Teacher Labor Market Research Articles

Why make it hard for teachers to cross state borders?

Barriers to mobility, particularly those imposed by state-level licensure procedures have received growing attention in the media and in reform discussions. Much of this attention is driven by shortages of teachers in some regions and subject areas and the fact that barriers to mobility make it more difficult for states to address such shortages by drawing on whatever surplus of labor may exist out of state. But there are reasons to expect that lowering barriers to mobility would be beneficial to the teacher labor market even in the absence of shortages. To the extent that teachers value locational flexibility, lowering barriers to mobility could make the teaching profession more desirable to prospective entrants and reduce attrition among experienced teachers who may opt out of the profession following a move to a new state. The authors describe how licensure procedures and pension systems impose costs on teachers who cross state borders, discuss the evidence on whether teachers are responding to these disincentives to mobility, and consider possible reforms that would lower barriers to teacher mobility.

Effects of Public Service Motivation on Turnover and Job Satisfaction in the U.S. Teacher Labor Market

ABSTRACTA substantial body of research has addressed the importance of the match between the person and the organization, or jobs for individuals and organizational outcomes across diverse fields. Despite growing attention to the role of the person–environment (P–E) fit, there are few studies incorporating the characteristics of jobs in the relationship between public service motivation (PSM) and job satisfaction. Drawing on the growing literature concerning PSM and teacher recruitment and retention, this study investigates whether altruistic work values, such as a strong altruistic desire and a preference for correcting social inequity, affect job satisfaction and teacher turnover.

Federal policy and the teacher labor market: exploring the effects of NCLB school accountability on teacher turnover

ABSTRACTThe media suggest that accountability pressure increases teacher stress and drives teachers away from teaching, resulting in teachers leaving disadvantaged schools that serve larger proportions of poor and minority students. However, no prior work has systematically examined the changes in the national trends of teacher turnover in response to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) school accountability. Drawing on nationally representative samples of schools and teachers from the Schools and Staffing Surveys and Teacher Follow-Up Surveys from 1993–2009, this study applied difference-in-differences approaches to examine the effects of NCLB on teacher turnover. We found a weak increase in the average rate of teachers transferring involuntarily to other schools following school-initiated separations, particularly in disadvantaged schools that served larger proportions of poor and minority students. We also observed that NCLB reduced the involuntary attrition rates of teachers. Importantly, the policy effect is indistinguishable from zero on voluntary transfer between schools or voluntary leaving the teaching profession.

Enduring in an “Impossible” Occupation

Very little is known about the role of person-level qualities, or personality, in the teacher labor market. This study explores the role of perfectionism in teacher occupational commitment and retention. One hundred eighteen graduates of a competitive teacher preparation program with widely varying levels of total years commitment to the job completed a measure of three dimensions of perfectionism— standards (holding oneself to high standards), order (valuing neatness, tidiness, and being disciplined), and discrepancy (perceiving a gap between ambitions and abilities)—and gave information about their personal backgrounds and work histories. Results suggest that none of the dimensions of perfectionism predict teacher commitment in the sample as a whole, but that the order dimension significantly predicts long-term commitment to struggling urban versus affluent suburban schools. These results imply that long-term urban teachers may be adept at overlooking difficult and sometimes chaotic circumstances to sustain themselves in the occupation.

The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring

We use matched employee-employer records from the teacher labor market to explore the effects of late teacher hiring on student achievement. Hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement by 0.042SD in mathematics and 0.026SD in reading. This reflects, in part, a temporary disruption effect in the first year. In mathematics, but not in reading, late-hired teachers remain persistently less effective, evidence of negative selection in the teacher labor market. Late hiring concentrates in schools that disproportionately serve disadvantaged student populations, contributing to challenges in ensuring an equitable distribution of educational resources across students.

