Abstract:
Public school teacher tenure has been debated for nearly a century. Nearly all of this debate has focused on the two competing goals: the protection of teachers from arbitrary dismissal for political or other non-performance related reasons versus the desire to dismiss teachers who are ineffective. There is virtually no discussion of the potential for tenure to act as a performance screen that improves teacher quality and student achievement. A 2009-10 New York City (NYC) reform of its teacher tenure process offers a unique opportunity to explore the implications of a rigorous tenure performance screen. The reform exposed teachers to higher expectations and resulted in a large increase in the share of teachers having their probationary period extended one additional year rather than being granted tenure.

Does a more rigorous tenure review process improve the performance of early career teachers? To understand the value of the tenure review process as a performance screen, we examine the reform’s effect on the performance (value-added) and retention of probationary teachers (first three years of teaching) as well as the impact having the probationary period extended on teacher performance. We employ rich data covering AY 2005-06 through AY 2013-14 that include information available to principals about teacher performance, final tenure decisions, and school-, teacher-, and student-level covariates. To isolate the causal impact of the more rigorous tenure review, we estimate difference-in-differences models that compare the differences in performance (value-added) or teachers’ retention decisions between early career (those affected by the reform) and later career (those not affected by the reform) teachers over the pre-reform and post-reform periods.