In the News
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Below you will find news articles where CALDER research and analysis,and the critical work of CALDER experts has appeared, including sources used in the articles. Please note, article links cited below were verified on the day of publication and may change.
"Jane Hannaway, director of the Education Policy Center for the Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit economic and social-policy research center, has studied the quality of teachers at low- and high-poverty schools. "You have [some] teachers in those high-poverty schools that are hitting it out of the ballpark," she said. "Still, high-poverty schools have a much greater variation between their best and worst teachers, while there is a much more slight variation in low-poverty schools."  Race to the TopEducation Week, Teacher Beat blog (September 11, 2009) Stephen Sawchuk "Ladd has been involved in a number of studies associated with this research group at the Urban Institute that makes use of value-added data."
"A 2008 Urban Institute study found that TFA corps members were, on average, more effective than other teachers in all subject areas, especially in math and science. In all cases, the positive impact of having a TFA teacher was at least twice that of having an experienced teacher relative to a new teacher."
"In a study of California schools , David P. Sims, an economics professor at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, examined the effect that having enough students to constitute a “subgroup” under the federal No Child Left Behind Act had on a school’s ability to make adequate yearly progress and the resulting impact on teacher turnover...His study was among those recently released at a conference hosted by the Washington-based Urban Institute’s National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research and the National Center on Performance Incentives at Vanderbilt University." Teach for America is Working for StudentsLas Vegas Sun (August 21, 2009) Allison Serafin "A 2008 Urban Institute study updated this year found that our corps members have positive effects on student achievement relative to other teachers, including experienced teachers, traditionally prepared teachers, and those fully certified in their field." National Mission in Local ClassroomsDelaware Online (August 20, 2009) Jennifer Price "A national study suggests the program benefits students. According to a study by the Urban Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan center focused on social and economic issues, last year, Teach for America teachers were found to be more effective in achieving better student test results than noncorps teachers with three or more years of experience."
"Take a look at an Ed Week story on No Child Left Behind. The story discusses research presented at a meeting of the Washington-based Urban Institute’s National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. Among the findings: (1) The law has given schools incentive to leave the worst- and best-scoring students behind and concentrate on students in the middle; (2) Schools with subgroups of Hispanic or black students were more likely to not meet AYP and lose experienced teachers after the failure to meet AYP is made public." Studies Weigh NCLB's Broad ImpactEducation Week (August 13, 2009) Dakarai I. Aarons "The researchers presented their findings at a conference hosted yesterday by the Washington-based Urban Institute’s National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research. They studied state implementation of the landmark federal education law and its impact on student achievement, teacher distribution and quality, and the teaching of subjects not covered in the law, among other topics." Professors Grade Education LawMedill Reports (August 12, 2009) Chris Linden "Sponsored by the Urban Institute’s CALDER Center, which specializes in education research, the event in Washington drew about 170 policy analysts and scholars." Teach For America a boon for CMS, N.C. students, tooJohn Tate The Charlotte Observer (July 22, 2009) "Recent research, conducted in North Carolina by the Urban Institute, shows that the impact of Teach For America teachers on high school student achievement is significant. In some cases it is more than twice that of non-TFA teachers, especially in the subjects of math and science."
"Teachers are starting to adjust to the new landscape. They are "both feeling the pressure and willing to think about doing new things," said Jane Hannaway, director of education policy at the Urban Institute..."It's a new world."
"High school students taught by Teach for America teachers performed better than other students on statewide tests in math and science, according to a 2008 study by the Urban Institute, a research organization. Teach for America's educators, who are more often new teachers, work in mostly urban and rural-area schools."
"Despite criticism toward TFA’s effectiveness, recent data shows that teachers in the program have demonstrated a positive impact on students in high-poverty schools. A 2008 Urban Institute study updated this year found that TFA members have a positive effect on student achievement relative to other teachers and those certified in their field." OUR OPINION: Teach for America can benefit N.D.Tom Dennis Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald (June 28, 2009) “The findings show that TFA teachers are more effective, as measured by student exam performance, than traditional teachers,” a 2008 study by the Urban Institute of Washington, D.C., concluded. “The positive TFA results are robust across subject areas, but are particularly strong for math and science classes.”
