When the Walls Come Down: Evidence on Charter Schools’Ability to Keep Their Best Teachers Without Unions and Certification Rules

Oct 15, 2026

Market-based school reform theory argues that teacher labor markets can improve when schools have autonomy to shape hiring, retention, and pay based on performance. This article tests that claim by comparing teacher exits in deregulated New Orleans charter schools with nearby traditionally governed districts. Results show a stronger link between teacher performance and retention in the deregulated market, and salary correlates with performance mainly when teachers move between charter schools. Despite improved retention, average incoming teacher quality declines relative to peers outside New Orleans.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages30

Reading Time1 h 16 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Teacher labor-market policies and evaluation reforms

Portfolio governance and charter-school deregulation

Study setting: New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

Methods and comparative analysis

Comparing exits and retention across districts

Research Article Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis June 2022, Vol. 44, No. 2, pp. 283–312 DOI: 10. 3102/01623737211047265 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)© 2021 AERA. [https://journals.sagepub.com/home/epa](https://journals.sagepub.com/home/epa) When the Walls Come Down: Evidence on Charter Schools’Ability to Keep Their Best Teachers Without Unions and Certification Rules Nathan Barrett The Coleridge Initiative Deven Carlson The University of Oklahoma Douglas N. Harris Tulane University Jane Arnold Lincove University of Maryland, Baltimore County Theories of market-based school reform suggest that teacher labor markets may be inefficient because schools lack autonomy to incentivize performance in hiring, retention, and compensation. We test this empirically by comparing teacher exits in the deregulated market of New Orleans with neighboring traditional school districts. We find that the relationship between teacher performance and retention is stronger in the deregulated market. We also find positive associations between salary and performance, but only when teachers transfer from one charter school to another. While teacher retention is more closely tied to performance in New Orleans, this did not yield a net gain in teacher quality, because new teachers in New Orleans were of lower average quality than their peers in neighboring districts. Keywords: economics of education, educational policy, educational reform, school/teacher effectiveness, teacher assessment, charter schools, econometric analysis, longitudinal studies, policy analysis, regression analyses over the past decade, policies governing teacher labor markets have changed markedly. Many states and districts have implemented teacher evaluation systems, eliminated traditional job protections, and experimented with compensation strategies that depart from traditional step-and-ladder salary schedules (e.g., Kraft, 2018) . With increasing evidence that teachers are critical to student outcomes (e.g., Chetty et al., 2014; Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010; Rivkin et al., 2005; Rockoff, 2004), these policy changes seek to improve the quality of teaching by providing school and district leaders with authority to make staffing and compensation decisions based on performance—a strategy restricted by many union contracts (Marianno, 2015; Moe, 2011; Strunk et al., 2018), as well as many state tenure laws (Barrett et al., 2021; Kraft Barrett et al. et al., 2020), although some states have weakened their tenure statutes over the past decade (Kraft et al., 2020) . At the same time, a number of districts across the country have also transitioned to more market-based school governance models by implementing a system of autonomous schools—often referred to as a “portfolio” system—that relies on private organizations to run schools and advance a larger goal of introducing market forces into the education system (Hill et al., 2013) . Recent accountings by the Center for Reinventing Public Education identify at least 25 large districts across the United States that have moved toward a portfolio system, including Nashville, New York City, Baltimore, Denver, and Los Angeles, among others (Campbell et al., 2017; Lake et al., 2016) . Texas has had almost 20 districts sign onto its recent System of Great Schools initiative, an effort designed to assist districts in their transitions to a portfolio system. In short, transitions toward portfolio systems have been among the most common systemic reform initiatives in recent years, and these transitions show little sign of abating. A key tenet of the portfolio strategy, and market-based education systems more generally, is that the government should hold school operators responsible for school performance and, in turn, operators are granted autonomy to make decisions regarding curriculum, scheduling, budgeting,

FAQs

What question does the article investigate about charter schools?

It examines whether New Orleans’ deregulated, portfolio-style charter system is more able to attract and retain highly effective teachers than traditionally governed districts.

What does the study find about the link between teacher performance and retention?

Teacher performance is more strongly associated with retention in the deregulated New Orleans charter market than in neighboring traditional districts.

Why does improved retention not translate into higher overall teacher quality?

New teachers entering New Orleans have lower average quality than teachers entering neighboring districts, offsetting any retention-related gains.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by MrHarris58