Kevin C. Bastian

Stayers and Leavers Early-Career Teacher Effectiveness and Attrition

Research on teacher development reports significant early-career increases in teacher effectiveness, but the extent to which this is attributable to the development of teachers who persist or to the attrition of less effective teachers is unclear. In this study of novice teachers in North Carolina public schools, the authors investigated the development of teachers’ effectiveness during their first five years in the classroom and contrasted the effectiveness of teachers who stayed with that of those who left. Across grade levels, teachers’ effectiveness increased significantly in their second year of teaching but flattened after three years. The teachers who left the profession were less effective, on average, than those who stayed at least five years, but this finding is somewhat less consistent than the findings of an initial jump in effectiveness and diminishing returns to on-the-job development.

The Effects of Experience and Attrition for Novice High-School Science and Mathematics Teachers

New Teacher Syndrome The employment retention of high-school science and math teachers in the United States has diminished over recent decades, such that now many students are being taught by novice teachers. Henry et al. (p. 1118) have analyzed the effectiveness of teachers by examining data collected from North Carolina public schools. Less-effective teachers seem to have a greater tendency to leave teaching and the greatest gains in teacher effectiveness are when the teacher is new—within the first 3 years on the job. Some subject areas are more likely to be affected by the preponderance of novice teachers than other subjects, including math and science. New teachers face a steep learning curve, and those who fall off tend to leave teaching. Because of the current high proportion of novice high-school teachers, many students’ mastery of science and mathematics depends on the effectiveness of early-career teachers. In this study, which used value-added models to analyze high-school teachers’ effectiveness in raising test scores on 1.05 million end-of-course exams, we found that the effectiveness of high-school science and mathematics teachers increased substantially with experience but exhibited diminishing rates of return by their fourth year; that teachers of algebra 1, algebra 2, biology, and physical science who continued to teach for at least 5 years were more effective as novice teachers than those who left the profession earlier; and that novice teachers of physics, chemistry, physical science, geometry, and biology exhibited steeper growth in effectiveness than did novice non–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teachers.

The Effects of Teacher Entry Portals on Student Achievement

The current teacher workforce is younger, less experienced, more likely to turnover, and more diverse in preparation experiences than the workforce of two decades ago. Research shows that inexperienced teachers are less effective, but we know little about the effectiveness of teachers with different types of preparation. In this study, we classify North Carolina public school teachers into portals—fixed and mutually exclusive categories that capture teachers’ formal preparation and qualifications upon first entering the profession—and estimate the adjusted average test score gains of students taught by teachers from each portal. Compared with undergraduate-prepared teachers from in-state public universities, (a) out-of-state undergraduate-prepared teachers are less effective in elementary grades and high school, (b) alternative entry teachers are less effective in high school, and (c) Teach For America corps members are more effective in STEM subjects and secondary grades.

Scholarships to Recruit the “Best and Brightest” Into Teaching Who Is Recruited, Where Do They Teach, How Effective Are They, and How Long Do They Stay?

Is a popular innovation for increasing human capital in the teaching profession—competitive college scholarships for teachers—effective? The authors show that one large and long-standing merit-based scholarship program (a) attracts teacher candidates who have high academic qualifications; (b) yields graduates who teach lower performing students, although not as challenging as the students of other beginning teachers; (c) produces teachers who raise high school and third- through eighth-grade mathematics test scores more than other traditionally prepared teachers do; and (d) produces teachers who stay in public school classrooms for 5 years or more at higher rates than alternative entry or other traditionally prepared teachers.

Teacher Preparation Policies and Their Effects on Student Achievement

State policies affect the qualifications of beginning teachers in numerous ways, including regulating entry requirements, providing incentives for graduate degrees, and subsidizing preparation programs at public universities. In this paper we assess how these policy choices affect student achievement, specifically comparing traditionally prepared with alternative-entry teachers; in-state traditionally prepared with out-of-state traditionally prepared teachers; teachers beginning with undergraduate degrees with those beginning with graduate degrees; and teachers prepared at in-state public universities with those prepared at in-state private universities. Using school fixed effects to analyze data from North Carolina, we find that: Teach For America corps members are more effective than traditionally prepared teachers; other alternative-entry teachers are less effective than traditionally prepared instructors in high school mathematics and science courses; and out-of-state traditionally prepared teachers are less effective than in-state traditionally prepared teachers, especially in elementary subjects where they constitute nearly 40 percent of the workforce.