"In the Twin Cities, teachers will be assigned to schools where the household incomes of 70 percent of the students qualify them for federal free lunches. This poverty is a challenge that draws many to Teach for America. And they get results. An Urban Institute study published in March finds that Teach for America teachers often deliver superior performance for their students, as measured by exam results. The positive results span all subject areas but are particularly strong in math and science."
"Teach for America, however, cites a 2008 Urban Institute study that found that high school students taught by Teach for America teachers outperformed their peers." "A study by the Urban Institute found that "TFA teachers are more effective, as measured by student exam performance, than traditional teachers." Performance-Based FundingEric A. Hanushek and Alfred A. Lindseth Education Week (June 08, 2009) "How to finance our schools remains controversial, and is the subject of continuous rancor in courthouses and statehouses across the nation...The basic problem with most school finance systems, both those in existence and those proposed, is that funding is separated from education policy. At a minimum, this eliminates a powerful tool: the huge incentives a properly designed finance system can offer for achieving improved outcomes." Researchers need more data to show what works and whySarah Karp Catalyst Chicago (June 04, 2009) "Studies already have shown that regardless of the school – good or bad, rich or poor -- good teachers can push students up a full grade level and bad ones can hold him down a grade level, Jane Hannaway, the founding director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, told colleagues Thursday at a seminar on outcome measurements across the education, child welfare and health systems. “In the worst schools, you find stars doing terrific things,” she said. The education research agenda also includes figuring out the effect that principals have on student outcomes. Teachers and others stress that principals do make a difference, but Hannaway says that so far there is little empirical evidence to show that. She’s also involved in examining the effectiveness of teacher incentive programs with these data systems." "A national study suggests the program benefits students. According to an Urban Institute study last year, Teach for America teachers were found to be more effective in achieving better student test results than non-corps teachers with three or more years of experience."
"More generally, [the letter] confuses the research on teachers' improvement trajectories with an absolute measure of effectiveness: Teachers do typically improve over their first three to five years in the classroom, but not all five-year veterans, even those who are maximally effective, are necessarily better than all first-year novices."
"Research over the years has shown that students with first-year teachers do not learn as much. However, a 2008 Urban Institute study found that Teach for America members were, on average, more effective than regular teachers, even those who were more experienced. A recent follow-up to the study this year confirmed the findings in a larger sample of teachers." Teach for America is Growing, but Union-influenced Policies Keep it from Doing MoreAlisa Harris World Magazine (May 22, 2009) "Other TFA teachers also seem to be getting results. A 2008 study by the Urban Institute found, looking at student exam performance, that TFA teachers are more effective than traditional teachers and even more effective than experienced secondary school teachers."
"But Superintendent Peter Gorman is right to hire more Teach for America graduates regardless. They have proven their mettle. A new study shows they often have stronger academic backgrounds than other teachers and are generally highly effective in the classroom – more so in math and science than traditional teachers. Those results will surprise some. But they come from a study of N.C. teachers between 2000 and 2006, recently released by the Urban Institute and CALDER (the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research), a research program involving several universities including Duke and Stanford. The study debunks the notion that TFA graduates are academically weak and poorly trained. And it provides needed data on the impact TFA teachers are having in the classroom, data the authors said has been surprisingly absent."
"Eric A. Hanushek, a research fellow at Stanford University who studies the economics of education and specializes in how teacher quality and class sizes impact student achievement, said few conclusions about classrooms can be reached with certainty because so many variables affect each student’s performance. However, research does show, he said, that variations in teacher quality effect tremendous change in the classroom. While he said it is difficult to correlate a teacher’s performance with student achievement, several studies that compare teachers among one another in classrooms have found that differences in teacher quality showed huge variation among classroom achievement—that teachers, in effect, were the classroom’s single most important variable. Research also shows that simply changing one variable in the classroom—say, inserting a good teacher into the mix—isn’t enough, he said."
"An Urban Institute study published in 2008 found that high school students taught by Teach For America teachers outperform their peers, even those taught by fully certified teachers," Tipton said."
"That kind of contractual bonus is rare in districts throughout the country, said Michael Podgursky a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Wisconsin. “I’ve seen these in contracts, but I’ve never seen it at 50 percent,” said Podgursky, who has authored numerous works about education and the rising cost of pensions."
