Special Education Funding and Teacher Turnover

Overview & Synopsis

We exploit differences in state special education funding systems based on special education enrollment ('bounty systems') or on total student enrollment ('census systems') to assess whether funding systems impact teacher turnover, teacher specialty, special education enrollment, state education spending, average class sizes, and teacher effort. We find that census funding decreases special education enrollment and increases turnover among special education teachers. Relative to their counterparts, special education teachers are 5 percentage points more likely to move across schools and 18 percentage points more likely to switch to general education teaching after the implementation of census funding in their state.