New Measures of Teacher Turnover Can Reveal Underlying Chronic Staffing Problems in Schools

Teacher quality is one of the most important measures that predicts students’ educational and professional outcomes. But student success can be undermined by teacher turnover. This brief, by PRC faculty research associate Huriya Jabbar and colleagues, describes a typology of teacher turnover measures, including both measures currently in use as well as new measures developed by the authors. These measures illuminate different ways in which staff instability can negatively affect schools.Population Research Cente

NEPC Review: Renewing Our Cities (EdChoice, March 2017) and CPR Scholarships (American Enterprise Institute, March 2017)

Two reports contend that the introduction of school choice can promote economic development in economically distressed urban areas. The first report, published by EdChoice, presents a case study of a charter school that has, according to the report, contributed to the economic development of the city of Santa Ana, California. The second report, published by the American Enterprise Institute, presents a proposal for a hypothetical voucher-like program that, if implemented, would purportedly spur economic development in high-poverty neighborhoods by luring higher income families into those neighborhoods. This review explains that both reports overlook significant bodies of relevant research literature and make unsupported claims that rely on flawed logic and data. The EdChoice report fails to collect and analyze data related to the report&rsquo;s causal assertion that economic development in Santa Ana resulted from the establishment of the charter school. The American Enterprise Institute report&rsquo;s claims about the benefits of the proposed program to publicly fund private schooling are unsupported by existing research. We conclude that these reports offer little useful guidance for policy or practice.</p

NEPC Review: "Plotting School Choice" and "In Need of Improvement"

Two recent reports by Education Sector set out to examine the viability of proposals to revamp the No Child Left Behind choice provisions to allow students in failing schools to choose a school outside of their home school district. The findings of the reports are weakened by foundational assumptions about capacity and competition for space, as well as a failure to present alternatives. Further, the reports do not systematically consider the role of geographic variation, causing a potential underestimation of the impact of inter-district choice for those urban contexts where policy advocates believe it is most necessary. Instead of an analysis based on such definite assumptions, policy makers would be better served by an array of assumptions and analyses, presenting the full scope of potential outcomes.</p

Wells, Amy Stuart, Jennifer Jellison Holme, Awo Korantemaa Atanda, and Anita Tijerina Revilla, Tackling Racial Segregation One Policy at a Time: Why School Desegregation Only Went So Far, Teachers College Record, 107(Sepember, 2005), 2141-2177.

Reports on a 5-year case study of six racially diverse high schools from the late 1970s; describes their curricular and organizational methods of school integration, the external societal factors that influenced the effects of these efforts, and the views of graduates about the long-term impact of their school experiences

Holme, Jennifer Jellison, Meredith P. Richards, Jo Beth Jimerson, and Rebecca W. Cohen, Assessing the Effect of High School Exit Examinations, Review of Educational Research, 80(December, 2010), 476-526.

Sums up and appraises the research on the topic in relation to student achievement, dropping out or graduation, post-secondary outcomes, and school responses