CALDER's Mission
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Education is vital not just for individual well-being, but for the nation's economic well-being in a competitive global economy. An appetite for ways to improve schooling in the United States is evident at all levels of government and among the public. Feeding that appetite with first-rate research on the effects of different policies is our mission. CALDER informs education policy leaders through analysis of data on individual students and teachers over time. Our research will focus most centrally on how the following affect outcomes for teachers (e.g., who teaches and where) and students (e.g., academic achievement, graduation rates):
Our ultimate interest is in student outcomes with particular attention to how outcomes differ for subgroups of the population. Given the major role that teachers play in determining student outcomes, a central focus of our research effort will be on teachers, especially who teaches which students and the determinants of teacher quality, as evidenced by student achievement gains. We also expect to make significant technical analytic contributions to the field as we engage new rich databases to help guide policymaking. By exploring similar questions across different states, we can also increase confidence in our results. This is one of CALDER’s key value propositions. Our team is geographically dispersed—strategically so—but it has a common mission and strong central research focus. Each of our partners is situated to enable access to key state and local data sources, but our research program is integrated with common themes and research questions. The multiple sources of data that partners provide complement each other and allow us to extend analyses, test findings under different policy and context conditions, and move the policy research agenda forward forcefully and efficiently. CALDER is a case where the whole will be significantly greater than the sum of the parts. | |
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