Do professional development schools reduce teacher attrition?: Evidence from a longitudinal study of 1,000 graduates

This article describes the findings from a study of professional development schools (PDS) and tra-ditional student teaching elementary education graduates between 1996 and 2004. Specifically, the effects of teacher preparation experiences on persistence in elementary education employment were examined. The study involved mining previously collected data on teacher candidates, their entry into teaching on graduation, and their subsequent persistence in teaching. The findings indicate that even when controlling for important student background and cognitive characteristics, edu-cation in a PDS appears to significantly foster graduates ’ entry into and persistence in teaching. The effect sizes, although statistically significant, were small to moderate.Keywords: professional development schools; teacher attrition; teacher preparation Educators have studied the issue of teacher attrition for 40 years across various educational contexts. In the 1960s, attrition rates were very high but fell to all-time lows in the 1990s (Grissmer, Kirby, & Nataraj, 1997). Even though these rates have fallen, the growing concern remains that, compared to other pro-fessions, early-career teachers continue to leave at much higher rates (Certo & Fox, 2002). Most any quick overview of current education research will include issues of projected teacher shortage statistics and teacher attrition. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, dangerous teacher shortages were predicted. These pre-dictions were not fully realized; however, they did result in much more systematic and dependable data collection and research on the attrition issue. This new research interest specifically helped to differentiate between tem-porary and permanent attrition (Grissmer et al., 1997). For example, temporary attrition refers to teachers who leave and then return. In the cur-rent study, there were very few (n = 28) such teachers in this category