American Institutes for Research

Publications

boy reading bookCALDER provides timely and accessible independent research and analysis on education policy to policy leaders, researchers, media and the public. Our research scientists are capitalizing on state longitudinal databases- what are emerging as the richest new sources of information on schools, teachers, and students in the U.S.- to address some critical questions about education policy.

Our research focuses on three areas of impact for key educational outcomes: teacher workforce policy (hiring practices, compensation, and certification, preparation); governance policy (accountability and choice); and changing community and economic conditions (changing student demographics and resources). We explore these issues across different states. To view research by state or author, click on state partners on the navigation panel to the left.



Working Papers | 2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | Jump to Policy Briefs

2012 | Back to Top



School Based Accountability and the Distribution of Teacher Quality Among Grades in Elementary Schools
Working Paper 75
Author(s): Sarah C. Fuller and Helen F. Ladd

We use North Carolina data to explore the extent to which teachers in the lower grades (K-2) of elementary school are lower quality than in the upper grades (3-5) and to examine the hypothesis that accountability contributes to a shortfall in teacher quality in the lower grades. Our concern with early elementary grades arises from recent studies that have highlighted that children’s experiences in the early school years have long lasting effects on their outcomes, including college going and earnings. Using licensure test scores as the primary measure of teacher quality, we find that concern about teacher quality in the lower elementary grades is warranted. Teachers in those grades are of lower quality than teachers in the upper grades. Moreover, we find that accountability, especially the form required by the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, increases the relative shortfalls of teacher quality in the lower grades and increases the tendency of schools to move teachers of higher quality from lower to upper grades and teachers of lower quality from upper to lower grades. These findings support the conclusion that accountability pressure induces schools to pursue actions that work to the disadvantage of the children in the lower grades.

Published: April 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Success in Community College: Do Institutions Differ?
Working Paper 74
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, Clara G. Muschkin, and Jacob L. Vigdor

Community colleges are complex organizations and assessing their performance, though important, is difficult. Compared to four-year colleges and universities, community colleges serve a more diverse population and provide a wider variety of educational programs that include continuing education and technical training for adults, and diplomas, associates degrees, and transfer credits for recent high school graduates. Focusing solely on the latter programs of North Carolina’s community colleges, we measure the success of each college along two dimensions: attainment of an applied diploma, or degree; or completion of the coursework required to transfer to a four-year college or university. We address three questions. First, how much variation is there across the institutions in these measures of student success? Second, how do these measures of success differ across institutions after we adjust for the characteristics of the enrolled students? Third, how do our measures compare to the measures of success used by the North Carolina Community College System? We find that most of the system’s colleges cannot be statistically distinguished from one another along either dimension.

Published: April 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Is it Just a Bad Class? Assessing the Long-term Stability of Estimated Teacher Performance
Working Paper 73
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen

In this paper we report on work estimating the stability of value-added estimates of teacher effects, an important area of investigation given public interest in workforce policies that implicitly assume effectiveness is a stable attribute within teachers. The results strongly reject the hypothesis that teacher performance is completely stable within teachers over long periods of time, but estimates suggest that a component of performance appears to persist within teachers, even over a ten-year panel. We also find that little of the changes in teacher effectiveness estimates within teachers can be explained by observable characteristics.

Published: March 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text | Earlier version available via CEDR 




Teacher Pension Systems, the Composition of the Teaching Workforce, and Teacher Quality
Working Paper 72
Author(s): Cory Koedel and Michael Podgursky

Teacher pension systems target retirements within a narrow range of the career cycle by penalizing individuals who separate too soon or remain employed too long. The penalties result in the retention of some teachers who would otherwise choose to leave, and the premature exit of some teachers who would otherwise choose to stay. We examine how the effects of teachers’ pension incentives on workforce composition influence teacher quality. Teachers who are held in by the “pull” incentives in the pension systems are not more effective, on average, than the typical teacher. Teachers who are encouraged to exit by the “push” incentives are more effective on average. We conclude that the net effect of teachers’ pension incentives on workforce quality is small, but negative. Given the substantial and growing costs of current systems, and the lack of evidence regarding their efficacy, experimentation by traditional and charter schools with alternative retirement benefit structures would be useful.

