Although much has been written about the importance of leadership in the determination of organizational success, there is little quantitative evidence due to the difficulty of separating the impact of leaders from other organizational components--particularly in the public sector. Schools provide an especially rich environment for studying the…

Teacher pension systems target retirements within a narrow range of the career cycle by penalizing individuals who separate too soon or remain employed too long. The penalties result in the retention of some teachers who would otherwise choose to leave, and the premature exit of some teachers who would otherwise choose to stay. We examine how the…

Struggling schools that come under increased accountability pressure face a number of challenges, changing instructional policies and practices to facilitate student improvement. But what effect does school accountability have on teachers' mobility decisions? This study is the first to exploit policy variation within the same state to examine the…

While it is generally understood that defined benefit pension systems concentrate benefits on career teachers and impose costs on mobile teachers, there has been very little analysis of the magnitude of these effects. The authors develop a measure of implicit redistribution of pension wealth among teachers at varying ages of separation. Compared…

Using matched student-teacher panel data from the state of Florida, the authors study the determinants of teacher job change and the impact of such mobility on the distribution of teacher quality. The probability a teacher stays at a school increases the more productive they are in their current school. The quality of teachers who exit teaching…

Search theory suggests that early career job changes on balance lead to better matches that benefit both workers and firms, but this may not hold true in teacher labor markets characterized by salary rigidities, barriers to entry, and substantial differences in working conditions that are difficult for institutions to alter. Education policy…

This paper analyzes attrition patterns among teachers in New York City public 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. We find that the first-year teachers who are less effective in improving student math scores have higher…

Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, even though these proxies correlate only weakly with student performance. This paper examines the attrition and mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality using value-added measures of teacher…

This study presents a generalization to the standard career concerns model and applies it to the public teacher labor market. The model predicts optimal teacher effort levels decline with both tenure at a school and experience, all things being equal. Using administrative data from North Carolina spanning 14 school years through 2008, the author…

Teachers are systematically sorted across schools. Often, schools serving the lowest-achieving students are staffed by the least-skilled teachers. While teachers' school preferences account for some of the sorting, school practices are also likely to be a key factor. Using value-added methods, the authors examine the relationship between a…

Research has consistently shown that teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among schools to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families. Using information on teaching spells in North Carolina, the authors examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. They conclude that…

We use detailed data from New York City to estimate how the characteristics of school principals relate to school performance, as measured by students' standardized exam scores and other outcomes. We find little evidence of any relationship between school performance and principal education and pre-principal work experience, although we do find…

Do charter schools draw good teachers from traditional, mainstream public schools? Using a panel dataset of all North Carolina public school teachers from 1997-2007, this research paper finds nuanced patterns of teacher quality flowing into charter schools. High rates of inexperienced and uncertified teachers moved to charter schools, but among…

This paper examines late career mobility and retirement decisions for a cohort of mid-career Missouri public school teachers. Specifically, the paper follows a cohort of teachers whose combined age and experience totaled 45 or more years in fall 1991 through the 2005-06 school year. Like many public employee pensions, Missouri has a system that…

A growing body of research confirms the long-held belief of parents, school administrators, and policy makers that teachers are the key component to a good education and that there is substantial variation in teacher quality. This research differs fundamentally from prior work on teachers by focusing directly on differences in student learning…