Teacher Turnover and Student Achievement

• In Event: 69.056 - Roundtable Session 31
  In Roundtable Session: 69.056-8 - Turnover in Schools: New Measures, New Contexts

Abstract

Recent literature examining the relationship between teacher quality and career paths has called into question the commonly held assumption that teacher turnover is harmful to student achievement. A number of studies have found that more effective teachers are more likely to stay in schools, while less effective teachers are more likely to leave, leading some to suggest that the effect of turnover on student achievement could even be beneficial. However, changes in average teacher effectiveness are not the only way that turnover can impact student achievement. Among other possibilities, teacher turnover may alter working conditions, including existing collaborations, or require resources be allocated to training new faculty. Thus, studies about the relationship between teacher quality and career paths provide only indirect evidence for the net effect of teacher turnover on student achievement.

As such, this paper examines the relationship between teacher turnover and student achievement. It asks: What is the average effect of teacher turnover on student achievement? Are the effects different for different kinds of schools? What explains the relationship between teacher turnover and student achievement?

We draw on extensive administrative data from the New York City Department of Education and the New York State Education Department, including nearly 850,000 observations of 4th and 5th grade students across all New York City schools during an eight-year period, to link student test scores in math and ELA to student, class, school, and teacher characteristics. This, then, allows us to employ two classes of fixed-effects regression models to better estimate the direct effect of teacher turnover on student achievement. We use regression models with school-by-grade fixed effects to capitalize on the turnover variation across years within the same grade level and school. We also employ school-by-year fixed effects to capitalize on turnover variation across grades within the same year and school. All models control for prior student achievement, but we also control for other student, class, school, grade, and teacher characteristics depending on the analysis.

The findings indicate that teacher turnover has significant and negative effects on student test scores in math and ELA. Students in years (or grade-levels) with higher turnover score lower in both ELA and math and the effects are particularly strong in schools with more low-performing and Black students. Moreover, students of teachers who do not turn over do worse in years (or grades) when more colleagues of the staying teachers leave.

This paper provides some of the strongest evidence to date that teacher turnover has harmful average effects on student achievement, particularly in schools with more historically marginalized students. It also adds to our understanding of how – specifically, it demonstrates that turnover harms achievement not only by changing the distribution in teacher quality but also by causing a broader disruptive organizational influence. Though policies aiming to replace less effective teachers with more effective ones may have some benefit, these findings suggest they must also consider the possible negative consequences of the churn itself.

Authors

• Matthew Ronfeldt, University of Michigan

• Susanna Loeb, Stanford University

• James H. Wyckoff, University of Virginia