Volume 9, Number 4 (Fall) 1974
Greenberg, David, and John McCall. 1974. "Teacher Mobility and Allocation." Journal of Human Resources 9(4):480-502.
The theories of human capital and internal labor markets are used to analyze teacher mobility. With data for the San Diego school system, we find that (1) since teaching assignments within school systems do not differ in terms of salary, internal mobility of teachers is governed by such nonpecuniary differences as student socioeconomic status (SES). As a result, (a) new teachers tend to be placed in low SES schools; (b) teachers tend to move toward and to stay in higher SES schools. (2) As a consequence, higher SES schools have faculties with relatively greater experience and educational attainment. The correlation between these teacher characteristics and student achievement reflects, therefore, mutual causation.
Mr. Greenberg is a member of the RAND Corporation research staff. Mr. McCall is Professor of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles, and a RAND consultant. The authors are indebted to the Personnel Division of the San Diego city schools for making available the data necessary to conduct this study. They are particularly grateful to Betty Spaeth of the Personnel Division, both for her efforts in securing the data and for the many invaluable insights she provided. The authors also wish to acknowledge the comments and suggestions of RAND colleagues Arthur J. Alexander, Stephen J. Carroll, Richard V. L. Cooper, Julie DaVanzo, Dennis De Tray, Emmett B. Keeler, Anthony Pascal, John Pincus, and Kenneth L. Ryder, and the able research assistance of Frank Berger. The research was sponsored by the U.S. Office of Education under Contract OEC-0-71-2533(099).
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