Essays on Teacher Mobility

Cook, Jeremy

Download PDF

Request Version for Screen Reader

Last Modified

March 22, 2019

Creator

Cook, Jeremy
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Economics

Abstract

The allocation of quality teachers across schools is of interest because of both the importance and costliness of teachers as inputs in the education production process. Furthermore, because teachers have preferences over their workplace characteristics, this allocation across schools is nonrandom. This research examines teacher mobility within the school system by focusing on the school characteristics that affect the probability of teachers leaving their current schools. Using longitudinal data on public schools in North Carolina, I estimate teacher mobility probabilities using empirical specifications that incorporate current school characteristics, as well as characteristics of other potential schools. I jointly estimate these teacher mobility probabilities with two endogenous teacher credential outcomes. The joint estimation uses a discrete factor random effects method to control for both individual permanent and time-varying unobserved heterogeneity. Results show that changes in student demographics have significant effects on one-year mobility probabilities. These changes in demographics have different effects across teachers of different experience levels, with teachers early in their careers being more sensitive to changes in student characteristics and salary than more experienced teachers. Long run results suggest that providing beginning teachers with preferred school characteristics may result in a substantial increase in the number of these teachers remaining in the public school system after five years.

Date of publication