Teacher retention

This week I reviewed the article titled "New Schools, new students, new teachers: Evaluating the effectiveness of charter schools" by Celeste Carruthers. This article focused on charter school effectiveness and its relationship to teacher turnover and retention. The study focused on public schools in North Carolina and included numerous charter schools with varying demographics. The study concluded that teacher retention tended to increase with the age of the charter school, as did average achievement gains. However, both remained significantly below the rates observed in traditional public schools. Carruthers concluded that teacher retention was only a minor factor for student achievement and only accounted for about a third of the gains observed in math among charter school students and virtually none of the reading gains. Carruthers cites experimental biases and other aspects of charter schools, like leadership, that may contribute to the results generated in the study. Further research is needed to determine if teacher retention is a significant factor in student achievement.