Published: February 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Assessing the “Rothstein Test”. Does it Really Show Teacher Value-Added Models are Biased?
Working Paper 71
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Duncan Chaplin

In a provocative and influential paper, Jesse Rothstein (2010) finds that standard value-added models (VAMs) suggest implausible future teacher effects on past student achievement, a finding that obviously cannot be viewed as causal. This is the basis of a falsification test (the Rothstein falsification test) that appears to indicate bias in VAM estimates of current teacher contributions to student learning. More precisely, the falsification test is designed to identify whether or not students are effectively randomly assigned conditional on the covariates included in the model. Rothstein’s finding is significant because there is considerable interest in using VAM teacher effect estimates for high-stakes teacher personnel policies, and the results of the Rothstein test cast considerable doubt on the notion that VAMs can be used fairly for this purpose. However, in this paper, we illustrate—theoretically and through simulations—plausible conditions under which the Rothstein falsification test rejects VAMs even when students are randomly assigned, conditional on the covariates in the model, and even when there is no bias in estimated teacher effects.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




The Aftermath of Accelerating Algebra: Evidence from a District Policy Initiative
Working Paper 69
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor

In 2002/03, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools initiated a broad program of accelerating entry into algebra coursework. The proportion of moderately-performing students taking 8th grade algebra increased from less than half to nearly 90%, then reverted to baseline levels, in the span of just six age cohorts. We use this policy-induced variation to infer the impact of accelerated entry into algebra on student performance in math courses as students progress through high school. Students affected by the acceleration initiative scored significantly lower on end-of-course tests in Algebra I, and were either no more likely or significantly less likely to pass standard follow-up courses, Geometry and Algebra II, on a college-preparatory timetable. We also find that the district assigned teachers with weaker qualifications to Algebra I classes in the first year of the acceleration, but this reduction in teacher quality accounts for only a small portion of the overall effect.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Different Skills: Identifying Differentially Effective Teachers of English Language Learners
Working Paper 68
Author(s): Ben Master, Susanna Loeb, Camille Whitney, and James Wyckoff

This study seeks to identify the characteristics and training experiences of teachers who are differentially effective at promoting academic achievement among English language learners (ELLs). Our analyses indicate that general skills such as those reflected by scores on teacher certification exams and experience teaching non-ELL students are less predictive of achievement for ELL students than for other students. However, specific experience teaching ELL students is more important for predicting effectiveness with future ELL students than non-ELL students as is both in-service and pre-service training focused on ELL-specific instructional strategies.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Pension-Induced Rigidites in the Labor Market for School Leaders
Working Paper 67
Author(s): Cory Koedel, Jason A. Grissom, Shawn Ni, and Michael Podgursky

Educators in public schools in the United States are typically enrolled in defined-benefit pension plans, which penalize across-plan mobility. We use administrative data from Missouri to examine how the mobility penalties affect the labor market for school leaders, and show that pension borders greatly reduce leadership flows across schools. Our most conservative estimates indicate that removing a pension border that divides two groups of schools will increase leadership flows between the groups by roughly 100 percent. We consider the implications of our findings for workforce quality in schools near pension borders in Missouri. Our results are of general interest given that thousands of public schools operate near pension boundaries nationwide.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Estimating the Effect of Leaders on Public Sector Productivity: The Case of School Principals
Working Paper 66
Author(s): Gregory F. Branch, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin

Although much has been written about the importance of leadership in the determination of organizational success, there is little quantitative evidence due to the difficulty of separating the impact of leaders from other organizational components – particularly in the public sector. Schools provide an especially rich environment for studying the impact of public sector management, not only because of the hypothesized importance of leadership but also because of the plentiful achievement data that provide information on institutional outcomes. Outcome-based estimates of principal value-added to student achievement reveal significant variation in principal quality that appears to be larger for high-poverty schools. Alternate lower-bound estimates based on direct estimation of the variance yield smaller estimates of the variation in principal productivity but ones that are still important, particularly for high poverty schools. Patterns of teacher exits by principal quality validate the notion that a primary channel for principal influence is the management of the teacher force. Finally, looking at principal transitions by quality reveals little systematic evidence that more effective leaders have a higher probability of exiting high poverty schools.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




