Teacher Turnover and Student Academic Achievement: A Close Look at One School Over Six Years

For at least six decades teacher turnover has been a major educational problem. Further, teacher turnover has been shown to have a negative effect on student academic achievement. This study was conducted to better understand the impact of teacher turnover on the academic achievement of students at the individual school level. Specifically, this study examined state mandated performance data, district Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments, and teacher assignment data for a Southern California elementary school over six years. The study sought to determine if there was a negative relationship between the number of new teachers assigned to fifth-grade students who had been enrolled at a Turnaround school for the 2010 through 2015 academic years and their academic achievement in reading and mathematics as measured by the Measures of Academic Progress (MAP) assessments and the California Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) or California Assessment of Students Performance and Progress (CAASPP) assessments. The researcher obtained MAP language arts and mathematics scores for 85 fifth graders who had attended the school for at least five years. In addition, the researcher collected students' enrollment data to determine the number of first and second year teachers they had from Kindergarten through fifth grade. Analysis for the MAP data revealed that the group of students who had three or more new teachers experienced noticeable (i.e., a few points) but not statistically significant lower mean performance scores in both language arts and math. However, for the STAR and CAASP data, there was a statistically significant negative correlation between the number of new teachers and students' performance. Implications of these findings for this and other schools experiencing high teacher turnover are discussed and suggestions for teacher support are provided. Keywords: Student achievement, teacher turnover, the Turnaround Model