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.
