The Compositional Effect of Rigorous Teacher Evaluation on Workforce Quality

Abstract

We study how the introduction of a rigorous teacher evaluation system in a large urban school district affects the quality composition of teacher turnovers. With the implementation of the new system, we document increased turnover among the least effective teachers and decreased turnover among the most effective teachers, relative to teachers in the middle of the distribution. Our findings demonstrate that the alignment between personnel decisions and teacher effectiveness can be improved through targeted personnel policies. However, the change in the composition of exiters brought on by the policy we study is too small to meaningfully impact student achievement.

Sorting Through Performance Evaluations: The Influence of Performance Evaluation Reform on Teacher Attrition and Mobility

“…Moreover, these results suggest that changes in turnover by teaching effectiveness induced by enhanced evaluation systems may be confined to urban district settings. This finding challenges the transferability of conclusions drawn from prior evidence from highly urban district settings (e.g., Cullen et al, 2019;Dee & Wyckoff, 2015;Sartain & Steinberg, 2016), as declines in turnover associated with highly effective teachers may be unlikely to occur in suburban or rural settings with a more restricted pool of teaching candidates, and potentially more limited job opportunities outside of teaching. A more limited teacher supply may present a challenge to administrator attempts to leverage the evaluation system to selectively staff their schools based on available performance measures.…”

“…A working paper by Cullen et al (2019) examined the impacts of a similar set of teacher evaluation reforms in Houston Independent School District (HISD). The study descriptively found that the implementation of the evaluation reforms was associated with a substantial increase in overall teacher exits from the district, but with greater increases in exits of teachers with lower value-added measures of teaching effectiveness.…”

“…We derive our primary results following an analytic strategy similar to Cullen et al (2019), who sought to estimate the change in selective teacher turnover and attrition associated with evaluation reforms within HISD. We use a series of linear probability models (LPM) specified as…”

“…Performance Evaluation Reform on Teacher Attrition and Mobility few compensation incentives to evaluation ratings), our findings suggest that states and districts can increase exits of low value-added instructors with relatively few substantial punitive measures or automatic dismissals. While these apparent impacts are somewhat smaller than those of more robust systems in urban labor markets like DC (Dee & Wyckoff, 2015) and HISD (Cullen et al, 2019), the changes in exit patterns associated with Tennessee's evaluation system are equivalent to other turnover studies such as Hanushek, Kain, and Rivkin's (2004) examination of teacher pay and reductions in the probability of school departure. In a recent study in Tennessee, Grissom and Bartanen (2019) also find similar magnitudes in estimated effects of high quality principals on the retention of high-value-added teachers.…”

Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Turnover in Equilibrium: Evidence From DC Public Schools

“…A couple of notable exceptions provide a foundation for our research, demonstrating that teacher evaluation can induce less effective teachers to disproportionately exit, raising the quality of teacher effectiveness (Cullen et al, 2019;Dee et al, 2019;Dee & Wyckoff, 2015;Sartain & Steinberg, 2016;Stecher et al, 2018). In a telling example, teacher evaluation reform in Houston increased low-performing teachers' voluntary exit by 6.2% (Cullen et al, 2019). When the average lowperforming teacher exited, student achievement improved by about 13% of a standard deviation (SD).…”