Many school districts experience difficulties attracting and retaining teachers, and the impending retirement of a substantial fraction of public school teachers raises the specter of sever shortages in some public schools. Schools in urban areas serving economically disadvantaged and minority students appear particularly vulnerable. This paper investigates those factors that affect the probabilities that teachers switch schools or exit the public schools entirely. The results indicate that teacher mobility is much more strongly related to characteristics of the students, particularly race and achievement, than to salary, although salary exerts a modest impact once compensating differentials are taken into account.
There are two main hypotheses for the decline in the aptitude of public school teachers since 1960: improved job opportunities for females in other occupations and the compression of teaching wages owing to unionization. Using data on several college graduating cohorts from 1961 to 1997, we investigate both hypotheses. To separate the hypotheses, we exploit the fact that states varied considerably in the progress of unionization and female wage parity. We proxy for a teacher's aptitude with the mean college aptitude of students at her undergraduate college. We identify the effects of unionization using laws that legalized and facilitated teachers' unionization. The evidence suggests that compression of teaching wages is responsible for about three-quarters of the decline in teacher aptitude. Females' opportunities in alternative occupations do matter, but opportunities improved rather similarly for females of all aptitudes. Although alternative occupations drew women out of teaching in general, they did not have a sufficiently disproportionate effect on high aptitude women to explain the bulk of the decline in teachers aptitude.
This paper examines teacher labor mobility within and out of the teaching profession. Previous studies of teacher mobility treat attrition as a binary choice where inter-district transfers are grouped with stayers or exits. Either case ignores the possibility that transfer attrition may be in.uenced by different factors than exit attrition. Using data for new teachers in Wisconsin, Iestimate separate hazard rates for transfers and exits. Transfers are found to respond most strongly when district salaries are increased relative to nearby districts. Salary increases for more experienced teachers may also reduce exit attrition among newer female teachers. Simulations suggest that fairly large salary increases are needed to reduce attrition out of Milwaukee down to the levels experienced by the average Wisconsin district.
This paper examines revealed parent preferences for their children's education using a unique data set that includes the number of parent requests for individual elementary school teachers along with information on teacher attributes including principal reports of teacher characteristics that are typically unobservable. We find that, on average, parents strongly prefer teachers that principals describe as good at promoting student satisfaction and place relatively less value on a teacher's ability to raise standardized math or reading achievement. These aggregate effects, however, mask striking differences across family demographics. Families in higher poverty schools strongly value student achievement and are essentially indifferent to the principal's report of a teacher's ability to promote student satisfaction. The results are reversed for families in higher-income schools.
This paper investigates the effects of California’s class size reduction program on teacher quality and student achievement in an effort to gain a comprehensive understanding of the impact of a large-scale decrease in class size. It uses year-to-year differences in class size generated by natural variation in enrollment and the state’s class size reduction program to identify both the direct effects of class size reduction and accompanying changes in teacher quality. The results show that, all else equal, smaller classes raise third-grade mathematics and reading achievement, particularly for lower-income students. However, the expansion of the teaching force required to staff the additional classrooms appears to have led to a deterioration in average teacher quality in schools serving a predominantly black student body. This deterioration partially or, in some cases, fully offset the benefits of smaller classes, demonstrating the importance of considering all implications of any policy change.
Applying the theory of yardstick competition to the schooling system, we show that it is optimal to have central tests of student achievement and to engage in benchmarking because it raises the quality of teaching. This is true even if teachers’ pay (defined in monetary terms) is not performance related. If teachers value reputation, and if teaching output is measured so that it becomes comparable, teachers will increase their effort. The theory is tested using the German PISA-E data. Our estimates suggest that, despite the flat career profile of German teachers, the quality of teaching tends to be higher in federal states with central exams.
This paper uses rich new data on New York State teachers to: determine how much variation in the average attributes of teachers exists across schools, identify schools that have the least-qualified teachers, assess whether the distribution has changed over time, and determine how the distribution of teachers is impacted by attrition and transfer, as well as by the job matches between teachers and schools at the start of careers. Our results show striking differences in the qualifications of teachers across schools. Urban schools, in particular, have lesser-qualified teachers; and New York City stands out among urban areas. Low-income, low-achieving and non-white students, particularly those in urban areas, find themselves in classes with many of the least skilled teachers. Salary variation rarely compensates for the apparent difficulties of teaching in urban settings and, in some cases, contributes to the disparities.
