How do teacher policies affect the recruitment, retention and assignment of teachers at the district, school and classroom levels (who teaches what students) and student outcomes (student achievement and attainment)?

We plan to examine the effect of state and district policies and practices on teacher recruitment, retention and assignment.

A number of different strategies designed to affect the availability and distribution of teaching talent have been instituted in recent years. They include, for example, financial incentives for experienced1 or especially effective teachers2 to teach in high poverty or low-performing schools.

Both North Carolina and Florida have embarked on financial incentives strategies. North Carolina established annual bonus awards of $1800 for teachers of math, science and special education in middle and high schools serving low-income or low-performing students (Clotfelter, Glennie, Ladd and Vigdor, 2006).3 Florida districts, notably Palm Beach, offered highly effective teachers $10,000 to move to low-performing schools. Numerous types of incentives for teachers in hard to recruit specialties, such as math, science and special education, have also emerged.

States and districts are also testing other incentives, including subsidized master's degree programs, incentives for teachers with national board certification4 to teach in low-performing schools, and housing assistance. In addition, collective bargaining agreements, such as the recent agreement in New York City, are chipping away at seniority provisions that allow more experienced teachers to bump less experienced ones.

We expect that, as data allow systems to identify the especially effective teachers, more incentive schemes will be developed to attract strong teachers to troubled schools. There are also questions about the pool of talent choosing teaching as a profession. The work of CALDER researcher Michael Podgursky, combining the Missouri K-12 and higher education data, allows us to examine how state higher education policies and practices affect the quality of candidates that flow through the pipeline into the profession and then into particular schools and their eventual effectiveness

CALDER researcher Susanna Loeb's research (e.g., Loeb and Page, 2000) reminds us, though, that we will have to assess these effects along with non-pecuniary factors associated with the workplace (supportive leadership and professional development) and other factors, such as geographic location (noted earlier) that affect teachers' school preferences. Buttressing Loeb's work are Kim Rueben's findings that teacher development programs are more cost effective than higher salaries in retaining new teachers in California (Reed, Rueben and Barbour, 2006).

Overall there is considerable state and local policy action designed to influence who enters teaching, who stays and where they work, and it is likely to intensify. Examining the effects of such schemes, and their interaction with other factors, including collective bargaining agreements, teacher preferences, and school working environment, is a key area in which we will contribute. In addressing these issues, we bring to the task both considerable experience with the issues (as authors of some of the seminal studies) and considerable expertise in working with data that allow us to focus our analysis strategically as policies develop.

Other CALDER Research Questions:

• How do governance policies, especially accountability policies, affect the recruitment, retention and assignment of teachers at the district, school and classroom levels (who teaches what students) and student outcomes (student achievement and attainment)?
  
• What factors account for teacher effectiveness in terms of student achievement outcomes? To what extent, and in what ways, does the importance of these factors vary for the performance of different types of students?
  
• How are the dynamics of social and economic context related to policy, teacher recruitment, retention and assignment, and student outcomes?

Or, go back to the description of outcomes examined by CALDER research.

Notes from this section

1. Important work by Hanushek, Kain and Rivkin (2004) with the Texas data and Clotfelter, Ladd and Vigdor (2004; forthcoming) with the North Carolina data show that regardless of how effective teachers may eventually become, teachers with little or no experience are less effective than teachers with more experience.
   
2. As measured by actual student performance.
   
3. In addition, in 1996 North Carolina introduced an accountability plan that awarded school-based bonuses of $1500 in exemplary schools.
   
4. See Goldhaber and Anthony, 2004; Goldhaber and Anthony, under review, for research using the North Carolina data on who applies, who becomes nationally board certified, and effects on student performance.