Consequences of Educator Stress on Turnover: The Case of Charter Schools

This chapter provides a brief review of the literature on educator stress and attrition, while focusing primarily on differences in attrition rates among Texas teachers who worked at a charter school between 1998 and 2009 compared to Traditional Public School (TPS) teachers. Survival analyses revealed that teachers who worked their entire career at a charter school were at the highest risk of attrition, whereas those who worked at TPS at any point in their career were at a much lower risk. This finding was relatively consistent across other teacher and school characteristic variables. In fact, this conclusion was reached across all the predictor variables, with the odds of leaving the profession typically being more than twice that of TPS. While research has documented various predictors of teacher attrition, our study extends the research specifically on charter teachers. Given the current political climate with continued support for charter schools, it is important to investigate this population of teachers. Recommendations for further research on stress and attrition as well implications for reducing teacher stress as a means to minimize attrition, are discussed.