Proposals to use teachers' performance incentives have recently attracted considerable attention. However, there is very little experience with applying incentives in schools. This paper provides evidence on the causal effects of two programs: the first provided the school and its teachers with monetary performance incentives and the second with additional conventional resources. The assignment of schools to the two programs was not random; therefore, identification is a central issue in the empirical analysis. The empirical results suggest that schools' and teachers' group monetary incentives caused significant gains in many dimensions of students' outcomes. Endowing schools with more resources also led to improvement in student performance. However, the comparison based on cost equivalency suggests that the teachers' incentive intervention is much more cost effective.
Performance-related incentive pay for teachers is being introduced in many countries, but there is little evidence of its effects. This paper evaluates a rank-order tournament among teachers of English, Hebrew, and mathematics in Israel. Teachers were rewarded with cash bonuses for improving their students’ performance on high-school matriculation exams. Two identification strategies were used to estimate the program effects, a regression discontinuity design and propensity score matching. The regression discontinuity method exploits both a natural experiment stemming from measurement error in the assignment variable and a sharp discontinuity in the assignment-to-treatment variable. The results suggest that performance incentives have a significant effect on directly affected students with some minor spillover effects on untreated subjects. The improvements appear to derive from changes in teaching methods, after-school teaching, and increased responsiveness to students’ needs. The program appears to have been more cost-effective than school-group cash bonuses or extra instruction time and is as effective as cash bonuses for students.
This paper investigates how a policy that is aimed to increase the labor force attachment of older teachers affects their labor supply and absenteeism. The policy allows teachers older than 52 to reduce their working hours by 10% at the cost of a 3.5% salary reduction. When teachers turn 56 they can reduce their work load by another 10% at the same cost. This measure therefore introduces a change in teachers budget constraints the moment they turn 52 respectively 56. This paper uses cross-sectional and longitudinal variation to assess the effect of this policy on teachers labor supply and the subsequent effect on absenteeism.
Researchers using cross-sectional data have failed to produce systematic evidence that teacher salaries affect student outcomes. These studies generally do not account for non-pecuniary job attributes and alternative wage opportunities, which affect the opportunity cost of choosing to teach. When we employ the methodology used in previous studies, we replicate their results. However, once we adjust for labor market factors, we estimate that raising teacher wages by 10% reduces high school dropout rates by 3% to 4%. Our findings suggest that previous studies have failed to produce robust estimates because they lack adequate controls for non-wage aspects of teaching and market differences in alternative occupational opportunities.
The authors investigate how the labor market decisions of recent college graduates, new teachers, and employers affect the academic quality of the teaching workforce in public schools. They use a rich longitudinal data set of Missouri college graduates and public school teachers to examine the behavior of college graduates concerning an initial decision to secure certification and teach in a public school, and subsequent decisions as to whether to continue. They find that college graduates with above-average ACT scores tend not to select into teaching, however, the effect is most pronounced for elementary school teachers. At any level of academic achievement, women are far more likely than men to teach, however, the relative aversion of high-ability women to teaching is at least as great as that of men. High-ability men and women who do enter public school teaching are more likely to leave than their less talented counterparts. Examination of non-teaching earnings for exiting teachers finds little evidence that high-ability teachers are leaving for higher pay. The results also highlight very different mobility patterns by teaching field. For both men and women, the attrition of math and science teachers with high ACT scores is greater than in other teaching fields. Finally, peer group effects may be a factor explaining female exit behavior. Controlling for own ACT, high-ability women who work with low-ability colleagues are more likely to exit.
In this paper the authors use a variety of administrative data to analyze the labor force dynamics of new public school teachers in Missouri. They find little contemporary evidence that high ability women are crowded into teaching. The effect of ACT scores on teacher mobility is similar for men and women. While women are much more likely than men to teach at any level of ability, the aversion of high ability women to public school teaching is at least as great as that of men. High ability men and women who do enter public school teaching are more likely to leave than their less talented counterparts, but the estimated effect of ACT on the log exit hazard is very similar by gender. Examination of non-teaching earnings for exiting teachers finds little evidence that high-ability teachers are leaving for higher pay. The results also highlight very different mobility patterns by teaching field. For both men and women, the attrition of math and science teachers with high ACT scores is greater than in other teaching fields.
Teacher quality is widely believed to be important for education, despite little evidence that teachers' credentials matter for student achievement. To accurately measure variation in achievement due to teachers' characteristics-both observable and unobservable-it is essential to identify teacher fixed effects. Unlike previous studies, I use panel data to estimate teacher fixed effects while controlling for fixed student characteristics and classroom specific variables. I find large and statistically significant differences among teachers: a one standard deviation increase in teacher quality raises reading and math test scores by approximately .20 and .24 standard deviations, respectively, on a nationally standardized scale. In addition, teaching experience has statistically significant positive effects on reading test scores, controlling for fixed teacher quality.
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