Race, poverty, and teacher mobility

Abstract

This paper provides new information about the interrelated issues of teacher turnover (both within and across school districts and inside and outside of teaching) and the importance of nonpecuniary school characteristics, such as race and poverty, using new administrative data on Georgia teachers and the elementary schools in which they teach. Simple descriptive statistics indicate that teachers are more likely to change schools if they begin their teaching careers in schools with lower student test scores, schools with lower income students, or schools that have higher proportions of minority students. A linear probability and a competing risks model of transitions out of first teaching jobs allow us to separate the importance of these highly correlated school characteristics.The estimates from the model imply that teachers are much more likely to exit schools with large proportions of minority students, and that the other univariate statistical relationships associated with student test scores and poverty rates are driven to a large extent by the correlations of these variables with the minority variable. Thus we find that, while the common notion that teachers are more likely to leave high poverty schools is correct, it occurs because teachers are more likely to leave a particular type of poor school -that which has a large proportion of minority students.1

Education Research and Administrative Data

“…Feng, 2010), Georgia (Scafidi, Sjoquist and Stinebrickner, 2007), Kentucky , Michigan (Gershenson, 2012), York (Brewer, 1996), Texas , Washington (Theobald, 1990), Wisconsin (Imezeki, 2005); and internationally in Italy (Barbieri, Rossetti and Sestito, 2011), Norway , Sweden (Karbownik, 2014) and Venezuela (Ortega, 2010) 19 . The broad conclusion from these papers is that school quality and working conditions matter for attracting and retaining teachers, particularly those of higher quality, but particular factors differ across sites in both whether they matter and how much they matter.…”

Doet onderwijssegregatie ertoe?

“…Er is een overvloed aan bewijs dat sommige vormen van onderwijssegregatie nadelig zijn voor kinderen, vooral als deze kinderen op een school zitten die over minder geld en voorzieningen beschikt, waar meer geweld plaatsvindt, en er om de haverklap een andere leerkracht voor de klas staat (Bakker et al, 2011;Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2006;Scafidi, Sjoquist, & Stinebrickner, 2007). Daarnaast is het een feit dat kinderen uit welgestelde en hoogopgeleide families over het algemeen beter op school presteren dan kinderen uit lagere sociaaleconomische milieus (Lareau, 2003;Reay, 2007;Roeleveld, Driessen, Ledoux, Cuppen, & Meijer, 2011).…”

A Look at Returning Teachers

“…There is ample evidence in the education literature that both prospective and practicing teachers make decisions that are consistent with this theory when considering whether to teacher (see, e.g., Dolton, 1990;Dolton & Makepeace, 1993;Hanushek & Pace, 1995;Manski, 1987;Podgursky, Monroe, & Watson, 2004;Shin & Moon, 2006;Stinebrickner, 2001) and where or whether to continue teaching (see, e.g., Borman & Dowling, 2008;Boyd, Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002;Guarino et al, 2006;Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004;Imazeki, 2005;Murnane & Olsen, 1989, 1990Scafidi, Sjoquist, & Stinebrickner, 2007;Stinebrickner, 1998Stinebrickner, , 2002. Teachers' personal and background characteristics, including gender, race/ethnicity, age, experience, education level, certification status, subject specialty, and academic ability, have been found to affect individuals' decisions both to enter teaching and to remain in particular schools or in the profession (see Borman & Dowling, 2008;Guarino et al, 2006 for reviews).…”