Teacher placement, mobility, and occupational choices after teaching

Abstract

Teachers’ initial placement has important implications for student achievement and the distribution of teachers among schools. This paper combines data from a US Baccalaureate and Beyond longitudinal study with school and school district information from the Common Core of Data to study the effects of initial school placement on teacher mobility. Multinomial logit hazard analysis shows that higher salaries may help retain teachers in the field and improved working conditions may help reduce teacher mobility within the profession. Teachers who change careers do not necessarily earn higher salaries; the occupation choice affects earnings in the new job.

Keywords:

• public school teachers
• comparable-wage-index-adjusted salaries
• working conditions
• occupational mobility
• teacher mobility

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Editor Professor Steve Bradley and two anonymous referees for their constructive comments. I am grateful to Tim Sass for his comments and suggestions. I would like to thank Lori Taylor, David Macpherson, Thomas McCaleb, Douglas Harris, Stefan Norrbin, Lynn MacDonald, and participants at the 2006 American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting and the 2007 American Education Finance Association Annual Meeting. I appreciate the National Center for Education Statistics for providing the restricted-use data. Any views expressed in this paper are solely my own. This research was supported by a dissertation grant from the American Educational Research Association which receives funds for its ‘AERA Grants Program’ from the National Science Foundation and the National Center for Education Statistics of the Institute of Education Sciences (U.S. Department of Education) under NSF Grant #REC-0310268. Opinions reflect those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the granting agencies.

Notes

1. To facilitate comparisons across individuals, I use the concordance table published by the SAT to convert all ACT scores into equivalent SAT scores.

2. Common Core of Data – Local Education Agency (School District) Universe Survey Data, 2001, 2002, 2003; Common Core of Data – Local Education Agency (School District) Finance Survey Data, 2001, 2002, 2003.

3. For years prior to 1997, the CWI for 1997 is used to capture geographic cost-of-living differences.

4. From the College Board website (http://www.collegeboard.com/sat/cbsenior/yr1996/nat/72-96.html), the average re-centered SAT test score is 1003 for college-bound seniors. The B&B is a sample of these college graduates; therefore, their mean SAT test score is higher than the national average.

5. About 12 out of 449 teachers fall into this category of teaching in both surveys 1993 and 2003 but not in 1997.