The Revolving Door: A Path-Breaking Study of Teachers in Texas Reveals That Working Conditions Matter More Than Salary (Research‪)‬

EXPERIENCED TEACHERS ARE, on average, more effective at raising student performance than those in their early years of teaching. This gives rise to the concern that too many teachers leave the profession after less than a full career and that too many leave troubled inner-city schools for suburban ones. Until now, the roots of these problems have not been well understood. In particular, it is not known whether teachers leave schools with high concentrations of disadvantaged and low-achieving populations for financial reasons or because of the working conditions associated with serving these students. Nor are there good estimates of what kinds of salary increases would need to be offered to slow the turnover among teachers. The chief obstacle to resolving these issues has been the difficulty of separating the effects of teachers' salary levels from their working conditions and preferences. The outstanding suburban school that retains most of its teachers is likely to be attractive on a number of levels: the pay is good, students are high performing, and parents are supportive. Since all three factors help in attracting and retaining teachers, it becomes difficult to calculate the degree to which each factor separately affects a teacher's decision to return to that school the following year. Conversely, the school that has disadvantaged and low-performing students may suffer high rates of teacher turnover, but sorting out the causes of turnover is difficult. Doing so requires detailed information for enough teachers and students to allow analysts to distinguish statistically among the various factors that affect teachers' decisions.