Is Teacher Effectiveness Stable Across School Contexts? An Examination of Teachers Who Transfer Into Turnaround Schools

Abstract

Turnaround interventions often require or encourage low-performing schools to replace teachers, assuming that schools will recruit high-performing teachers who remain effective after transferring. However, teacher effectiveness may change after transferring, which could explain why some teacher replacement efforts do not improve student achievement. This paper contributes new information on the stability of teacher effectiveness by examining teachers who transfer into turnaround schools relative to teachers who transfer into low-performing but non-turnaround schools. I examine this issue by using two turnaround models in Tennessee, one with documented positive effects and one producing no effects on student achievement. I find that teacher effectiveness increases after transferring into the model that produced positive effects and either decreases or stays the same after transferring into the model that did not improve student achievement. These findings suggest that heterogeneity in turnaround effects may be partly explained by changes in teacher effectiveness after they transfer into turnaround schools.