New research shows just how much losing a teacher midyear hurts students | Chalkbeat Colorado

Matt Barnum, Author at Chalkbeat explains, The ill effects of teacher turnover identified in previous research may be driven largely by midyear departures, which might be more common than previously thought. 

Brown International Academy teacher Kate Tynan-Ridgeway works with a student. 
PHOTO: Cyrus McCrimmon/Denver Post

The consequences of teacher churn were apparent to Esperanza Vazquez, a mother of two from New York City. 

I had an experience with my son where he had a new teacher every week in math,”she told Chalkbeat recently. “That doesn’t help students.”   

Now new research backs up Vazquez’s experience, documenting for perhaps the first time the steep consequences for students after teachers leave a classroom in middle of the school year. 

The finding comes in a trio of new studies focusing on North Carolina. Together, they suggest that ill effects of teacher turnover identified in previous research may be driven largely by midyear departures; that those consequences extend even to students in the same grade whose teachers stay on; and that midyear turnover may be more common than previously thought, especially in schools serving more students of color and those from low-income families...

Henry and Redding’s three studies — two of which were published earlier this year in peer-reviewed journals, with the other is set to be published in coming weeks — home in on the rarely studied phenomenon of midyear teacher turnover. 
Read more... 

Source: Chalkbeat Colorado