Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: Teacher Tenure Reform: Implications for Students, Teachers, and Schools

(Education)

The importance of high-quality teachers for student outcomes has been well established. However, traditional teacher policies that provide structural salary increases and strong employment protections have not been tied to effectiveness. Recently, policymakers have sought to challenge these traditional policies in favor of policies that establish more rigorous evaluation systems and performance-based compensation and retention. One of the more controversial of these policies is the restructuring or elimination of teacher tenure. Laws governing teacher tenure have largely required teachers to serve a probationary period of two to five years, and upon satisfactory completion of probation they achieve tenure. Critics of this system assert that performance is not adequately assessed during the probationary period, which leads to high rates of teachers achieving tenure. Once tenured, it becomes very difficult, regardless of performance, to dismiss teachers. Policymakers are seeking to address these concerns by restructuring or eliminating tenure laws and embedding tenure and retention decisions within state established teacher evaluation systems. Theoretically, by removing or reforming tenure protections and tying tenure and promotion to teacher performance, the quality of the workforce should improve. However, little is known about the impact of tenure reforms on teacher and student outcomes. The current slate of tenure reforms enacted around the country is providing researchers and policymakers with the first evidence of how the teacher labor market responds when tenure protections are reformed or removed. This panel includes four interdisciplinary papers that examine tenure reform across four states. In the first paper, Goldhaber, Hansen, and Walch examine the effects of extending the probationary period for tenure in Washington and North Carolina. They assess how this increase affects teachers’ effort, student achievement, and mobility patterns. The second paper by Husain, Loeb, Miller, and Wyckoff also examines the effect of probationary period extensions. This paper uses a tenure policy reform in New York City where principals could selectively extend a teacher’s probationary period based on performance. Here, the authors assess how the reform affected rates of tenure, teacher exit, and teacher effectiveness. Third, Santillano and Barrett address how teachers respond to quality signals when the signals are credibly tied to retention decisions. This paper uses North Carolina data where they enacted significant tenure reforms in 2012. This paper demonstrates that mobility decisions are based on teachers’ own effectiveness and that these effects depend on various teacher characteristics and credentials. Finally, Barrett, Strunk, and Lincove address how schools respond to the loss of tenure. Here, the authors build on previous work that demonstrated increases in attrition post-tenure reform in Louisiana. The authors examine if schools alter the way they compensate teachers in an effort to offset the loss of compensation due to the elimination of tenure and reduce the reform’s effect on teacher attrition. Together, these papers provide some of the first evidence about the impact of tenure reforms on student outcomes and on teacher mobility, quality and compensation. Results from these papers will help inform state policymakers as they continue to enact tenure reforms and associated staffing policies.