A Working Paper from EPIC

A War on Teachers? Labor Market Responses to Statewide Reform

November 2017

We examine the effect of Michigan’s 2011 reforms to teacher evaluation and tenure policies on teacher retention. Our data are drawn from administrative records containing the population of public school employees from 2005-06 through 2015-16. Our difference-in-differences identification strategy exploits the plausibly exogenous timing of pre-reform CBA contract expiration dates that governed when teachers were exposed to the reforms to isolate the causal effect of reforms on the probability that a teacher permanently exits Michigan’s traditional public schools. We find that, on average, Michigan’s teacher accountability reforms had little impact on teacher attrition. However, further analyses provide strong evidence that teachers assigned to hard-to-staff districts (proxied by poverty rates, student performance and dropout rates) were more likely to exit post reform, as well as evidence that pre-tenure teachers were also disproportionately affected. Thus, our results suggest that although more teachers exited Michigan’s schools post reform, teacher-specific reforms alone may have had little impact on overall teacher attrition, and policymakers must consider differential impacts based on experience and teaching location.