Teachers’ Labor Market Responses to Performance Evaluation Reform: Experimental Evidence from Chicago Public Schools

Abstract

Traditional teacher evaluation systems have come under scrutiny for not identifying, supporting, and, if necessary, removing low-performing teachers from the classroom. Leveraging the experimental rollout of a pilot evaluation system in Chicago, we find that, while there was no main effect of the pilot on teacher exit, the pilot system increased exit for low-rated and nontenured teachers. Furthermore, teachers who exited were lower performing than those who stayed and those who replaced them. These findings suggest that reformed evaluation systems can induce low-performing teachers to exit schools and may also improve the overall quality of the teacher labor force.