Who Chooses Incentivized Pay Structures? Exploring the Link Between Performance and Preferences for Compensation Reform in the Teacher Labor Market

We report on research examining the revealed preferences of teachers in Denver Public Schools who were given the opportunity to select between remaining on a traditional salary schedule and opting into one of the nation’s high-profile pay reform systems, Denver’s Professional Compensation System for Teachers. The incentive structure creates differential earnings risk for teachers according to their experience and measured effectiveness as well as their staffing assignment and school. We find that teachers are generally responsive to the eligibility criteria, but many teachers who would have earned more under the new system chose not to participate.

Teacher tenure

Debates over the efficacy of tenure are longstanding but tenure reform is now more prominent in the public eye given recent high-profile legislative battles in states like Ohio and Wisconsin. This focus on tenure also is a natural outgrowth of the large body of research showing that differences between individual teachers can have profound effects on student achievement. Some of the rhetoric in these debates centered on the systems’ inability to fire ineffective tenured teachers. Some contend that the high costs associated with the teacher dismissal process are tantamount to a guarantee that teachers won’t be fired for poor performance. Yet there are counterarguments that weakening tenure will lead to a lower quality teacher workforce. Similarly, others argue that the recent drop in individuals choosing to pursue a career in teaching is related to what’s being called the war against teachers, with tenure reform representing one front in that war (Goldstein, 2014). Our opinion is that direct empirical evidence fails to support the claim that the current wave of reforms affect the teacher labor market or student achievement.

School human capital and teacher salary policies

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to consider how the level and structure of teacher salaries affect student outcomes and the possibility of improving student achievement in the USA. Design/methodology/approach – The analysis integrates an underlying economic model of the role of salaries in the teacher labor market with existing empirical results. Findings – Much of the current policy discussion about teacher salaries is very unclear about how student outcomes will be affected by changing policies. The US is at a “bad equilibrium” where it cannot increase salaries for effective teachers without increasing salaries for ineffective teachers and thus it is stuck with a teaching corps that is harming both students and the future economic performance of the country. Dealing with problems of the productivity of schools must involve altering the structure of the single salary schedule for teachers. Research limitations/implications – The discussion focusses exclusively on the US schooling system, although there are obvious parallels to systems in other countries. Practical implications – The paper provides an overarching model of how the structure of salaries for teachers has broad implications of school outcomes. Social implications – Improved long-run economic outcomes depend crucially on reforms that involve rewarding the most effective teachers but not the least effective. Originality/value – The integrated approach to the consideration of teacher salaries provides a way of assessing the discordant policy discussions related to teacher salaries.

Teacher pay and school productivity: Exploiting wage regulation

The impact of teacher pay on school productivity is a central concern for governments worldwide, yet evidence is mixed. In this paper we exploit a feature of teacher labour markets to determine the impact of teacher wages. Teacher wages are commonly set in a manner that results in flat wages across heterogeneous labour markets. This creates an exogenous gap between the outside labour market and inside (regulated) wage for teachers. We use the centralised wage regulation of teachers in England to examine the effect of pay on school performance. We use data on over 3000 schools containing around 200,000 teachers who educate around half a million children per year. We find that teachers respond to pay. A ten percent shock to the wage gap between local labour market and teacher wages results in an average loss of around 2% in average school performance in the key exams taken at the end of compulsory schooling in England.

Productivity returns to experience in the teacher labor market: Methodological challenges and new evidence on long-term career improvement

We present new evidence on the relationship between teacher productivity and job experience. Econometric challenges require identifying assumptions to model the within-teacher returns to experience with teacher fixed effects. We describe the identifying assumptions used in past models and in a new approach that we propose, and we demonstrate how violations of these assumptions can lead to substantial bias. Consistent with past research, we find that teachers experience rapid productivity improvement early in their careers. However, we also find evidence of returns to experience later in the career, indicating that teachers continue to build human capital beyond these first years.

