Stay a Little Longer? Teacher Turnover, Retention and Quality in Disadvantaged Schools

Using French administrative data on secondary school teachers, we analyze a non-pecuniary, “career-path oriented” centralized incentive scheme designed to attract and retain teachers in French disadvantaged schools. We rely on a major reform of the structure of this incentive scheme to identify its effect on teacher turnover, retention, and quality in disadvantaged schools. \n \nWe find this incentive scheme has a statistically significant positive effect on the number of consecutive years teachers stay in disadvantaged schools and decreases the probability of inexperienced teachers in disadvantaged schools to leave the profession. However, we find no statistically significant effect on the teacher experience gap nor the student achievement gap between disadvantaged and non disadvantaged schools.