How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement
By Matthew Ronfeldt, Susanna Loeb, J. Wyckoff. 2011
1,446 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Researchers and policymakers often assume that teacher turnover harms student achievement, though recent studies suggest this may not be the case. Using a unique identification strategy that employs school-by-grade level turnover and two classes of fixed-effects models, this study estimates the effects of teacher turnover on over 850,000 New York City fourth- and fifth-grade student observations over 8 years. The results indicate that students in grade levels with higher turnover score lower in both English language arts (ELA) and math and that these effects are 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 distribution in teacher quality.
Subfields: Education
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/f5a0219ca4009a1ab7b41704b33f28dac8bdb10d
How researchers see this paper
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In Education
- Matthew Ronfeldt
- William H. Marinell
- Lucy C. Sorensen
- Dimitri Van Maele
- Y. Goddard
- J. Papay
- M. Van Houtte
- Matthew D. Hendricks
Citations in the corpus
- Teacher and school determinants of teacher job satisfaction: a multilevel analysis (2020, background): “Teacher attrition and teacher turnover have been found to negatively affect student academic achievement, in part because teachers with higher qualifications are more likely to leave the profession (Clotfelter et al., 2007; Ronfeldt et al., 2013).”
- The Impact of Preservice Preparation and Early Career Support on Novice Teachers’ Career Intentions and Decisions (2013, positive): “They concluded that “though there may be cases where turnover is actually helpful to student achievement, on average, it is harmful” (Ronfeldt et al., 2011, p. 18).”
- Does New Teacher Induction Really Improve Retention? (2017, background): “In a recent study, for example, Ronfeldt, Loeb, and Wyckoff (2013) found some of the strongest evidence to date for a direct, harmful effect of teacher turnover on the mathematics and reading achievement of elementary students.”