UC Santa Barbara’s Gevirtz Graduate School of Education continues this year’s “Policy Goes to School” lecture series on Monday, May 6 from 2 pm - 3 pm in room 1213 Education Building. Shaun Dougherty, Associate Professor of Public Policy & Education, Department of Leadership, Policy, and Organizations at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University, will give the lecture “Teacher Turnover in Career and Technical Education.” The talk is free and open to the public. The lecture series is hosted by Michael Gottfried, Tine Sloan, and the Department of Education.
As the policy interest in career and technical education has increased in the last decade, there has been anecdotal discussion of whether there are enough available, qualified teachers to staff high-demand programs of study. In this paper, Dougherty uses administrative data from Massachusetts to present turnover rates among CTE teachers across subject areas and contexts. He hypothesizes that specialized CTE schools that may offer more desirable work environments experience lower rates of turnover, but that generally higher wage and demand sectors of employment experience higher rates of turnover.
Dr. Dougherty’s research emphasizes the use of quantitative research methods to evaluate the impact of educational policies and programs. He emphasizes understanding how the requirements, incentives and behaviors that those policies produce develop human capital and promote equitable outcomes, with a particular focus on how family income, race, and disability status influence policy impact. Dr. Dougherty is a national expert on career and technical education, with additional expertise in accountability policy. His work has been published in leading journals and has been cited by major media outlets. He has received research funding from IES, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Institute for Research on Poverty, which also recognized him as an Early Career Scholar. In addition, he is a faculty fellow with the Tennessee Education Research Alliance and a faculty adviser to the Strategic Data Project through the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.