Teacher quality and attrition

The argument that instructors with marketable skills are likely to exit the teaching profession leads many to believe that public schools are populated by teachers of mediocre talent. Yet, teachers with skills attractive to non-education employment may not be the best individuals in the classroom. A two-stage regression technique first estimates a teacher's impact on their students conditional upon prior academic achievement and then uses this quality measure to explain teacher attrition. This paper finds that higher-quality female teachers are less likely to leave the profession. Teacher quality does not impact attrition of male teachers. (c) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.