ERIC Number: EJ1100633
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2016-May
Pages: 6
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0013-1784
EISSN: N/A
Do Accountability Policies Push Teachers Out?
Ingersoll, Richard; Merrill, Lisa; May, Henry
Educational Leadership, v73 n8 p44-49 May 2016
The impact of accountability on U.S. schools, for good or ill, is a subject of debate and research. The authors recently studied an aspect of accountability that had previously received little attention. They asked, do accountability reforms affect public schools' ability to retain their teachers? By analyzing data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and the Teacher Followup Survey, they found strong (but unsurprising) evidence that accountability made teacher retention more difficult in low-performing schools; schools whose students scored low on high-stakes assessments had higher teacher turnover than those that scored higher; and schools that received sanctions because of their low performance had even higher turnover. The most helpful finding of the analysis was that even in schools subject to sanctions, higher teacher turnover was not inevitable. Schools that had better working conditions--and especially those that gave teachers greater classroom autonomy--were able to mitigate the negative effects of accountability sanctions. The authors conclude that holding teachers accountable for results must be paired with giving them control over the instruction that produces these results.
Descriptors: Accountability, Public Schools, Teacher Persistence, Surveys, Teacher Surveys, Low Achievement, High Stakes Tests, Labor Turnover, Academic Achievement, Teaching Conditions, Sanctions, Professional Autonomy
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Evaluative
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Assessments and Surveys: Schools and Staffing Survey (NCES)
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A