Localism and Teacher Labor Markets: How Geography and Decision Making May Contribute to Inequality

A wide body of evidence indicates that there is a large inequality in the distribution of teachers across schools. Relatedly, recent research has revealed a number of important dimensions of teacher labor markets in the United States. We review the literature in two of these areas: the geography of teacher labor markets and the decision-making process on the part of districts, schools, and teachers. Our review leads us to several conclusions, including that teacher labor markets are geographically small and, thus, highly localized and also that teacher hiring decisions are largely made by local school leaders. Taken together, this evidence has important implications regarding both the local nature of teacher labor markets and how this localism has the potential to reinforce and exacerbate inequities across schools and districts.

Teacher Quality Policy When Supply Matters

Teacher contracts that condition pay and retention on demonstrated performance can improve selection into and out of teaching. I study alternative contracts in a simulated teacher labor market that incorporates dynamic self-selection and Bayesian learning. Bonus policies create only modest incentives and thus have small effects on selection. Reductions in tenure rates can have larger effects, but must be accompanied by substantial salary increases; elimination of tenure confers little additional benefit unless firing rates are extremely high. Benefits of both bonus and tenure policies exceed costs, though optimal policies are sensitive to labor market parameters about which little is known. (JEL I21, J22, J23, J24, J31, J41, J45)

New professionalism in austere times: the employment experiences of early career teachers in Scotland

International concern to raise educational standards and improve teacher quality has directed attention to the need to sustain career-long professional learning. Teacher induction and early professional learning (during years 2–6) have been associated with patterns of attrition and improved pupil outcomes. As the economic crisis impacts on public sector employment, the rhetoric of professionalism stands in contrast to the employment experiences of many recently qualified teachers. This article draws on interviews with 20 early career teachers in Scotland who achieved full registration from 2006. Work histories drawn from this small-scale study challenge the implicit assumptions of staged models of teacher development and draw attention to the increasing fragmentation and casualisation of experience in the teacher labour market.

Reforming Again: Now Teachers

BackgroundEducational reform responds to local and national pressures to improve educational outcomes, and reform efforts cycle as similar pressures recur. Currently, reform efforts focus on teachers, even though confidence in a host of American social institutions is dropping. One of the most widespread reforms regarding teachers is the creation of state laws and regulations that require high-stakes evaluation, often using value-added models or related approaches to measuring growth in student learning.PurposeThis article discusses the papers in this special issue of Teachers College Record, drawing implications for teacher evaluation practice and policy, along with possible changes in the demand for teacher education and the teacher labor market.ConclusionsThe articles in this special issue of Teachers College Record address the use of emerging high-stakes teacher evaluation regulations and draw implications for policy and practice. All papers address limitations in the reliability and validity of these systems and the impacts that such shortcoming might have on teachers and students. In addition, there could be major impacts on the teacher labor market with implications for the sustained effectiveness of America's schools.

The Globalizing Labor Market in Education: Teachers as Cultural Ambassadors or Agents of Institutional Isomorphism?

Institutional isomorphists and other proponents of world culture theory argue that schools around the world are converging in many ways, whereas anthropologists and others question this conclusion, often arguing that local cultural differences belie superficial similarities. These viewpoints are not merely academic explanations of the spread and apparent convergence of education policies and practices around the world but are often present in policy and practice. The authors seek both to shed new light on these often-entrenched positions and to refocus the debate by considering the presence and influence of such views in the policies and practices of international teacher exchanges. In the context of the expanding global labor market for teachers, the authors consider the implicit theories underpinning international exchange policies and the ways in which the exchange teachers themselves make sense of these policies. In particular, we recognize that although extensive work has been done on the dynamics of policy borrowing, little attention has been paid to international exchange teachers as potential agents of isomorphism, adopting and disseminating practices at the local level. Paradoxically, the exchange policies construct a universal teacher who is interchangeable across national (and cultural) contexts, a view resonant with institutional isomorphists, while justifying the exchanges rhetorically on the basis of their value as a cultural exchange, a view more consistent with the culturalists. The teachers who participate, however—and who effectively self-select by their beliefs that such exchanges are possible—accept the interchangeability thesis and view such exchanges as a professional development opportunity.

