Affect of Teacher Turnover on Students' Achievement PDF Print E-mail

3/22/12

In the article "Effectiveness and Efficiency Indicators for Texas Public Schools" in the December 2011 issue of theTASBO Report, Tom Canby reported on the relatively low teacher turnover rates observed in a majority of large urban Texas school districts recognized for outstanding performance by the Broad Foundation.  Teacher turnover rates ranged as high as 72% in the 1,030 school districts for school year 2009-2010, according to data reported by school districts to the Texas Education Agency.  

In today's Education Week blog Teacher Beat, Stephen Sawchuk reports on a recent study that focused on the affect of teacher turnover on students' achievement.  Stephen Sawchuk's blog "Teacher Turnover Affects All Students' Achievement, Study Indicates" cites the study "How teacher turnover harms student achievement" by University of Michigan's Matthew Ronfeldt, Stanford University's Susanna Loeb, and the University of Virginia's Jim Wyckoff.  The study was presented at a conference held by the Center for Longitudinal Data in Education Research.  The results of the study include: 

  • "Teacher turnover has a significant and negative impact on student achievement in both math and ELA. Moreover, teacher turnover is particularly harmful to the achievement of students in schools with large populations of low-performing and black students;
  • There may be a disruptive impact of turnover beyond compositional changes in teacher quality;
  • Turnover has a harmful effect on student achievement, even after controlling for different indicators of teacher quality, especially in lower-performing schools;
  • Turnover negatively affects the students of stayers – those who remain in the same school from one year to the next. Thus, turnover must have an impact beyond simply whether incoming teachers are better than those they replaced – even the teachers outside of this redistribution are somehow harmed by it; and 
  • Though there may be cases where turnover is actually helpful to student achievement, on average, it is harmful."

To access the December 2011 issue of the TASBO Report, click on the link below.

http://www.tasbo.org/files-public/publications/reportarchives/tasboreport_winter2011.pdf

To access the Education Week blog "Teacher Turnover Affects All Students' Achievement, Study Indicates" dated March 22, 2012, click on the link below.

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/teacherbeat/2012/03/when_teachers_leave_schools_ov.html