Does the Mode of Entry into Teaching Matter in Teacher Retention? A Discrete-Time Survival Analysis Modeling of New York City Public School Teachers.

Abstract

Does the Mode of Entry into Teaching Matter in Teacher Retention? A Discrete-Time Survival Analysis Modeling of New York City Public School Teachers Charles Olufemi Ogundimu This dissertation examines whether the mode of entry into K-12 public school teaching has any implications on teacher retention. Teacher retention is important because it is an important precursor to teacher quality, which has been shown to positively impact student performance. However, teacher turnover can seriously threaten teacher retention. Additionally, teacher turnover is associated with serious economic and non-economic costs. To this end, it may benefit schools and school districts to pay particular attention to hiring and retaining their teachers, especially the quality ones, for the long haul. Current teacher labor markets literature is deficient in serious analytical frameworks for understanding longitudinal cohort retention comparisons of traditional and nontraditional teachers, as well as analysis of quit behaviors that focus on when a teacher is at the greatest risk of quitting. My research endeavors to bridge this gap. Using a large-scale administrative data set comprising cohorts of traditional and nontraditional teachers from the New York City Department of Education (NYCDOE), I used discrete-time survival analysis modeling, specifically, the Cox Proportional Hazards (PH) model, to analyze the quit and retention patterns of cohorts of teachers from traditional and nontraditional sources over a six-year period. I found similar retention patterns between the two groups with notable peculiar patterns for the nontraditional group. The data suggests that entry routes into K-12 public school teaching, the year of entry into teaching, individual age, sex, ethnicity, subject taught, and school level can be important predictors of retention.