Is Teacher Effectiveness Stable Across School Contexts? An Examination of Teachers Who Transfer Into Turnaround Schools

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam

Teacher effectiveness is often assumed to remain stable when high-performing teachers transfer into turnaround schools, yet effectiveness may change after transfer and help explain why some teacher-replacement reforms fail to raise student achievement. This paper examines stability by comparing teachers who move into Tennessee turnaround models—one with positive student outcomes and one with no impact—against teachers transferring into low-performing non-turnaround schools, finding increases or decreases depending on the model’s turnaround effects.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Teacher effectiveness stability assumption in turnaround reforms

Tennessee turnaround context: ASD vs iZones

AERA Open January-December 2022, Vol. XX, No. X, pp. 1–17 DOI: 10. 1177/23328584221139763 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© The Author(s) 2022. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/ero) Is Teacher Effectiveness Stable Across School Contexts? An Examination of Teachers Who Transfer Into Turnaround Schools Lam D. Pham North Carolina State University Turnaround interventions often require or encourage low-performing schools to replace teachers, assuming that schools will recruit high-performing teachers who remain effective after transferring. However, teacher effectiveness may change after transferring, which could explain why some teacher replacement efforts do not improve student achievement. This paper contributes new information on the stability of teacher effectiveness by examining teachers who transfer into turnaround schools relative to teachers who transfer into low-performing but non-turnaround schools. I examine this issue by using two turnaround models in Tennessee, one with documented positive effects and one producing no effects on student achievement. Ifind that teacher effectiveness increases after transferring into the model that produced positive effects and either decreases or stays the same after transferring into the model that did not improve student achievement. These findings suggest that heterogeneity in turnaround effects may be partly explained by changes in teacher effectiveness after they transfer into turnaround schools. Keywords: difference in differences, school reform, school turnaround, teacher effectiveness Introduction School turnaround initiatives promising to dramatically improve student achievement often rely on interventions that help low-performing schools recruit effective teachers (Dragoset et al., 2017; Redding & Nguyen, 2020; Rice & Malen, 2010; Schueler et al., 2021) . These staff replacement policies in turnaround schools have received substantial resource investments and policy attention, but evaluations report mixed results on student achievement, even when thereforms successfully recruit high-performing teachers (Carlson & Lavertu, 2018; Glazerman et al., 2013; Henry et al., 2020) . Mixed results in some reform models, despite an influx of effective teachers, call into question the assumption that effective teachers will perform equally well after transferring into a turnaround school. To test this assumption, I examine the stability of teacher effectiveness after they transfer into Tennessee’s turnaround schools. The Tennessee context is highly informative for this study because the state has been implementing two active turnaround models that have both recruited effective teachers into their schools (Henry et al., 2020): the Achievement School District (ASD) and local Innovation Zones (iZones) . I describe the ASD and iZone reforms in detail below, but although both models recruited effective teachers, prior research has found that ASD schools did not improve student achievement, while iZone schools produced significantly positive effects (Pham et al., 2020; Zimmer et al., 2017) . In this paper, I compare changes in the effectiveness of teachers who transfer into ASD schools and teachers who transfer into iZone schools, both relative to changes in the effectiveness of teachers who transfer into low-performing but non-turnaround schools. This analysis provides important new insights to explain whether the mixed impact of turnaround reforms can be at least partially explained by changes in teacher effectiveness after they transfer. Additionally, this study makes important contributions to our understanding of contextual influences on teacher effectiveness. Although a few studies have examined differences in teacher effectiveness after transferring across schools serving different poverty levels or different levels of acad

FAQs

What assumption about teacher replacement in turnaround schools does the paper challenge?

Turnaround reforms often assume that effective teachers recruited by low-performing schools will remain effective after transferring. The paper tests whether teacher effectiveness stays stable across different turnaround contexts.

How does the study compare teacher outcomes across school types?

It compares teachers who transfer into Tennessee turnaround schools (ASD and iZones) relative to teachers who transfer into low-performing but non-turnaround schools, using the latter as a reference group.

What does the paper find about teacher effectiveness after transferring?

Teacher effectiveness increases after transferring into the turnaround model that produced positive student achievement effects, but decreases or stays the same after transferring into the model that did not improve student achievement.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Adam