Should I Stay, or Should I Go? Differential Responses to Base Salary Increases

• In Event: Saturday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Policy Futures for K–12 and Higher Education: Advancing Policy and Broadening Participation (Table 34)

Abstract

Studies have examined the extent to which teacher turnover is influenced by salary changes; however, less is known about the heterogeneity of salary effects by teacher characteristics. The goal of this study is to leverage plausibly exogenous salary changes to identify the extent to which current and future additional salary reduces teacher turnover and to investigate if these effects are heterogeneous across teacher characteristics, including special education teaching endorsements and education level. We find that a 10% increase in salary is associated with a 1.6 percentage point decrease in turnover among general education teachers and a 3.4 percentage point decrease in turnover among special education teachers. These point estimates are statistically different from each other at the 5 percent level.

Authors

• Christopher A. Candelaria, Vanderbilt University

• Liliane Nienstedt, Vanderbilt University

• Emily K. Penner, University of California - Irvine

• Aaron J. Ainsworth, University of California - Irvine