Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Numerous studies link more effective principals to lower average rates of teacher turnover. Teachers, however, vary in their own effectiveness, and high-performing principals may not target retention efforts equally to all teachers. In particular, more effective principals may seek to strategically influence the composition of their school's teaching force by retaining high performers and not retaining lower performers. Indeed, the potential for such strategic retention behaviors provides a primary motivation for many states' and districts' recent investments in large-scale, multiple-measures teacher evaluation systems. We investigate strategic teacher retention using longitudinal data from Tennessee, a state that has implemented a comprehensive statewide system for measuring both teacher and principal performance since 2011-12. Using multiple measures of principal effectiveness, we first document that, as in prior research, principals rated more positively on the state administrator evaluation rubric see lower rates of teacher turnover, on average. We show, however, that higher retention under high-performing principals is concentrated among the most effective teachers. In contrast, the lowest-performing teachers, as measured by classroom observation scores, turn over at substantially higher rates in schools with highly rated principals. This pattern is especially evident in the highest achieving schools and among novice teachers, though further analysis of evaluation scores suggests that informal means of teacher removal, such as counseling out, rather than the use of formal administrative processes, drive the increased rates of turnover among low performers in schools with effective principals.