Teacher turnover incites academic unrest
Despite the introduction of a more qualified educator at a school, teacher turnover can have a negative impact on educational achievement, according to a new report. This data echoes a recent study that found principal turnover to be potentially damaging to student achievement as well.
“Turnover must have an impact beyond simply whether incoming teachers are better than those they replaced — even the teachers outside of this redistribution are somehow harmed by it,” according to the authors in the new report by researchers at the University of Michigan, Stanford University and the University of Virginia.
The report’s authors studied the test scores of fourth- and fifth-grade New York students over an eight-year period. According to the study, a change in teacher turnover by just one standard deviation lined up with a 2 percent of a deviation decrease in math achievement. Students who saw 100 percent teacher turnover experienced academic achievement declines ranging from 6 percent to 10 percent depending upon the subject matter.
“This study finds some of the first empirical evidence for a direct effect of teacher turnover on student achievement,” the study boasts. “Results suggest that teacher turnover has a significant and negative impact on student achievement in both math and ELA.”
The researchers also found that teacher turnover affected students in both large and small schools equally. The data also indicated that the negative impact of teacher turnover was most prevalent in schools with a large student body that is primarily low income and African American.
“Though there may be cases where turnover is actually helpful to student achievement, on average, it is harmful,” reads the report. “This indicates that schools would benefit from policies aimed at keeping grade level teams in tact over time. One possibility might be to introduce incentive structures to retain teachers that might leave otherwise. Implementing such policies may be especially important in schools with large populations of low-performing and black students, where turnover has the strongest negative effect on student achievement.”
The cause of the negative impact felt by teacher turnover has not been clearly identified. The researchers involved question whether the causes could stem from a lack of institutional knowledge by the new hire or the loss and/or lack of rapport with students and co-workers.
