Do Accountability Policies Push Teachers Out?

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.

The impact of accountability on U.S. schools, for good or ill, is a subject of debate and research. Recently, we studied an aspect of accountability that had previously received little attention (Ingersoll, Merrill, & May, 2016). We asked, do accountability reforms affect public schools' ability to retain their teachers?