Mobility of teachers into and out of education and across school districts has very important implications for Tennessee’s ability to offer high quality education throughout the state. This report uses detailed data from the 2001-2002 through 2006-2007 school years to examine the propensity of teachers to transition from their existing positions. In total we find that between 83.0 percent and 86.1 percent of teachers stay in the same school from one year to the next. Those teachers that move can be categorized into four possible transitions: (1) movement to another school within their current district, (2) movement to another district, (3) movement by a classroom teacher to a non-classroom capacity, and (4) movement outside the Tennessee education labor force. We find that only about one percent of classroom teachers move to nonclassroom responsibilities, so this transition is not considered further. Between 4.8 percent and 7.7 percent of teachers move to a different school within the same district each year and just under two percent move to a different district. Between 6.2 and 6.9 percent exit the Tennessee education labor force each year for reasons including (but not limited to) finding a job outside education or retiring. This report investigates the underlying causes of these teacher transitions using simple statistics that compare the characteristics of the positions before and after the transition and using multivariate analysis that examines the probability that teachers will transition.
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