Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Our study will examine the effects of a charter school opening on teacher turnover and teacher quality in neighboring traditional public schools. We will investigate this question using longitudinal administrative data on teachers and schools from North Carolina.

Jackson (2012) also looked at this question using North Carolina data from 1996 to 2006; he found small overall effects of charter school entry on teacher turnover and teacher quality (other than for certain subgroups). However, the context in North Carolina has changed dramatically since then. The state had originally capped the number of charters at 100, and after the cap was removed in 2011 a flood of applications ensued, with 224 charter schools currently operating (Ladd, Clotfelter, and Holbein 2017).

We seek to build on this prior work over a longer time horizon to test whether charter schools have a more pronounced effect on local teacher labor markets in response to significantly larger charter penetration in urban and rural school districts, and with opportunities for teachers to work in charter schools more readily available. Specifically, we will examine the effects of charter schools on the distribution of teacher quality and teacher demographics across schools at both the extensive and intensive margins of charter penetration. We will also examine the secondary effects of these distributional changes on student access to quality teachers across student subgroups. Our findings should have critical implications for policymakers grappling with the long-run impacts of charter schools on public education.