"The A+ vouchers werefamous in education circles for yielding improvements in failing public schools. Four separate sets of studies, including researchers at Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, the Manhattan Institute and the Urban Institute, have found that the A+ program produced especially dramatic improvements in 2002-2003, the first year when vouchers were offered to a substantial number of students."
"The concentration of new teachers in low-income communities is "remarkably consistent" across the nation, said James Wyckoff, a University of Virginia economist. Many teachers leave jobs in low-income communities after a year or two. Their flight leaves openings in struggling schools, which are filled by more new teachers."
"A rigorous 2008 study by the Urban Institute found that the incremental impact of students having a TFA teacher was three times the incremental impact of having a teacher with three or more years of experience. TFA results were strong in all subjects, but particularly strong in math and science."
"But the Urban Institute has studied the program and found that "TFA status more than offsets any experience effects. Disadvantaged secondary students would be better off with TFA teachers, especially in math and science, than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience."
"High school students taught by Teach for America teachers perform better on end-of-course exams than those taught by traditional teachers, says an evaluation by the Urban Institute...That finding holds true even when comparing Teach for America's teachers to more experienced educators, and even though the nonprofit's teachers are assigned to more academically-challenged classrooms... The 2009 report updates a 2007 report using a larger sample size and additional comparisons." "Jane Hannaway, the director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, cautioned the group to also “be careful what you wish for.” “We’ve got all this big-time money, and there’s no way that we can complain anymore that we don’t have enough money to do the job,” she said. “If we find in a few years that all this money didn’t make a difference, we’re further back than where we started.”
"The highest quality studies have consistently shown that students learn more in charter schools... Florida State economist Tim Sass and colleagues found that middle-school students at charters in Florida and Chicago who continued into charter high schools were significantly more likely to graduate and go on to college than their peers who returned to district high schools because charter high schools were not available."
"...researchers Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, and Colin Taylor decided to update their study with a larger sample of teachers and students. They added data for 32 teachers and more than 2,000 students, and re-ran the numbers so that they could do more "apples to apples" comparisons. The results were the same: Across the eight subjects tested, the students of TFA teachers racked up bigger learning gains than their non-TFA counterparts...The overall TFA boost, in fact, was bigger than the size of the learning improvement that students normally get from having a teacher who's been on the job for three years or more."
"Jane Hannaway, the director of education policy center at the Urban Institute, a Washington-based think tank, praised the [T3] database for opening new avenues for study..."This is ... a cross section of contracts that's likely to yield some interesting results we won't get elsewhere," she said. "The database will become longitudinal, hopefully, and I think the analyses will get richer and richer."
"In an Urban Institute study that examined North Carolina high schools between 2000 and 2007, Teach for America recruits were found to be more effective than teachers from traditional teacher training schools in boosting student achievement. The report... attributed some success to the strong academic credentials of the recruits, but acknowledged that many of the recruits teach for only a few years."
"Jane Hannaway, director of education policy at the Urban Institute a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, DC said the [Bronx Preparatory Charter] school's results jibe with studies that have found a weak correlation between certification and teacher quality. "I think the general point is that certification in and of itself doesn't explain a whole lot about teacher effectiveness," she said."
"Last spring, the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, released a study showing that the incremental impact of a Teach For America corps member on student achievement was three times greater than the incremental impact of veteran teachers studied."
"Advocates point to research, such as a recent report from Urban Institute, a nonprofit organization, that North Carolina high school students of teachers in the program were more successful in state-required exams than students of more experienced teachers."
"Studies by universities, think tanks and other organizations (Harvard, Princeton, the Urban Institute, the Manhattan Institute and the Federal Reserve, to name a few) have all reached the same conclusion: When public schools are exposed to vouchers they improve in response to increased competition."
"A study by the Urban Institute found that today's city public school hires have more attractive attributes - such as scoring higher on certification exams - than the hires of old...What's more, the Urban Institute researchers found that these new hires helped reduce the gap in credentials between teachers in high- and low- poverty schools."
