IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/17176.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement

Author

Listed:
  • Matthew Ronfeldt
  • Hamilton Lankford
  • Susanna Loeb
  • James Wyckoff

Abstract

Researchers and policymakers often assume that teacher turnover harms student achievement, but recent evidence calls into question this assumption. Using a unique identification strategy that employs grade-level turnover and two classes of fixed-effects models, this study estimates the effects of teacher turnover on over 600,000 New York City 4th and 5th grade student observations over 5 years. The results indicate that students in grade-levels with higher turnover score lower in both ELA and math and that this effect is particularly strong in schools with more low-performing and black students. Moreover, the results suggest that there is a disruptive effect of turnover beyond changing the composition in teacher quality.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthew Ronfeldt & Hamilton Lankford & Susanna Loeb & James Wyckoff, 2011. "How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement," NBER Working Papers 17176, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17176
    Note: ED
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w17176.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Eric A. Hanushek & EJohn F. Kain & Steven G. Rivkin, 2004. "Why Public Schools Lose Teachers," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 39(2).
    2. Eric Hanushek & Steven Rivkin, "undated". "Constrained Job Matching: Does Teacher Job Search Harm Disadvantaged Urban Schools?," Discussion Papers 09-011, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    3. Donald Boyd & Hamilton Lankford & Susanna Loeb & James Wyckoff, 2005. "Explaining the Short Careers of High-Achieving Teachers in Schools with Low-Performing Students," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 166-171, May.
    4. Eric A. Hanushek & John F. Kain & Steven G. Rivkin, 1999. "Do Higher Salaries Buy Better Teachers?," NBER Working Papers 7082, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cory Koedel & Jiaxi Li, 2016. "The Efficiency Implications Of Using Proportional Evaluations To Shape The Teaching Workforce," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 34(1), pages 47-62, January.
    2. Cory Koedel & Michael Podgursky & Shishan Shi, 2013. "Teacher Pension Systems, the Composition of the Teaching Workforce, and Teacher Quality," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 32(3), pages 574-596, June.
    3. Boyd, Donald & Grossman, Pamela & Ing, Marsha & Lankford, Hamilton & Loeb, Susanna & O’Brien, Rachel & Wyckoff, James, 2011. "The effectiveness and retention of teachers with prior career experience," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1229-1241.
    4. Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2011. "The Long-Term Impacts of Teachers: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood," NBER Working Papers 17699, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. John P. Papay & Martin R. West & Jon B. Fullerton & Thomas J. Kane, 2011. "Does Practice-Based Teacher Preparation Increase Student Achievement? Early Evidence from the Boston Teacher Residency," NBER Working Papers 17646, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. D. Mark Anderson & Mary Beth Walker, 2015. "Does Shortening the School Week Impact Student Performance? Evidence from the Four-Day School Week," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 10(3), pages 314-349, July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Marine de Talancé, 2015. "Better Teachers, Better Results? Evidence from Rural Pakistan," Working Papers DT/2015/21, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    2. Barbieri, Gianna & Rossetti, Claudio & Sestito, Paolo, 2011. "The determinants of teacher mobility: Evidence using Italian teachers’ transfer applications," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(6), pages 1430-1444.
    3. Li Feng & Tim R. Sass, 2017. "Teacher Quality and Teacher Mobility," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 12(3), pages 396-418, Summer.
    4. Eric Isenberg & Jeffrey Max & Philip Gleason & Matthew Johnson & Jonah Deutsch & Michael Hansen, "undated". "Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to Effective Teachers? Evidence from 26 Districts (Final Report)," Mathematica Policy Research Reports ce9ae6b49ff34e388113f31ca, Mathematica Policy Research.
    5. Dan Goldhaber & Cyrus Grout, 2016. "Pension Choices and the Savings Patterns of Public School Teachers," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 11(4), pages 449-481, Fall.
    6. Kuenga Choden, 2019. "An ordered probit model on quitting decision of secondary public school teachers in Bhutan," Journal of Administrative and Business Studies, Professor Dr. Usman Raja, vol. 5(2), pages 65-78.
    7. Cowen, Joshua M. & Butler, J.S. & Fowles, Jacob & Streams, Megan E. & Toma, Eugenia F., 2012. "Teacher retention in Appalachian schools: Evidence from Kentucky," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(4), pages 431-441.
    8. Feng, Li & Figlio, David & Sass, Tim, 2018. "School accountability and teacher mobility," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 1-17.
    9. Gibbons, Stephen & Scrutinio, Vincenzo & Telhaj, Shqiponja, 2021. "Teacher turnover: Effects, mechanisms and organisational responses," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).
    10. Stefan C. Wolter & Stefan Denzler, 2004. "Wage elasticity of the teacher supply in Switzerland," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 47(3-4), pages 387-408.
    11. Brutti, Zelda & Sánchez Torres, Fabio, 2022. "Turning around teacher quality in Latin America: Renewed confidence and lessons from Colombia," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 62-93.
    12. Guarino, Cassandra M. & Brown, Abigail B. & Wyse, Adam E., 2011. "Can districts keep good teachers in the schools that need them most?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(5), pages 962-979, October.
    13. Player, Daniel, 2009. "Monetary returns to academic ability in the public teacher labor market," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(2), pages 277-285, April.
    14. Chaohai Shen & Tong Sheng & Xingheng Shi & Bingquan Fang & Xiaoqian Lu & Xiaolan Zhou, 2022. "The Relationship between Housing Price, Teacher Salary Improvement, and Sustainable Regional Economic Development," Land, MDPI, vol. 11(12), pages 1-21, December.
    15. Ali Protik & Steven Glazerman & Julie Bruch & Bing-ru Teh, 2015. "Staffing a Low-Performing School: Behavioral Responses to Selective Teacher Transfer Incentives," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 10(4), pages 573-610, October.
    16. Hendrik Jürges & Wolfram F. Richter & Kerstin Schneider, 2005. "Teacher Quality and Incentives: Theoretical and Empirical Effects of Standards on Teacher Quality," FinanzArchiv: Public Finance Analysis, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 61(3), pages 298-326, November.
    17. Gibbons, Stephen & Scrutinio, Vincenzo & Telhaj, Shqiponja, 2018. "Teacher turnover: does it matter for pupil achievement?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 88681, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    18. Steele, Jennifer L. & Pepper, Matthew J. & Springer, Matthew G. & Lockwood, J.R., 2015. "The distribution and mobility of effective teachers: Evidence from a large, urban school district," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 86-101.
    19. Yi Wei & Sen Zhou & Yunbo Liu, 2020. "The draw of home: How does teacher’s initial job placement relate to teacher mobility in rural China?," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(1), pages 1-14, January.
    20. Feng, Li, 2005. "Hire Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Determinants of Attrition among Public School Teachers," MPRA Paper 589, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:17176. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.