The Apprentice Pathways to the Principalship and Student Achievement

Background: Nascent empirical research demonstrates the sizable impacts of principals on student achievement. More research is needed on the pathways to the principalship and how principals’ characteristics and training experiences influence their performance. Purpose: (1) To describe the characteristics of first-time principals and the schools that hire them and (2) to assess the extent to which the characteristics of early-career principals and the environments in which they previously worked are associated with changes in student achievement in the schools they lead. Setting: North Carolina public schools. Sample: All first-time principals (981 in total) from 2006-2007 through 2009-2010 and the students attending the schools where they serve. Data: Administrative data on students, school personnel (teachers, assistant principals, principals), and schools provided by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction. Research Methods: Covariate adjustment and fixed effects value-added models. Findings: We find that first-time principals are “homegrown”—hired from within the district. On average, first-time principals wait 5.12 years between completing formal principal preparation and assuming school leadership and spend 4.15 years as assistant principals in North Carolina public schools. Several principal characteristics, including holding a doctorate from an in-state private or out-of-state institution (negative) and serving as an assistant principal in a high–value-added school (positive), are significantly associated with student achievement gains. Conclusions: This study suggests that the effectiveness of early-career principals may be affected by the environment where they served as assistant principals. Further analyses are needed to better understand the attributes of meaningful assistant principal experiences.

Incorporating Access to More Effective Teachers into Assessments of Educational Resource Equity

To address gaps in achievement between more- and less-affluent students, states and districts need to ensure that high-poverty students and schools have equitable access to educational resources. Traditionally, assessments of resource equity have focused on per-pupil expenditures and more proximal inputs, such as teacher credentials and class size, despite the inconsistent and/or weak relationships between these measures and student performance. Given the sizable and direct effects of teachers on student achievement, we argue that (1) teachers’ value-added scores should be incorporated into assessments of resource equity and (2) providing schools with greater flexibility for setting salaries or using strategic staffing initiatives may be necessary to achieve an equitable distribution of effective teachers. To illustrate these assertions we incorporate teacher value added into a case study of resource allocation in the public high schools of Wayne County, North Carolina, which have been the target of a complaint by the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

Teachers Without Borders Consequences of Teacher Labor Force Mobility

Many states have responded to teacher shortages by granting certification to individuals traditionally prepared out-of-state; now, out-of-state prepared teachers comprise a sizable percentage of the teacher workforce in many states. We know little about these teachers, and therefore, in the present study, we estimate the effectiveness of out-of-state prepared teachers in North Carolina elementary schools. We find that out-of-state prepared teachers are significantly less effective than in-state prepared and alternative entry teachers; however, there is a substantial overlap in the distributions of effectiveness across groups. Upon testing hypotheses to explain these findings, results indicate that differences in human capital help explain out-of-state prepared teachers’ underperformance and suggest the utility of research evidence to inform state policy and local hiring decisions.

A Temperament for Teaching? Associations Between Personality Traits and Beginning Teacher Performance and Retention:

The “greening” (i.e., inexperience) of the U.S. teacher workforce puts a premium on districts and schools hiring effective and persistent beginning teachers. Given the limitations of characteristics currently available at the time of hiring (e.g., academic ability, preparation type), we built off previous research in economics and psychology to investigate associations between personality traits and first-year teachers’ performance and retention in North Carolina public schools. Using the 5-factor model of personality, we find that conscientiousness is significantly associated with higher value-added estimates, higher evaluation ratings, and higher retention rates. Additionally, general self-efficacy, a subdomain of conscientiousness, is significantly associated with teacher value added and evaluation ratings. These conscientiousness results are consistent with a rich body of evidence connecting conscientiousness-related measures to employee performance and retention across professions, and they suggest that districts and schools should consider using personality trait measures, along with other valid indicators, as a way to improve teacher hiring decisions.

Connecting Teacher Preparation to Teacher Induction: Outcomes for Beginning Teachers in a University-Based Support Program in Low-Performing Schools.

Given concerns with the performance and attrition of novice teachers, North Carolina allocated