A special issue of Public Finance Review tackles the impact of teachers, focusing especially on the hiring and retention of qualified teachers, including in disadvantaged districts.
Some of the topics addressed:
- Is there a link between out-of-field teachers and student achievement
- Does the No Child Left Behind testing mandate affect teacher turnover?
- How do salaries affect teacher attrition?
- How effective are teacher recruitment practices?
Mandated testing, for example, looked at fourth-grade teachers in New York State public elementary schools and found that the introduction of mandated testing resulted in less teacher turnover and more experienced teachers.
Regarding out-of-field teachers, the study found that teachers certified in subjects resulted in students with higher scores, but only in social studies and mathematics. However, subject-certified teachers were not more effective at promoting the intellectual engagement of their students but were more likely to have negative opinions of a given student's performance.
For a limited time you can download all the papers free of charge at http://pfr.sagepub.com/content/vol36/issue1/
References:
Donald Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, James Wyckoff, The Impact of Assessment and Accountability on Teacher Recruitment and Retention, Public Finance Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, 88-111 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1091142106293446
Thomas S. Dee, Sarah R. Cohodes, Out-of-Field Teachers and Student Achievement, Public Finance Review, Vol. 36, No. 1, 7-32 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/1091142106289330