The Gateway to the Profession: Assessing Teacher Preparation Programs Based on Student Achievement
Working Paper 65
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Stephanie Liddle

With teacher quality repeatedly cited as the most important schooling factor influencing student achievement, there has been increased interest in examining the efficacy of teacher training programs. This paper presents research examining the variation between and impact that individual teacher training institutions in Washington state have on the effectiveness of teachers they train. Using administrative data linking teachers’ initial endorsements to student achievement on state reading and math tests, we find the majority of teacher training programs produce teachers who are no more or less effective than teachers who trained out-of-state. However, we do find a number of cases where there are statistically significant differences between estimates of training program effects for teachers who were credentialed at various in-state programs. These findings are robust to a variety of different model specifications.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text





2011
| Back to Top


Certification Requirements and Teacher Quality
Working Paper 64
Author(s): Tim R. Sass

Traditionally, states have required individuals complete a program of study in a university-based teacher preparation program in order to be licensed to teach. In recent years, however, various “alternative certification” programs have been developed and the number of teachers obtaining teaching certificates through routes other than completing a traditional teacher preparation program has skyrocketed. In this paper I use a rich longitudinal data base from Florida to compare the characteristics of alternatively certified teachers with their traditionally prepared colleagues. I then analyze the relative effectiveness of teachers who enter the profession through different pathways by estimating “value-added” models of student achievement. In general, alternatively certified teachers have stronger pre-service qualifications than do traditionally prepared teachers, with the least restrictive alternative attracting the most qualified perspective teachers. These differences are less pronounced when controlling for the grade level of teachers, however. On average, alternatively certified science teachers have also had much more coursework in science while in college than traditionally prepared science teachers. The same is not true for math teachers, where the hours of college coursework are approximately equal across pathways. Of the three alternative certification pathways studied, teachers who enter through the path requiring no coursework have substantially greater effects on student achievement than do either traditionally prepared teachers or alternative programs that require some formal coursework in education. These results suggest that the additional education coursework required in traditional teacher preparation programs either does little to boost the human capital of teachers or that whatever gains accrue from traditional teacher education training are offset by greater innate ability of individuals who enter teaching through routes requiring little formal training in education.

Published: December 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Where You Come From or Where You Go? Distinguishing Between School Quality and the Effectiveness of Teacher Preparation Program Graduates
Working Paper 63
Author(s): Kata Mihaly, Daniel McCaffery, Tim R. Sass, and J.R. Lockwood

In this paper we consider the challenges involved in evaluating teacher preparation programs when controlling for school contextual bias. Including school fixed effects in the achievement models used to estimate preparation program effects controls for school environment by relying on differences among student outcomes within the same schools to identify the program effects. However, identification of preparation program effects using school fixed effects requires teachers from different programs to teach in the same school. Even if program effects are identified, the precision of the estimated effects will depend on the degree to which graduates from different programs overlap across schools. In addition, if the connections between preparation programs result from the overlap of atypical graduates or from graduates teaching in atypical school environments, use of school effects could produce bias. Using statewide data from Florida, we show that teachers tend to teach in schools near the programs in which they received their training, but there is still sufficient overlap across schools to identify preparation program effects. We show that the ranking of preparation programs varies significantly depending on whether or not school environment is taken into account via school fixed effects. We find that schools and teachers that are integral to connecting preparation programs are atypical, with disproportionately high percentages of Hispanic teachers and students compared to the state averages. Finally, we find significant variance inflation in the estimated program effects when controlling for school fixed effects, and that the size of the variance inflation factor depends crucially on the length of the window used to compare graduates teaching in the same schools.

Published: January 2012 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text




Pension-Induced Rigidities in the Labor Market for School Leaders
Working Paper 62
Author(s): Cory Koedel, Jason A. Grissom, Shawn Ni, and Michael Podgursky

Educators in public schools in the United States are typically enrolled in defined-benefit pension plans, which penalize across-plan mobility. We use administrative data from Missouri to examine how the mobility penalties affect the labor market for school leaders. We show that pension borders greatly affect leadership flows across schools – for two groups of schools separated by a pension border, our estimates indicate that removing the border will increase leadership mobility between them by 97 to 163 percent. We consider the implications of the pension-induced rigidities in the leadership labor market for schools near pension borders in Missouri. Our findings are of general interest given that thousands of public schools operate near pension boundaries nationwide.

