Left at a Crossroad: Teacher Attrition and Moving Behavior in Indiana Fourth- Through Eighth-Grade Classrooms

• In Event: Park Central Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: The Teacher Experience of School Climate and Culture

Abstract

In addressing sources of inequality across state contexts, the problem of teacher attrition and turnover is increasingly attracting the attention of school leaders, policy makers, and education researchers. In this paper, we test whether student demographic and prior achievement characteristics predict teacher attrition and moving behavior in Indiana 4th through 8th grade classrooms from 2010 to 2014 using a recently compiled, large-scale administrative data set. We find that important indicators of school climate manifest themselves within an individual teacher’s classroom net of school level demographic characteristics, and make a significant difference in a teacher’s probability to leave. This finding adds to our understanding of how forces of school climate operate on teachers’ propensity to leave at different organizational levels.

Authors

• Patrick Graff, University of Notre Dame

• Brian Fitzpatrick, University of Notre Dame