Working Paper: NBER ID: w14022
Authors: Donald Boyd; Pam Grossman; Hamilton Lankford; Susanna Loeb; James Wyckoff
Abstract: Almost a quarter of entering public-school teachers leave teaching within their first three years. High attrition would be particularly problematic if those leaving were the more able teachers. The goal of this paper is estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement. Using data for New York City schools from 2000-2005, we find that first-year teachers whom we identify as less effective at improving student test scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers in both low-achieving and high-achieving schools. The first-year differences are meaningful in size; however, the pattern is not consistent for teachers in their second and third years. For teachers leaving low-performing schools, the more effective transfers tend to move to higher achieving schools, while less effective transfers stay in lower-performing schools, likely exacerbating the differences across students in the opportunities they have to learn.
Keywords: teacher attrition; student achievement; value-added; New York City
JEL Codes: I21; J24
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| less effective teachers (I24) | higher attrition rates (D29) |
| more effective teachers (A21) | transfer to higher-achieving schools (I23) |
| less effective teachers (I24) | remain in lower-performing schools (I24) |
| teacher effectiveness (A21) | attrition (J63) |