Published: October 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1070KB)  See Working Paper 67 for an updated version 




Designing and Analyzing Studies that Randomize Schools To Estimate Intervention Effects on Student Academic Outcomes Without Classroom-Level Information
Working Paper 61
Author(s): Pei Zhu, Robin Jacob, Howard Bloom, and Zeyu Xu

This paper provides practical guidance for researchers who are designing and analyzing studies that randomize schools — which comprise three levels of clustering (students in classrooms in schools) — to measure intervention effects on student academic outcomes when information on the middle level (classrooms) is missing. This situation arises frequently in practice because many available data sets identify the schools that students attend but not the classrooms in which they are taught. Do studies conducted under these circumstances yield results that are substantially different from what they would have been if this information had been available? The paper first considers this problem in the context of planning a school randomized study based on preexisting two-level information about how academic outcomes for students vary across schools and across students within schools (but not across classrooms in schools). The paper next considers this issue in the context of estimating intervention effects from school-randomized studies. Findings are based on empirical analyses of four multisite data sets using academic outcomes for students within classrooms within schools. The results indicate that in almost all situations one will obtain nearly identical results whether or not the classroom or middle level is omitted when designing or analyzing studies.

Published: October 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 549KB) | Earlier version available via MDRC |journal article Journal Publication 




Chronically Low-performing Schools and Turnaround: Evidence from Three States
Working Paper 60
Author(s): Michael Hansen and Kilchan Choi

Current federal policy emphasizes a focus on turning around schools that consistently fail to serve their students and communities. At first glance, the identification of chronically low-performing schools and successful turnarounds may seem straightforward. Characterizing school performance, however, requires resolving multiple dilemmas about schools that have not been previously addressed within the literature on turnaround. Furthermore, the literature lacks empirical evidence on the frequency of turnaround in these low-performing schools. This paper addresses these issues involved in identifying low performance and turnaround among schools. Additionally, it examines the long-term performance trajectories of chronically low-performing (CLP) elementary and middle schools in multiple states to identify schools that have shown rapid improvement (designated turn around [TA] schools), schools that have shown moderate improvement (MI), and schools that are persistently not improving (NI). The findings indicate school turnaround is an uncommon event in these low-performing schools, though not rare—approximately 10 to 30 percent of CLP schools, depending on the state and school level, are identified as TA schools based on improvements in performance.

Published: full text coming soon 




Power Play?  Teacher Characteristics and Class Assignments
Working Paper 59
Author(s): Demetra Kalogrides, Susanna Loeb, and Tara Béteille

While prior research has documented differences in the distribution of teacher characteristics across schools serving different student populations, few studies have examined how teacher sorting occurs within schools. Comparing teachers who teach in the same grade and school in a given year, the authors find that less experienced, minority, and female teachers are assigned students with lower average prior achievement, more prior behavioral problems, and lower prior attendance rates than their more experienced, white and male colleagues. Though more effective (higher value-added ) teachers and those with advanced degrees are also assigned less difficult  classes, controlling for these factors does not eliminate the association between experience, race, gender, and assignments. These patterns have negative implications for teacher retention given the importance of working conditions for teachers’ career decisions.

Published: March 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1.39MB) 


 


Stepping Stones: Principal Career Paths and School Outcomes
Working Paper 58
Author(s): Tara Béteille, Demetra Kalogrides, and Susanna Loeb

Principals tend to prefer working in schools with higher-achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. District leadership can also exacerbate principal turnover by implementing policies aimed at improving low-performing schools such as rotating school leaders. Using longitudinal data from one large urban school district we find principal turnover is detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains, which are particularly detrimental to students in high-poverty and failing schools.

