Follow the Leader: Principal Characteristics and Teachers’ Labor Market Decisions

Purpose: School leaders shape the day-to-day lives of teachers and likely influence how teachers approach labor market decisions. In this paper, we describe teachers’ revealed preferences for principal qualities, analyzing over 13,000 transfer applications across 13 years from the Wake County Public School System. Findings: When transfer applicants had previously worked with a school's principal, they were 10 percentage points more likely to request that school compared to other schools. Transfer applicants were also more likely to request schools with strong survey reports of leadership and where the principal was more experienced. The schools that were the most likely to have vacancies because teachers sought to exit them at high rates also generally had the least demand for those positions; notably, on average, these schools served student populations that were historically marginalized and had low levels of prior achievement. Implications: While district teacher transfer policies allow teachers flexibility, within-district transfers can also be costly since they can contribute to school-level teacher churn. Principals at schools with many transfer seekers could benefit from district support with recruitment in the short term while working toward the longer-term goal of developing leaders’ abilities to foster school climates where teachers want to work. Districts can use teacher transfer requests as an early indicator of teacher attrition; this information could enable principals to identify teachers who are likely to leave and target their retention efforts, particularly with effective teachers and teachers working in hard-to-staff areas.