Science teacher shortage and the moonlighting culture: The pathology of the teacher labour market in Uganda

The Ugandan Government promotes the rapid expansion of secondary education and requires an emphasis on mathematics and science subjects at that level, but has a “market” approach to the recruitment of teachers. This study uses both national and local evidence to demonstrate that, not only are the teachers of these subjects too few for the policies to be effective, but many of them are employed in more than one school, and some in other work. This “moonlighting” trend, which contributes to problems of poor service, is seen as part of a questionable tendency to commercialise teaching. Policy changes and practical steps are suggested in order to regulate and reduce moonlighting.

The teacher labor market in the Chilean urban school system.

This study explores the current market conditions of teacher labor in the Chilean school system. It also makes forecasts about the future behavior of the demand of teachers required by Chilean urban schools and the supply to fulfill it by 2020. As current trends persist, there will be a national overstock of teachers in elementary and secondary education and its specialties. Finally, it analyzes the possible impact of public policies aimed to improve selection criteria of students entering to education programs and to increase the number of non-teaching hours for teachers.

Teacher Value Added as a Measure of Program Quality

Many states now possess the data and statistical methods that can produce teacher value-added scores and link them to preparation programs. It is important to understand the limitations of these measures and the inferences that they do and do not support. These limitations fall into three categories. First, value-added measures (VAM) provide information about only one of several important dimensions of teacher preparation program quality, focusing on one outcome measure, but not addressing other program characteristics, including the quality of program resources, the appropriateness of program content, and the contributions programs make to teacher learning. Second, comparing programs on the average VAM scores begs the question of whether mean performance is the most appropriate way to look at program quality. Third, the measurement of program graduates’ VAM is strongly affected by the labor market for teachers, which weakens the inferences from VAM scores to the quality of preparation programs.

Teacher workforce planning: the interplay of market forces and government polices during a period of economic uncertainty

Background: The labour market for classroom teachers in England is a mixture of free-market capitalism and state workforce planning, interlaced with ideological and political interventions such as the introduction of new routes into teaching and the capping of class size. Purpose: The article examines the relationship between the teacher labour market and the economy in order to predict how it will be affected by government's attempt to manage the current economic crisis. Sources of evidence: In doing this, it draws upon a data set which tracks teacher supply and demand in England over the last 20 years. Main argument: The lack of articulation between workforce planning and the free market in teacher labour is traced across the two economic cycles from the upswing of the late 1980s through the recession of the early 1990s and the recovery of the late 1990s through the so-called ‘goldilocks’ period up to 2008 when the recession, generated by the banking crisis, engulfed the western world. The variations in the market are analysed along with factors impacting on the fluctuations of the teacher labour market Conclusions: The article concludes that there has been a lack of articulation between workforce planning and the free market in teacher labour, often exacerbated by the unintended consequences of political decisions. It predicts how this will impact on the workforce as government strategies attempt to reduce the financial deficit and encourage the private sector to stimulate the economy.

School Finance Reform: Do Equalized Expenditures Imply Equalized Teacher Salaries?

Kentucky is a poor, relatively rural state that contrasts greatly with the relatively urban and wealthy states typically the subject of education studies employing large-scale administrative data. For this reason, Kentucky's experience of major school finance and curricular reform is highly salient for understanding teacher labor market dynamics. This study examines the time path of teacher salaries in Appalachian and non-Appalachian Kentucky using a novel teacher-level administrative data set. Our results suggest that the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) provided a salary boost for all Appalachian teachers, resulting in a wage premium for teachers of low and medium experience and equalizing pay across Appalachian and non-Appalachian districts for teachers of high experience. However, we find that Appalachian salaries fell back to the level of non-Appalachian teachers roughly a decade following reform, at which point the pre-KERA remuneration patterns re-emerge.