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How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement
Researchers and policymakers often assume that teacher turnover harms student achievement, but recent evidence calls into question this assumption. Using a unique identification strategy that employs grade-level turnover and two classes of fixed-effects models, this study estimates the effects of teacher turnover on over 1.1 million New York City 4th grade student observations over 10 years. The results indicate that students in grade-levels with higher turnover score lower in both ELA and math and that this effect is particularly strong in schools with more low-performing and black students. Moreover, the results suggest that there is a disruptive effect of turnover beyond changing the composition in teacher quality.
Keywords: Academic Achievement, Teacher Effectiveness, Teacher Turnover
Citation: Matthew Ronfeldt, Susanna Loeb, James Wyckoff (2012). How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement. CALDER Working Paper No. 70
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Education Level: K-12
Research Area: Personnel policies
Topic Area: Teacher labor markets