Published: March 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1.98MB) 


 


Teacher Quality and Teacher Mobility
Working Paper 57
Author(s): Li Feng and Tim R. Sass

This paper assesses the determinants of teacher job change and the impact of such mobility on the distribution of teacher quality. High and low-quality teachers are more likely to leave than those in the middle of the distribution. In contrast, the relationship between teacher productivity and inter-school mobility is relatively weak. Teachers who rank above their faculty colleagues are more likely to transfer to a new school within a district and exit teaching. As the share of peer teachers with more experience, advanced degrees or professional certification increase, the likelihood of moving within district decreases. There is also evidence of assortative matching among teachers. The most effective teachers who transfer tend to go to schools whose faculties are in the top quartile of teacher quality. Teacher mobility exacerbates differences in teacher quality across schools.

Published: January 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1257KB) 




2010 | Back to Top

The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality
Working Paper 56
Author(s): Eric A. Hanushek

Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion.

Published: December 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 909KB) 


 


Assessing the Determinants and Implications of Teacher Layoffs
Working Paper 55
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Roddy Theobald

Over 2000 teachers in Washington state received reduction-in-force (RIF) notices in the past two years. Linking data on these RIF notices to a unique dataset of student, teacher, school, and district variables the authors determine factors that predict the likelihood of a teacher receiving a RIF notice. A teacher's seniority is the greatest predictor, but (all else equal) master's degree teachers and credentialed teachers in the "high-needs areas" of math, science, and special education were less likely to receive a RIF notice. For a subset of the teachers there is no observed relationship between effectiveness and the likelihood of receiving a RIF notice. Results suggest a different group of teachers would be targeted for layoffs under an effectiveness-based vs. seniority-driven layoff system.

Published: December 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1644KB) 


 


Value-Added Models and the Measurement of Teacher Productivity
Working Paper 54
Author(s): Douglas N. Harris, Tim R. Sass, and Anastasia Semykina

Research on teacher productivity, and recently developed accountability systems for teachers, rely on value-added models to estimate the impact of teachers on student performance. The authors test many of the central assumptions required to derive value-added models from an underlying structural cumulative achievement model and reject nearly all of them. Moreover, they find that teacher value added and other key parameter estimates are highly sensitive to model specification. While estimates from commonly employed value-added models cannot be interpreted as causal teacher effects, employing richer models that impose fewer restrictions may reduce the bias in estimates of teacher productivity.

Published: December 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1169KB) 


 


Public School Choice and Student Achievement in the District of Columbia
Working Paper 53
Author(s): Austin Nichols and Umut Özek

This study examines the multi-faceted public school choice environment in the District of Columbia and the effects of alternative public schools on the achievement levels of students who exercise this type of school choice. The results indicate that students who attend out-of-boundary public schools and charter schools significantly outperform similar students who attend in-boundary public schools in both reading and math tests. We rely on instrumental variables framework to disentangle the underlying reasons behind this achievement gap and find that the observed differences are likely due to the positive effects of alternative public schools.

Published: December 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 875KB) 


 


Value Added of Teachers in High-Poverty Schools and Lower-Poverty Schools
Working Paper 52
Author(s): Tim R. Sass, Jane Hannaway, Zeyu Xu, David N. Figlio, and Li Feng

Using data from North Carolina and Florida, this paper examines whether teachers in high-poverty schools are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. Bottom teachers in high-poverty schools are less effective than bottom teachers in lower-poverty schools. The best teachers, by comparison, are equally effective across school poverty settings. The gap in teacher quality appears to arise from the lower payoff to teacher qualifications in high-poverty schools.  In particular, the experience-productivity relationship is weaker in high-poverty schools and is not related to teacher mobility patterns. Recruiting teachers with good credentials into high-poverty schools may be insufficient to narrow the teacher quality gap. Policies that promote the long-term productivity of teachers in challenging high-poverty schools appear key.

Published: November 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 629KB) 



 


Scrambling the Nest Egg: How Well Do Teachers Understand their Pensions and What Do They Think about Alternative Pension Structures?
Working Paper 51
Author(s): Michael DeArmond and Dan Goldhaber

This paper addresses two questions: How well do teachers understand their current pension plans? And, what do they think about alternative plan structures? The data come from administrative records and a 2006 survey of teachers in Washington State. The results suggest Washington’s teachers are fairly knowledgeable about their pensions, though new entrants and mid-career teachers appear to be less knowledgeable than veteran teachers. As for teachers’ preferences for plan structure, the survey suggests that when it comes to investing additional retirement savings, a plurality of teachers favor defined contribution plans which offer more portability and choice, but more risk than traditional defined benefit plans. Perhaps unsurprisingly, all else equal, teachers newer to the profession are more likely than veteran teachers to favor a defined contribution structure.

