In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large, positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Employing a quasi-experimental design based on data from the first year years of IMPACT, we find that, on average, DCPS replaced teachers who left with teachers who increased student achievement by 0.08 SD in math. When we isolate the effects of lower-performing teachers who were induced to leave DCPS for poor performance, we find that student achievement improves by larger and statistically significant amounts (i.e., 0.14 SD in reading and 0.21 SD in math). In contrast, the effect of exits by teachers not sanctioned under IMPACT is typically negative but not statistically significant.
In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large, positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Employing a quasi-experimental design based on data from the first year years of IMPACT, we find that, on average, DCPS replaced teachers who left with teachers who increased student achievement by 0.08 SD in math. When we isolate the effects of lower-performing teachers who were induced to leave DCPS for poor performance, we find that student achievement improves by larger and statistically significant amounts (i.e., 0.14 SD in reading and 0.21 SD in math). In contrast, the effect of exits by teachers not sanctioned under IMPACT is typically negative but not statistically significant.
I dedicate this dissertation to my many families who have offered me so much support through this process-my biological family, my academic family, and my friends. I especially thank Charles for his love and patience this past year. I could not have done this without you. vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am immensely grateful to my advisor, Jim Wyckoff, for the excellent advising and endless patience he provided while I wrote this dissertation and over the past five years. For co-leading our DCPS research project and his sage advice, I am also very grateful to Tom Dee. I also thank my dissertation committee, Ben Castleman, Julie Cohen, and Bridget Hamre for their feedback and support during the dissertation process, and Allison Atteberry, Matt Kraft, and Roddy Theobald for helpful comments and suggestions on previous drafts of this work. I would also like to thank the District of Columbia Public Schools for providing data used in this dissertation, and Scott Thompson, Kim Levengood, Luke Hostetter, Alden Wells and Austin Zentz of DCPS for answering questions about the data and about IMPACT. I also use data from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project, and I appreciate the work done by the original MET researchers and staff at ICPSR as well.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.