Charter Schools, Teacher Labor Market Deregulation, and Teacher Quality

Abstract

This study uses teacher-level data from the Schools and Staffing Survey of 1999 to test whether teachers in charter schools have stronger academic backgrounds than their peers working in conventional public schools and whether state regulatory policies are associated with differences between public and public charter school teachers. Specifically, the authors estimate whether school type (public, public charter, independent private, private Catholic) is associated with the likelihood that a teacher attended a highly or most competitive undergraduate college. They find compelling evidence both that charter schools generally hire more teachers from more competitive undergraduate institutions than do conventional public schools and, furthermore, that relaxation of state teacher certification policies for charter schools increases the likelihood that charter schools hire teachers from more competitive undergraduate institutions. Findings are highly dependent on supply of teachers from competitive undergraduate institutions.