Teacher Turnover, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement in DCPS

NBER Working Paper No. 21922

Issued in January 2016

NBER Program(s):Children, Economics of Education



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.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w21922

Published: Melinda Adnot & Thomas Dee & Veronica Katz & James Wyckoff, 2017. "Teacher Turnover, Teacher Quality, and Student Achievement in DCPS," Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, vol 39(1), pages 54-76.

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