A school’s lowest-performing teachers are more likely to leave when the building has a highly rated principal, a new Vanderbilt University study finds.
The study, which examines six years of data from Tennessee, found that more-effective principals see lower rates of teacher turnover on average, but that is concentrated among high-performing teachers.
The data used in this study span the 2011-12 to 2016-17 school years, and use state teacher-evaluation data to classify teachers as high or low performers. The evaluation system includes both classroom-observation scores and value-added scores, which measure a teacher’s contribution to student learning. Teachers who receive low observation scores in their evaluations are more likely to leave schools with effective principals regardless of whether they have high or low value-added scores.
