The heterogeneous effects of teacher turnover on student achievement: Evidence from a centralized teacher allocation system

This paper contributes to the literature on the effect of teacher turnover on student achievement. We study an educational system characterized by a centralized teacher allocation model and estimate the causal effects of teacher turnover on students’ exam scores. A small but statistically significant negative effect is found, which is mainly attributed to organizational disruption at the school level and seems to persist for up to two years. We find heterogeneous effects, with students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and with lower previous achievement being more negatively affected. We conclude that students in lower-achieving and socially disadvantaged schools are more exposed to teacher turnover, and this turnover penalizes these students more. We also find that it is the turnover among short-term contract teachers that drives the negative effects.