Assistant Professor
Brendan Bartanen earned his Ph.D. in Leadership and Policy Studies from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University in 2019. He subsequently joined the department of Educational Administration & Human Resource Development as an assistant professor. He is also a Research Affiliate of the Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA), a research-practice partnership between Vanderbilt University and the Tennessee Department of Education. His research aims to increase our understanding of the labor market for principals and teachers. In particular, his work examines the intersections among educator turnover, measures of effectiveness, high-stakes evaluation systems, and educator diversity. He was awarded the 2019 New Scholar Award from the Association for Education Finance and Policy.
Bartanen’s research draws on large-scale, longitudinal administrative data, and he has worked extensively with statewide datasets from Tennessee and Missouri. Among his recently published work is an article in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis showing that principal turnover negatively affects student achievement and teacher retention. Additionally, he co-authored an article in the American Educational Research Journal that demonstrates that effective principals are better at strategic retention–retaining effective teachers and “failing to retain” ineffective teachers. His other projects include race and gender gaps in teacher observation scores, estimating principal effects on student attendance, and the relationship between principal race and the racial composition of a school’s teaching staff.
Areas of scholarly interest include:
- K-12 Education Policy
- School Leadership
- Principal and Teacher Labor Markets
- Educator Evaluation Systems
- Educator Diversity
- Quantitative Methods
- bartanen@tamu.edu
- (979) 862-2136