Estimating the Impact of Preparatory Teaching Experience on Teacher Retention

About 21 percent of Texas teachers leave the profession within the first three years of teaching. Taking advantage of variation in required preparatory teaching experience -- called student teaching -- hours across educator preparation programs (EPPs), this study uses pooled Texas administrative data to adapt Boyd et al.'s (2006) conceptual model of the effects of EPP characteristics on teacher retention. A logistic regression with year and program fixed effects estimates substantial gains from increasing the number of hours required for student teaching. In fact, increasing the number of hours required for student teaching from one semester (0-300 hours) to two semesters (301-600 hours) can increase the odds of retaining a teacher for one year by 54.4 percent. An increase from one to four semesters of student teaching is correlated with a 70.9 percent increase the odds two-year teacher retention. A state mandate for two semesters of student teaching would raise the state's one-year teacher retention rate to 74.6 percent and a mandate for four semesters of student teaching would raise the state's two-year retention rate to 63.4 percent. However, there are decreasing marginal returns to additional hours of student teaching in terms of retention. The number of required hours for student teaching represents an important yet singular aspect of teacher preparation and state policies should expand their focus on teacher preparation beyond student teaching requirements.