TY  - JOUR
AU  - Boyd,Donald
AU  - Grossman,Pam
AU  - Lankford,Hamilton
AU  - Loeb,Susanna
AU  - Wyckoff,James
TI  - Who Leaves? Teacher Attrition and Student Achievement
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14022
PY  - 2008
Y2  - May 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14022
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14022.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Donald Boyd
The Center for Policy Research
University of Albany
135 Western Ave.
Albany, NY  12222
E-Mail: boydd@rockinst.org

Pam Grossman
School of Education
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305
E-Mail: Pamg@stanford.edu

Hamilton Lankford
School of Education, ED 317
University at Albany
State University of New York
Albany, NY 12222
E-Mail: hamp@albany.edu

Susanna Loeb
524 CERAS, 520 Galvez Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA  94305
Tel: 650/725-4262
E-Mail: sloeb@stanford.edu

James Wyckoff
Curry School of Education
University of Virginia
P.O. Box 400277
Charlottesville, VA 22904-4277
E-Mail: wyckoff@virginia.edu
AB  - Almost a quarter of entering public-school teachers leave teaching within their first three years.  High attrition would be particularly problematic if those leaving were the more able teachers.  The goal of this paper is estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement.  Using data for New York City schools from 2000–2005, we find that first-year teachers whom we identify as less effective at improving student test scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers in both low-achieving and high-achieving schools.  The first-year differences are meaningful in size; however, the pattern is not consistent for teachers in their second and third years.  For teachers leaving low-performing schools, the more effective transfers tend to move to higher achieving schools, while less effective transfers stay in lower-performing schools, likely exacerbating the differences across students in the opportunities they have to learn.
ER  -