View Research by Author - Pamela Grossman

Citation URL: http://www.urban.org/PamelaGrossman

When given the opportunity, many teachers choose to leave schools serving poor, low-performing, and minority students. While substantial research has documented this phenomenon, far less effort has gone into understanding what features of the working conditions in these schools drive this relatively high turnover rate. This paper 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 within the same school. Teachers’ perceptions of the school administration have 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 in New York City.

Teacher attrition has attracted considerable attention as federal, state and local policies- intended to improve student outcomes, increasingly focus on recruiting and retaining more qualified and effective teachers. But policy makers are often frustrated by the seemingly high rates of attrition among teachers earlier on in their careers. This paper analyzes attrition patterns among teachers in New York City elementary and middle schools and explores whether teachers who transfer among schools, or leave teaching entirely, are more or less effective than those who remain. Findings show first-year teachers who are less effective in improving student math scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers. This raises important questions about current retention and transfer policies.

This research brief estimates the overall extent of test measurement error and how this varies across students using New York City student- level longitudinal data across grades 3-8 from 1999- 2007. Results reinforce the importance of accounting for measurement error, as it meaningfully increases effect size estimates associated with teacher attributes. There are important differences in teacher effectiveness that are systematically related to observed teacher attributes. Such effects are important in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies. Also, effect sizes as traditionally measured have led analysts to understate the magnitudes of effects because the standard deviation of observed scores overstates the dispersion of true achievement in the student population.

This paper estimates the overall extent of test measurement error and how this varies across students using New York City longitudinal data. Results reinforce the importance of accounting for measurement error, as it meaningfully increases effect size estimates associated with teacher attributes. There are important differences in teacher effectiveness that are systematically related to observed teacher attributes. Such effects are important in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies.

In debates over the best way to prepare teachers some argue that easing entry into teaching is necessary to attract strong candidates, while others argue that investing in high quality teacher preparation is most promising. Most agree that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This paper estimates the effects of features of teachers' preparation on teachers' value-added to student test score performance in Math and English Language Arts. Results indicate variation across preparation programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers supplied to New York City schools. Preparation directly linked to practice appears to benefit first year teachers.

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