Performance Screens for School Improvement: The Case of Teacher Tenure Reform in New York City

Tenure is intended to protect teachers with demonstrated teaching skills against arbitrary or capricious dismissal. Critics of typical tenure processes argue that tenure assessments are superficial and rarely discern whether teachers in fact have the requisite teaching skills. A recent reform of the tenure process in New York City provides an unusual opportunity to learn about the role of tenure in teachers’ career outcomes. We find the reform led to many fewer teachers receiving tenure. Those not receiving tenure typically had their probationary periods extended to allow them an opportunity to demonstrate teaching effectiveness. These “extended” teachers were much more likely to leave their schools and be replaced by a teacher who was judged to be more effective. Thanks to Joanna Cannon, Anne-Marie Hoxie and Keely Alexander at the New York City Department of Education for providing the data employed in this paper and for answering questions about the NYCDOE tenure policy. We benefited from comments by Arthur Mckee, Doug Harris and three anonymous reviewers on earlier drafts of this paper. We appreciate financial support from the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER). CALDER is supported by IES Grant R305A060018. The views expressed in the paper are solely those of the authors. Any errors are attributable to the authors.