How Teacher Labor Market Affects Teaching Quality
Turnover of U.S. teachers is a major reason for our educational problems. In 1987, the modal value of teacher experience has dropped from 15 years to just one year in 2007-2008. Today, 50% of new teachers drop out within five years of entering teaching. Obviously, more and more students are being taught by novice teachers. Once teachers get enough experience to start having positive effects, they quit. I won't go into the reasons teaching seems unappealing. While salary can be a factor, in my experience with teachers, it is working conditions they find most objectionable. Numerous other sources have debated such causes as lack of status, misbehaving students, apathetic parents, our general anti-intellectual culture, etc. What I want to highlight here is a new study that explores the relationship between teaching quality and experience - with emphasis on science teaching. The first good thing this study did was define teaching quality in terms of value added, and they used huge numb...