Teacher recruitment and mobility: evidence from four-day school week adoption

• In Event: Comparing the Old with the New: Exploring 4DSW Adoption and its Effects on Teachers and Staffing

Abstract

In the face of worsening teacher shortages across the nation, many school districts have implemented a unique solution to attract and retain effective teachers: switching from the traditional five-day school week to a four-day school week (4DSW). I provide early evidence on the effect of 4DSW adoption on teacher mobility and recruitment using teacher-level administrative data from Texas following over 300,000 teachers per year for a 15 year period. By tracking the workplace of each teacher during each year, I estimate a set of unique measures of teacher recruitment, including annual flows of teachers between each district and the composition of recruited cohorts of teachers, to study whether the 4DSW policy is an attractive amenity for teachers deciding where to work. I find limited evidence that the 4DSW is an effective teacher recruitment mechanism. 4DSW-adopting districts see no increase in net inflows of teachers after adopting the policy and appear no more successful at filling vacancies created by departing teachers. I find evidence of a retention effect of 2.87 fewer departures per year in adopting districts, including 1.92 fewer departures to other public school districts in Texas. 4DSW districts recruit slightly more experienced cohorts, driven by substitution away from hiring first-time teachers and towards hiring teachers from other public school districts. Finally, I use new anti-instrumental variables ("anit-IV") methods to estimate teacher willingness to pay for the 4DSW as a workplace amenity, providing evidence on whether teachers are willing to accept lower salaries in exchange for a four-day week. Results of this work are relevant for policymakers tasked with weighing the evidence on 4DSW effects on student well-being against the assumed benefits for teacher recruitment before adopting the policy.

Author

• Cade Lawson, Georgia State University
  Presenting Author