively little was known about teachers’ time use… more →
Is there a national teacher shortage? A systematic examination of reports of teacher shortages in the United States
Teachers are critical to student learning, but adequately staffing classrooms has been challenging in many parts of the country. Even though teacher shortages are being reported across the U.S., teacher shortages are poorly understood. Determining and addressing teacher shortages is difficult… more →
Screening with Multitasking: Theory and Empirical Evidence from Teacher Tenure Reform
What happens when employers screen their employees but only observe a subset of output? We specify a model with heterogeneous employees and show that their response to the screening affects output in both the probationary period and the post-probationary period. The post-probationary impact is… more →
Out of the Gate, but Not Necessarily Teaching: A Descriptive Portrait of Early-Career Earnings for Those Who Are Credentialed to Teach
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentPrior work on teacher candidates in Washington State has shown that about two thirds of individuals who trained to become teachers between 2005 and 2015 and received a teaching credential did not enter the state’s public teaching workforce immediately after graduation, while about one third… more →
Changes in Teachers’ Mobility and Attrition in Arkansas During the First Two Years of the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has been a trying period for teachers. Teachers had to adapt to unexpected conditions, teaching in unprecedented ways. As a result, teachers' levels of stress and burnout have been high throughout the pandemic, raising concerns about a potential increase in… more →