Teacher Career Paths, Teacher Quality, and Persistence in the Classroom: Are Public Schools Keeping Their Best?

This paper examines the mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality—measured using value-added methods—and focuses on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. On average, more effective teachers remain in the profession and stay in their initial schools. But there appears to be heterogeneity in mobility behavior across the performance distribution and evidence that student demographics and achievement levels affect teacher mobility.