Has Who Comes Back Changed? A Longitudinal Analysis of Early Career Teacher Reentry (2000–2017)

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Abstract

Prior work on teacher reentry behavior using data from the 1970s-1990s suggests that gender and child-rearing responsibilities play a role in who exits and who returns to the classroom. I examine this topic with data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1997), focused on the years 2000-2017. Using survival analysis, I find that teachers who exited the classroom for at least one year were fairly unlikely to return to the classroom at a later point. In contrast to previous studies, I do not find evidence of a relationship between gender or child-rearing status and teacher reentry. I conclude that changes in the teacher labor market and broader changes in society may explain the differences between cohorts.

Author

• Anna Moyer, Vanderbilt University