Who Leaves? Teacher Attrition and Student Achievement
by:Donald J. Boyd, Pamela L. Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, James H. Wyckoff (March 2009)

Teacher attrition has attracted considerable attention as federal, state and local education policies increasingly focus on recruiting and retaining more qualified teachers. This paper analyzes attrition patterns New York City teachers and explores whether teachers who transfer among schools, or leave teaching entirely, are more or less effective than those who remain. First-year teachers who are less effective in improving student math scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers.

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Making a Difference?: The Effects of Teach for America in High School 
by: Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, Colin Taylor (Revised version, March 2009)

Teach for America (TFA) selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. This paper is the first study that examines TFA effects in high school. We use rich longitudinal data from North Carolina and estimate TFA effects through cross-subject student and school fixed-effects models. We find that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified in-field. Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science.

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Student Transience in North Carolina:The Effect of School Mobility on Student Outcomes Using Longitudinal Data
by: Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, Stephanie D'Souza (March 2009)

This paper examines the effect of school mobility rates on the performance of different groups of students in North Carolina using detailed administrative data on students and schools from 1997 to 2005 and following four cohorts of 3rd graders for six years each. We find school mobility rates, were highest for minority and disadvantaged students, declined across successive cohorts for Hispanic students, but increased for Black students. Also, “strategic” school moves (cross-district) benefitted or had no effect on student performance, but “reactive” moves (within district) hurt all groups of students. 

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Status vs. Growth: The Distributional Effects of School Accountability Policies
by: Helen F. Ladd, Douglas L. Lauen (March 2009)

Using a ten-year student-level panel dataset from North Carolina, we examine how school-specific pressure related to two school accountability approaches (status and growth) affects student achievement at different points in the prior-year achievement distribution. We find that the status, but not the growth, approach reduces the reading achievement of higher performing students, with the losses in the aggregate exceeding the gains at the bottom. The distributional effects of accountability pressure depend on the type of school accountability pressure and tested subject.

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