How has iZone Teacher Recruitment Affected the Performance of Other Schools?

This brief continues the examination of Tennessee’s efforts to turn around its lowest performing schools by reviewing the extent to which statewide iZone teacher recruitment has impacted the schools from which these teachers came.

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Published:
January 2018

Authors:
Adam Kho
Gary T. Henry
Ron Zimmer
Lam Pham

Key Findings

 

  • Students in schools losing teachers to iZone schools experienced a small negative effect as a result of those teacher losses, particularly in reading and science.
  • This effect of losing teachers was smaller in Priority schools than in non-Priority schools.
  • The small negative effects of losing teachers in the schools that lost these teachers does not appear to offset the positive effects in iZone schools. Overall, considering both, our calculations show a net positive impact on students in Tennessee as a result of the iZone initiative.

Methods

This analysis used four years of Tennessee teacher and student-level data. Researchers examined data on 234 iZone teachers from three Tennessee school districts. Researchers compared student test score gains in grades that lost a teacher to iZone schools to other grades in the same school that did not lose a teacher to the iZone. This approach allowed researchers to control for other school-level changes that may have impacted student achievement.


Adam Kho

Adam Kho

Adam Kho is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of Southern California's Rossier School of Education

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Gary T. Henry

Gary T. Henry

Gary T. Henry is dean of the University of Delaware's College of Education and Human Development and professor in the School of Education and the Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy & Administration

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Ron Zimmer

Ron Zimmer

Ron Zimmer is a Professor and Director of the Martin School of Public Policy and Administration at University of Kentucky.

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Lam Pham

Lam Pham

Lam D. Pham is an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University

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