The Impact of Incentives to Recruit and Retain Teachers in Hard-to-Staff Subjects

We investigate the effects of a statewide program designed to increase the supply of teachers in designated hard-to-staff areas, such as special education, math, and science. Employing a difference-in-difference estimator we find that the loan forgiveness component of the program was effective, reducing mean attrition rates for middle and high school math and science teachers by 10.4 percent and 8.9 percent, respectively. We also find that the impact of loan forgiveness varied with the generosity of payments; when fully funded, the program reduced attrition of special education teachers by 12.3 percent, but did not have a statistically significant impact when funding was substantially reduced. A triple-difference estimate indicates that a one-time bonus program also had large effects, reducing the likelihood of teachers' exit by as much as 32 percent in the short run. A back-of-the-envelope cost-benefit analysis suggests that both the loan forgiveness and the bonus program were cost effective. (C) 2017 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.