Published: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 629KB)



 


Teacher Attitudes about Compensation Reform: Implications for Reform Implementation
Working Paper 50
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber, Michael DeArmond, and Scott DeBurgomaster

Reform advocates and policymakers concerned about the quality and distribution of teachers support proposals of alternative compensation for teachers in hard-to-hire subject areas, hard-to-staff schools, and with special knowledge and skills. The successful implementation of such proposals depends in large part on teacher attitudes. The current body of research on teacher attitudes toward compensation reform paints an inconsistent picture of teachers’ views, largely ignoring the influence of individual and workplace characteristics on teacher attitudes. Results from a 2006 survey of teachers in Washington State linked to school and district data confirm earlier findings that teacher opinion about pay reform is not uniform, and further illustrates teacher preferences for different pay structures vary substantially by individual and workplace characteristics. Nearly three quarters of teachers favored higher pay for hard-to-staff schools. In contrast, only 17% favored merit pay. Teachers with a high degree of confidence in their principal were more likely to support merit pay than those with greater sense of trust and respect for their fellow teachers than for their principal. Policymakers interested in implementing new pay systems should carefully assess teacher opinion in determining where (and how) they invest in them.

Published: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 768KB)



 


What Makes Special Education Teachers Special? Teacher Training and Achievement of Students with Disabilities
Working Paper 49
Author(s): Li Feng and Tim R. Sass

This paper contributes importantly to the growing literature on the training of special education teachers and how it translates into classroom practice and student achievement. The authors examine the impact of pre-service preparation and in-service formal and informal training on the ability of teachers to promote academic achievement among students with disabilities. Using student-level longitudinal data from Florida over a five-year span the authors estimate “value-added” models of student achievement. There is little support for the efficacy of in-service professional development courses focusing on special education. However, teachers with advanced degrees are more effective in boosting the math achievement of students with disabilities than are those with only a baccalaureate degree. Also pre-service preparation in special education has statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability of teachers of special education courses to promote gains in achievement for students with disabilities, especially in reading. Certification in special education, an undergraduate major in special education, and the amount of special education coursework in college are all positively correlated with the performance of teachers in special education reading courses.

Published: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 527KB)



 


Scaling the Digital Divide: Home Computer Technology and Student Achievement
Working Paper 48
Author(s): Jacob L. Vigdor and Helen F. Ladd

Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between the rich and the poor?  Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities?  This study covers years 2000 to 2005, a period when home computers and high-speed Internet access expanded dramatically. Using administrative data on North Carolina public school students to corroborate earlier surveys that document broad racial and socioeconomic gaps in home computer access and use, the authors compared the children's reading and math scores before and after they acquired a home computer, and compared these scores to those of peers who had a home computer by fifth grade and to test scores of students who never acquired a home computer. The introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores.  The authors also conclude that home computers are put to more productive use in households where parental monitoring is more effective. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps.

Published: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 683KB)



 


School Accountability and Teacher Mobility
Working Paper 47
Authors(s): Li Feng, David N. Figlio, and Tim R. Sass

Struggling schools that come under increased accountability pressure face a number of challenges, including changing instructional policies and practices to facilitate student improvement. But what effect does school accountability have on teachers’ mobility decisions? This study is the first to exploit policy variation within the same state to examine the effects of school accountability on teacher job changes. Using student-level data from Florida State the authors measure the degree to which schools and teachers were “surprised” by the change in Florida’s school grading system (A+ Plan for Education) in the summer of 2002— what they refer to as an “accountability shock.” They observed the mobility decisions of teachers in the years before and after the school grading change and found over half of all schools in the state experienced an accountability “shock” due to this grading change.  Teachers were more likely to leave schools facing increased accountability pressure; even more likely to leave schools shocked downward to a grade of “F”; and less likely to leave schools facing decreased accountability pressure. Schools facing increased accountability pressure also saw a rise in the average quality of the teachers who stayed.  If these schools were able to retain more of their high- quality teachers, perhaps through increased incentives to remain in the school, the performance gains associated with school accountability pressure could be greater than those already observed.

