Teacher Turnover, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement in DCPS

Abstract

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.

New Evidence on the Frequency of Teacher Turnover: Accounting for Within-Year Turnover

“…However, this finding suggests that the timing of when teachers receive their performance evaluations may be consequential. Although administrators share signals of teachers’ performance throughout the school year, summative evaluation scores that include value-added scores for many teachers—which are often not available until the subsequent school year (Goldring et al, 2015)—are related to both job satisfaction and retention (Adnot et al, 2016; Cullen et al, 2017; Koedel, Li, Springer, & Tan, 2018). The extent to which the delayed provision of performance ratings spurs within-year turnover is an important topic in understanding how recent changes in educator evaluation systems incentivize teacher turnover in ways that may be disadvantageous for students and if more timely release of evaluation scores may reduce within-year turnover.…”

“…Finally, it is possible that teacher exits during the school year—whether teacher- or administrator-initiated—could be beneficial for student performance and school morale if the teacher had extremely poor performance prior to her or his exit. Recent evidence suggests that inducing the lowest performing teachers to exit can be beneficial to the composition of the teaching workforce and student achievement (Adnot, Dee, Katz, & Wyckoff, 2016; Cullen, Koedel, & Parsons, 2017). The diversity of within-year teacher turnover makes it difficult to ascertain the appropriate level as well as the full costs and benefits this type of turnover poses to school systems.…”

The Impact of Performance Ratings on Job Satisfaction for Public School Teachers

“…There are a number of potential theories of action that underlie the move toward more differentiated teacher ratings in Tennessee and elsewhere. It may be a primary objective to generate differential satisfaction between more and less effective teachers, perhaps with the longer-term goal of influencing attrition and thus workforce composition in a way that improves student achievement (Adnot, Dee, Katz, & Wyckoff, 2016; Kraft, 2015; The New Teacher Project, 2012). In this case, given the strong link between job satisfaction and retention established in previous research (Ingersoll, 2001; Stockard & Lehman, 2004), our findings are consistent with progress in Tennessee on this objective (subject to the local interpretation of the estimates, which we discuss in the next paragraph).…”

Teacher Coaching in a Simulated Environment

“…In some cases, these policies have improved teacher and student outcomes, but many still enter the profession under prepared. Moreover, many teachers who could improve with induction support leave the profession before they have time to develop (Adnot et al, 2017; Smith & Ingersoll, 2004).…”