Title: Naming names
Description: This dissertation examines the causal effects of the publication of individual teacher ratings on (1) teacher movement and (2) teacher-student assignment patterns in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD). Both analyses use a difference-in-differences strategy that exploits the fact that the Los Angeles Times publication of individual teacher ratings in August 2010 was an exogenous shock to the school system. In the first section, I find that elementary teachers rated average, less effective and least effective in publication were over 30 percent more likely to leave teaching in the district as a result of the publication than elementary teachers without ratings. In contrast, the leave rates of teachers rated effective were not impacted. Findings were robust to a second publication of teacher ratings at the end of the same school year. While teacher transfer rates were not impacted by the initial publication of teacher ratings, they were impacted by the second release of ratings after controlling for the earlier ratings teachers received. On average, teachers with an effective rating in the second release transferred to schools with fewer free- or reduced-price lunch (FRPL), limited English proficient (LEP) and non-white students in 2011-12 on average relative to the schools they came from as a result of the publication. Teachers rated ineffective transferred to schools with relatively more FRPL, LEP and non-white students on average.

In the second section, I describe teacher-student assignment patterns across and within LAUSD elementary schools. As has been found in other districts, LAUSD students who are more disadvantaged and achieve at lower levels are in classrooms taught by teachers with less experience than the students in classrooms of more experienced teachers across the district and within individual schools. I then estimate the impact of the publication of teacher effectiveness ratings on within-school assignment patterns. The impacts of sorting were quite small overall, not statistically significant after accounting for multiple hypothesis testing, and limited to only one outcome. As a result of the publication, ineffective teachers had somewhat larger percentages of students new to the school in their classrooms relative to their grade-level peers.
Subjects: Teachers, Rating of, Teacher mobility, Teacher effectiveness, Teacher-student relationships
Places: United States