"The fine folks over at the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research have an interesting study up on the use of student test-score data in tenure decisions...Using a matched set of teacher/student data encompassing about 10,000 North Carolina teachers, researchers Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen...attempted to determine whether this "value added" data over a teacher's first few years can predict his or her future performance, thus giving districts useful objective data upon which to base tenure decisions."
"And, it turns out, school choice delivers an added bonus. The Urban Institute, a leading national think tank in Washington, found that competition spurred a general improvement in student achievement in Florida's "F" schools. When faced with accountability pressure and choice, these schools tried new and better ways to raise standards." 2008 | Back to Top
"And a study this year by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C., that looked at six years of data on end-of-course tests for high-school students in North Carolina found that students taught by Teach for America teachers learned more in a year than students taught by other teachers."
"According to a recent Urban Institute study at the high-school level, Teach For America teachers are, on average, more effective than other teachers, including those who are fully certified in their subject areas."
"The standards as originally conceptualized don't appear to be the standards on the books in many states," said Jane Hannaway, the co-chairwoman of the academy working group that developed the recommendations on standards. "They are too voluminous, superficial, and repetitive, and there's little coherent direction for instruction.""And there is a concern that the assessments overrepresent easy-to-measure skills and underrepresent complex reasoning skills," added Ms. Hannaway, the director of the Education Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a think tank based here."
"The whole field of education is changing very swiftly and becoming a much more data-driven system," said Jane Hannaway, director of the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the Urban Institute...Even data advocates such as Hannaway caution that tests are prone to errors and misuse. Narrow tests will force teachers to narrow their teaching, she said, and scholars are still learning how to untangle teacher impact from the myriad factors that affect children and their test scores."
"However, the first study to examine Teach for America at the secondary-school level, recently released by the Urban Institute, finds that its teachers are in fact more effective than those with traditional training—at all levels of experience. The study measured performance on state exams and found that students of Teach for America instructors did significantly better in all subject areas tested, and especially in math and science. The authors found that even though the program's teachers are assigned to "the most demanding classrooms," they're able to compensate for their lack of experience with better academic preparation and motivation. As a result, the authors say, students are better off with Teach for America instructors "than with fully licensed in-field teachers with three or more years of experience."
"On average, high school students taught by TFA corps members performed significantly better on state-required end-of-course exams, especially in math and science, than peers taught by far more experienced instructors. The TFA teachers' effect on student achievement in core classroom subjects was nearly three times the effect of teachers with three or more years of experience."
"To identify which schools best accelerate learning for underperforming children, growth models may need to be freed from grade-level proficiency goals, researchers said at a forum hosted by The Urban Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank."
"But, as Duke University professor and researcher Helen Ladd pointed out, poor-performing teachers are not evenly distributed within a district, and they tend to be clumped in high-poverty schools — thus rendering a sweeping policy solution to disbar that 10 percent from teaching unfeasible."
"The Urban Institute has published a paper on Teach for America that suggests the recent college graduates it employs are an impressive bunch."
"The May 23 conference at the Urban Institute, a think tank based here in the nation's capital, examined the policy implications for value-added statistical designs, which typically measure students' learning gains from one year to the next."
"But a new study from a federal research center based at the Urban Institute in Washington suggests that the country might raise student performance through programs like Teach for America, a nonprofit group that places high-achieving college graduates in schools that are hard to staff...According to the study, Teach for America participants who worked in North Carolina between 2000 and 2006 had more impact on student performance than traditional teachers did, as measured by end-of-course tests. The difference was observed in several areas of science and was strongest in math. The findings are especially significant because Teach for America teachers worked in schools with the neediest students."
"Jane Hannaway, director of the education-policy center at the Urban Institute, pointed to three virtues: Because the data systems include all students, there is often no need for the researcher to worry about constructing a statistically valid sample. Because the data extend across time, scholars can determine how a student's performance changes over a number of years, which removes some of the usual anxiety about isolating the effects of a single teacher or classroom. And with such a vast number of observations at hand, researchers can do multiple comparisons at once."
"Value-added models are providing us with new information about teachers, information that we've never had before," said Jane Hannaway, the director of CALDER, which is housed at the Washington based Urban Institute. "But the information we get from value-added modeling is not perfect information. And we're still learning a lot about what the measures mean and don't mean and, given the limitations of the measures, how we should be using them."
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