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Teacher hiring and retention
Teacher Turnover in Early Childhood Education: Longitudinal Evidence from the Universe of Publicly-Funded Programs in Louisiana
This paper provides a longitudinal examination of teacher turnover across all publicly-funded, center-based early childhood sites in Louisiana. We follow 4,465 early educators teaching in fall 2016 up to seven times through the fall of 2019. We provide the first statewide estimates of within-… more →
Disappearing Diversity and the Probability of Hiring a Nonwhite Teacher: Evidence from Texas
This study investigates whether a principal’s likelihood of hiring a teacher of color is sensitive to the racial composition of students in the school. We used an administrative dataset from Texas including 59,157 principal observations and 662,997 teacher observations spanning 2000 to 2017 in… more →
Teacher Licensing, Teacher Supply, and Student Achievement: Nationwide Implementation of edTPA
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe debate on the stringency of licensure exams for prospective public school teachers is on-going, including the recent controversial roll-out of the educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA). We leverage the quasi-experimental setting of different adoption timing by states and analyze… more →
Heroes, Villains, or Something In Between? How “Right to Work” Policies Affect Teachers, Students, and Education Policymaking
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceAlthough the Janus v. AFCSME (2018) decision fundamentally changed the institutional context for U.S. teachers’ unions by placing all public school teachers in a “Right to Work” (RTW) framework, little research exists to conceptualize the effects of such policies that hinder… more →
Does Where Students Come From Affect Where Teachers Go?
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe show that fade out biases value-added estimates at the teacher-level. To do so, we use administrative data from North Carolina and show that teachers' value-added depend on the quality of the teacher that preceded them. Value-added estimators that control for fade out feature no such teacher-… more →
Identifying and Producing Effective Teachers
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeachers are among the most important school-provided determinants of student success. Effective teachers improve students’ test scores as well as their attendance, behavior, and earnings as adults. However, students do not enjoy equal access to effective teachers. This article reviews some of… more →
Building Experience and Retention: The influence of principal tenure on teacher retention rates
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThis study investigates the influence of principal tenure on the retention rates of the teachers they hire over time. We analyzed the hiring practices and teacher retention rates of 11,717 Texas principals from 1999 to 2017 employing both individual and year fixed effects. Main findings indicate… more →
The Three R’s of Teacher Pension Funding: Redistribution, Return, and Risk
How are teacher pension benefits funded? Under traditional plans, the full cost of a career teacher’s benefits far exceeds the contributions designated for them. The gap between the two has three pieces, which may (with some license) be mnemonically tagged the three R’… more →
Rent-Seeking through Collective Bargaining: Teachers Unions and Education Production
We explore how teachers unions affect education production by comparing outcomes between districts allocating new tax revenue amidst collective bargaining negotiations and districts allocating tax revenue well before. Districts facing union pressure increase teacher salaries and benefits, spend… more →
Regulatory Arbitrage in Teacher Hiring and Retention: Evidence from Massachusetts Charter Schools
We study personnel flexibility in charter schools by exploring how teacher retention varies with teacher and school quality in Massachusetts. Charters are more likely to lose their highest and lowest value-added teachers. Low performers tend to exit public education, while high performers tend… more →
Teacher-to-classroom assignment and student achievement
We study the effects of counterfactual teacher-to-classroom assignments on average student achievement in elementary and middle schools in the US. We use the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) experiment to semiparametrically identify the average reallocation effects (AREs) of such assignments… more →
Pre-Service Teacher Quality and Workforce Entry
Using rich longitudinal data from one of the largest teacher education programs in Texas, we examine the measurement of pre-service teacher (PST) quality and its relationship with entry into the K–12 public school teacher workforce. Drawing on rubric-based observations of PSTs during clinical… more →
More Than Shortages: The Unequal Distribution of Substitute Teaching
Classroom teachers in the US are absent on average approximately six percent of a school year. Despite the prevalence of teacher absences, surprisingly little research has assessed the key source of replacement instruction: substitute teachers. Using detailed administrative and survey data from… more →
Year-Round School Calendars: Effects on Summer Learning, Achievement, Parents, Teachers, and Property Values
Year-round school calendars take the usual 175-180 instruction days of the school year and redistribute them, replacing the usual schedule – nine months on, three months off – with a more “balanced” schedule of short instruction periods alternating with shorter breaks across all four seasons of… more →
Preferences, Selection, and the Structure of Teacher Pay
Human-capital formation in school depends largely on the selection and retention of teachers. I conduct a discrete-choice experiment with responses linked to administrative teacher and student records to examine teacher preferences for compensation structure and working conditions. I calculate… more →
Testing, Teacher Turnover and the Distribution of Teachers Across Grades and Schools
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTeacher turnover has adverse consequences for student achievement and imposes large financial costs for schools. Some have argued that high-stakes testing may lower teachers’ satisfaction with their jobs and could be a major contributor to teacher attrition. In this paper, we exploit changes in… more →
The Unavoidable: Tomorrow's Teacher Compensation
States and localities cannot avoid dealing with issues of teacher compensation. Not only is it the largest budget item for most local governments, but it is the place of largest leverage for improving the quality of schools. Fortunately, consistent research evidence directly informs ways to… more →
The Teacher Residency: An Innovative Model for Preparing Teachers
Newly emerging teacher residency programs offer an innovative approach to recruiting and retaining high-quality teachers for hard-to-staff schools. This report summarizes the features of these programs and research about their practices and outcomes.
A Coming Crisis in Teaching? Teacher Supply, Demand, and Shortages in the U.S.
Recent media reports of teacher shortages across the country are confirmed by the analysis of several national data sets reported in this paper. Shortages are particularly severe in special education, mathematics, science, and bilingual/English learner education, and in locations with lower… more →
Teacher Turnover: Why It Matters and What We Can Do About It
Without changes in current policies, U.S. teacher shortages are projected to grow in the coming years. Teacher turnover is an important source of these shortages. About 8% of teachers leave the profession each year, two-thirds of them for reasons other than retirement. Another 8% shift to… more →