Do Accountability Policies Push Teachers Out?

Richard Ingersoll, Lisa Merrill, Henry May
May 1, 2016

Sanctions exacerbate the teacher turnover problem in low-performing schools—but giving teachers more classroom autonomy can help stem the flood. School accountability may be the most controversial and significant of all contemporary U.S. education reforms. The accountability movement began in the 1990s as some states initiated various combinations of incentives and sanctions for schools based on student test scores, under the theory that this combination of carrots and sticks would lead to improvements in school performance. In January 2002, accountability gained major impetus as a nationwide reform with the advent of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), revised in 2016 as the Every Student Succeeds Act.

Keywords: Education, teaching, teachers, ESEA, ESSA, high stakes testing, high-stakes testing, incentives, rewards, sanctions

Richard Ingersoll, Lisa Merrill, Henry May