New Research Shows Just how Much Losing a Teacher Midyear Hurts Students
October 23, 2018
By: Matt Barnum
Source: Chalkbeat
The consequences of teacher churn were apparent to Esperanza Vazquez, a mother of two from New York City.
“I had an experience with my son where he had a new teacher every week in math,” she told Chalkbeat recently. “That doesn’t help students.”
Now new research backs up Vazquez’s experience, documenting for perhaps the first time the steep consequences for students after teachers leave a classroom in middle of the school year.
The finding comes in a trio of new studies focusing on North Carolina. Together, they suggest that ill effects of teacher turnover identified in previous research may be driven largely by midyear departures; that those consequences extend even to students in the same grade whose teachers stay on; and that midyear turnover may be more common than previously thought, especially in schools serving more students of color and those from low-income families.