Susanna Loeb

Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban Schools: A Descriptive Analysis

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.

Does External Accountability Affect Student Outcomes? A Cross-State Analysis

We developed a zero-to-five index of the strength of accountability in 50 states based on the use of high-stakes testing to sanction and reward schools, and analyzed whether that index is related to student gains on the NAEP mathematics test in 1996–2000. The study also relates the index to changes in student retention in the 9th grade and to changes in high school completion rates over the same period. The results show that students in high-accountability states averaged significantly greater gains on the NAEP 8th-grade math test than students in states with little or no state measures to improve student performance. Furthermore, students in high-accountability states do not have significantly higher retention or lower high school completion rates.

How Changes in Entry Requirements Alter the Teacher Workforce and Affect Student Achievement

We are in the midst of what amounts to a national experiment in how best to attract, prepare, and retain teachers, particularly for high-poverty urban schools. Using data on students and teachers in grades 38, this study assesses the effects of pathways into teaching in New York City on the teacher workforce and on student achievement. We ask whether teachers who enter through new routes, with reduced coursework prior to teaching, are more or less effective at improving student achievement. When compared to teachers who completed a university-based teacher education program, teachers with reduced coursework prior to entry often provide smaller initial gains in both mathematics and English language arts. Most differences disappear as the cohort matures, and many of the differences are not large in magnitude, typically 2 to 5 percent of a standard deviation. The variation in effectiveness within pathways is far greater than the average differences between pathways.

How Teacher Turnover Harms Student Achievement

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.

Explaining the Short Careers of High-Achieving Teachers in Schools with Low-Performing Students

Low-achieving students often are taught by the least-qualified teachers. These disparities begin when teachers take their first jobs, and in urban areas they are worsened by teachers’ subsequent decisions to transfer and quit. Such quits and transfers increase disparities in at least two ways. First, more qualified teachers are substantially more likely to leave schools having the lowest-achieving students. For example, of the new teachers hired in New York City’s lowest-achieving schools in 1996–1998, 28 percent scored in the lowest quartile on the general-knowledge certification exam. Of those remaining in the same schools five years later, 44 percent had scores in the lowest quartile. In contrast, 22 percent of the new teachers in the higher-achieving schools were in the lowest quartile, which only increased to 24 percent for those remaining after five years. Second, the generally high teacher turnover in lowerperforming schools disadvantage students in those schools since the effectiveness of teachers increases over the first few years of their careers. Twenty-seven percent of first-year teachers in New York City’s lower-performing schools do not return the following year, compared to 15 percent in the quartile of schools having the relatively highest student achievement. In this paper we examine New York City elementary school teachers’ decisions to stay in the same school, transfer to another school in the district, transfer to another district, or leave teaching in New York State during the first five years of their careers. Our model allows us to go beyond past research in three important ways: examining how transfer and quit behavior is influenced by (i) interactions between teacher qualifications and school-level student achievement, (ii) unobserved heterogeneity in teachers’ responses to school-level student attributes, and (iii) the distance from new teachers’ prior homes to their initial job. Many factors influence teacher transfers and quits. Teachers respond positively to increased salary, although the variation in salary across districts often is not large enough to strongly affect teacher sorting. Non-pecuniary job characteristics such as class size, preparation time, facilities, student characteristics, and school leadership also can affect teacher decisions, and differences in these characteristics can be great across schools, especially in large urban areas (see Eric Hanushek et al., 1999; Loeb et al., 2005). In addition, teachers prefer schools and districts similar and geographically close to those they attended in high school (Boyd et al., 2004, 2005). Several recent state-specific studies have considered student characteristics. Benjamin Scafidi et al. (2003) use a competing-risk model and find that Georgia elementary teachers move from schools with higher proportions of minority students and from low-performing schools, but the latter is explained by teacher preferences for fewer minority students. Hanushek et al. (2004), using a similar model and Texas data, find that teachers prefer higher-achieving students even after controlling for student racial composition. Both studies interact teacher race * Boyd, Lankford, and Wyckoff: University at Albany, Albany, NY 12222; Loeb: Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. We are grateful to Richard Murnane for comments and to the Smith Richardson Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education for financial support. We also appreciate assistance with data from the New York State Education Department. None of these organizations necessarily supports the views expressed in this paper. Any errors are attributable to the authors. 1 School performance is based on the 4th-grade English Language Arts exam. 2 The 28 versus 22 percent comparison for entering (mostly certified) teachers understates the actual difference in the qualifications of new teachers across schools. For example, approximately half of the new teachers in the lowest-achieving schools were not certified, compared to 20 percent in the higher-achieving schools. 3 Recent studies include Peter Dolton and Wilbert van der Klaauw (1999) and Todd Stinebrickner (2000).

The Influence of School Administrators on Teacher Retention Decisions

This article explores the relationship between school contextual factors and teacher retention decisions in New York City. The methodological approach separates the effects of teacher characteristics from school characteristics by modeling the relationship between the assessments of school contextual factors by one set of teachers and the turnover decisions by other teachers in the same school. We find that teachers’ perceptions of the school administration has by far the greatest influence on teacher retention decisions. This effect of administration is consistent for first-year teachers and the full sample of teachers and is confirmed by a survey of teachers who have recently left teaching.

Examining the Link between Teacher Wages and Student Outcomes: The Importance of Alternative Labor Market Opportunities and Non-Pecuniary Variation

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.

Principal's Time Use and School Effectiveness.

School principals have complex jobs. To better understand the work lives of principals, this study uses observational time use data for all high school principals in one district. This article examines the relationship between the time principals spent on different types of activities and school outcomes, including student achievement, teacher and parent assessments of the school, and teacher satisfaction. We find that time spent on organization management activities is associated with positive school outcomes, whereas day‐to‐day instruction activities are marginally or not at all related to improvements in student performance and often have a negative relationship with teacher and parent assessments.

Triangulating Principal Effectiveness How Perspectives of Parents, Teachers, and Assistant Principals Identify the Central Importance of Managerial Skills

While the importance of effective principals is undisputed, few studies have identified specific skills that principals need to promote school success. This study draws on unique data combining survey responses from principals, assistant principals, teachers, and parents with rich administrative data to determine which principal skills correlate most highly with school outcomes. Factor analysis of a 42-item task inventory distinguishes five skill categories, yet only one of them, the principals’ Organization Management skills, consistently predicts student achievement growth and other success measures. Analysis of evaluations of principals by assistant principals supports this central result. The analysis argues for a broad view of principal leadership that includes organizational management skills as a key complement to the work of supporting curriculum and instruction.

Where Do Head Start Attendees End Up? One Reason Why Preschool Effects Fade Out

This study investigates the relationship between preschool experience and the quality of schools subsequently attended as young adolescents. In particular, we differentiate the characteristics of middle-grade schools attended by eighth graders who earlier experienced Head Start, other preschool programs, or did not attend preschool. School quality is defined in terms of social composition, academic rigor, safety, and social relations. After accounting for family background and demographics, we find that former Head Start attendees are educated in middle-grade schools of significantly lower quality than their counterparts who did not attend preschool, and particularly compared to peers who attended other preschools. No matter how beneficial Head Start was initially for its young participants, such benefits are structurally undermined if students are subsequently exposed to schooling of systematically lower quality. The low quality of middle-grade schools attended by former Head Start participants explains, in part, why Head Start effects fade over time.