Time-Out on Timing: The Relationship between the Timing of Teacher Hires and Teacher Quality. Working Paper 2009-04

Interest in understanding how principals and school districts hire teachers has increased as empirical evidence on teacher effectiveness has grown. Case studies suggest late hiring timelines are pervasive in large urban school districts and result in the loss of more qualified teachers to surrounding suburbs. This paper uses labor market fixed effects regression techniques to provide the first empirical estimates of the relationship between the timing of teacher hires and teacher qualifications. Using the 1999-2000 SASS, I find that urban and low SES districts make over half of their teacher hires late. However, analyses find no relationship between timing and teacher qualifications including selectivity of university attended, certification, and master's degree. Null results persist across multiple specifications and subgroup analyses. (Contains 9 tables and 4 footnotes.)