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Home Products Five Findings on Teacher Turnover and Access to Effective Teachers in the School District of Philadelphia
The School District of Philadelphia (SDP) partnered with REL Mid-Atlantic to better understand teacher turnover in the district and to examine how effective teachers are distributed across its schools. Having developed a strategic plan that set goals for retaining effective teachers, the district thought a deeper study of teacher turnover and access to effective teachers could yield insight on strategies to improve students' achievement through improved access to effective teachers and lower turnover among effective teachers. We partnered with the district to take a closer look at its data to inform how it responds to turnover. Here, we share five findings that stood out to us from our research with the district:
The district faces new challenges not envisioned when we first began this study, including providing quality remote instruction during a pandemic while retaining its most effective teachers. Yet it also has an opportunity to consider innovative strategies that could help equalize access to effective teaching. For example, with remote learning, the district might be able to rethink teaching assignments without increasing class sizes or moving teachers to different schools to ensure that students who are historically underserved by the education system are more likely to have an effective teacher. Virtual formats can facilitate opportunities for teachers to learn from their peers and observe instruction from effective teachers without leaving their home. And schedules accommodating virtual learning might allow for time to focus on building professional learning communities and to support building a positive school climate. The pandemic has changed the meaning of being in school, and districts nationwide can use lessons from this study to make the most of this time to build an effective teaching workforce. To help, we've compiled resources across all 10 RELs on recruiting and retaining teachers.
References
Dee, T. S. (2004). Teachers, race, and student achievement in a randomized experiment. Review of Economics and Statistics, 86(1), 195–210. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED464172.
Gershenson, S., Holt, S. B., & Papageorge, N. W. (2016). Who believes in me? The effect of student- teacher demographic match on teacher expectations. Economics of Education Review, 52(1), 209–224.
Gershenson, S., Lindsay, C. A., Hart, C. M., & Papageorge, N. W. (2017). The long-run impacts of same-race teachers. Institute of Labor Economics Discussion Paper No. 10630. Institute of Labor Economics.
Papay, J. P., Bacher-Hicks, A., Page, L. C., & Marinell, W. H. (2017). The challenge of teacher retention in urban schools: Evidence of variation from a cross-site analysis. Educational Researcher, 46(8), 34–448. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=EJ1161119.
Author(s)
Steven Malick
Erin Dillon
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