Impacts of Staff Turnover on Test Scores for Students with and Without Disabilities

Staff turnover is a critical issue for practitioners and policymakers alike. While extant research indicates teacher turnover has a detrimental impact on student outcomes generally, students with disabilities may be disproportionately impacted, as they receive services from both general educators and from special educators and paraeducators, who have higher turnover rates. Yet, prior research has not examined effects of turnover on students with versus without disabilities. Using administrative data from Washington State, we provide the first causal estimates of special and general education teacher and paraeducator turnover on outcomes for students with and without disabilities. We find general education teacher turnover negatively impacts test scores for both groups and there is an outsized impact of special education teacher turnover on test scores for students with disabilities. Estimates of paraeducator turnover, however, are small and not statistically significant. Our findings suggest the stability of the general education teacher workforce is important for all students, and the stability of the special education teacher workforce should be a key priority for improving outcomes for students with disabilities.