Published: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 669KB) 



 


Competitive Effects of Means-Tested School Vouchers
Working Paper 46
Authors(s): David N. Figlio and Cassandra M.D. Hart

Voucher options like tuition tax credit-funded scholarship programs have become increasingly popular in recent years. This study examines the effects of private school competition on public school students’ test scores in the wake of Florida’s Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC) program which offered scholarships to eligible low-income students to attend private schools. The authors examine whether students in schools exposed to a more competitive private school landscape saw greater improvements in their students’ test scores after the introduction of the program, than did students in schools that faced less competition. Students in public schools faced with increased private school competition showed greater gains in test scores than students in other public schools with the introduction of the program. These findings are not an artifact of pre-policy trends; the degree of competition from nearby private schools matters only after the announcement of the new program, which makes nearby private competitors more affordable for eligible students. The gains appear to be much more pronounced in the schools most at risk of losing students and in the schools that are on the margin of Title I funding.

Published: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 709KB) 



 


Measure for Measure: The Relationship between Measures of Instructional Practice in Middle School English Language Arts and Teachers’ Value-Added Scores
Working Paper 45
Author(s): Pamela L. Grossman, Susanna Loeb, Julia Cohen, Karen Hammerness, James H. Wyckoff, Donald J. Boyd, and Hamilton Lankford

Many studies have estimated the relationship between teachers' characteristics (i.e., experience and academic performance) and their value-added to student achievement. Few have explored whether instructional practices predict student test score gains. In this study, authors ask what classroom practices, if any, differentiate teachers with high impact on student achievement in middle school English Language Arts from those with lower impact. The study further explores the extent to which value-added measures signal differences in instructional quality. Even with the small sample used in the analysis, the authors find evidence that high value-added teachers have a different profile of instructional practices than do low value-added teachers. Teachers in the top quartile as measured by value-added scores score higher than second-quartile teachers on all 16 elements of instruction that were measured. The differences are statistically significant for a subset of practices including explicit strategy instruction.

Published: May 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 630KB)



 


Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field
Working Paper 44
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor

Research has consistently shown that teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among schools to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families. Using information on teaching spells in North Carolina, the authors examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. They conclude that salary differentials are a far less effective tool for retaining teachers with strong pre-service qualifications than for retaining other teachers in schools with high proportions of minority students. Consequently, large salary differences would be needed to level the playing field when schools are segregated. This conclusion reflects the finding that teachers with stronger qualifications are both more responsive to the racial and socioeconomic mix of a school's students and less responsive to salary than are their less well qualified counterparts when making decisions about remaining in their current school, moving to another school or district, or leaving the teaching profession.

Published: May 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 669KB)



 


New Estimates of Design Parameters for Clustered Randomization Studies: Findings from North Carolina and Florida
Working Paper 43
Authors(s): Zeyu Xu and Austin Nichols

The gold standard in making causal inference on program effects is a randomized trial. Most randomization designs in education randomize classrooms or schools rather than individual students. Such "clustered randomization" designs have one principal drawback: They tend to have limited statistical power or precision. This study aims to provide empirical information needed to design adequately powered studies that randomize schools using data from Florida and North Carolina. The authors assess how different covariates contribute to improving the statistical power of a randomization design and examine differences between math and reading tests; differences between test types (curriculum-referenced tests versus norm-referenced tests); and differences between elementary school and secondary school, to see if the test subject, test type, or grade level makes a large difference in the crucial design parameters. Finally they assess bias in 2-level models that ignore the clustering of students in classrooms.

Published: May 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 848KB) 



 


Constrained Job Matching:Does Teacher Job Search Harm Disadvantaged Urban Schools?
Working Paper 42
Author(s): Eric A. Hanushek and Steven G. Rivkin

Search theory suggests early career job changes lead to better matches that benefit both workers and firms, but this may not hold true in teacher labor markets characterized by salary rigidities, barriers to entry, and substantial differences in working conditions. Education policy makers are particularly concerned that teacher turnover may have adverse effects on the quality of instruction in schools serving predominantly disadvantaged children. Although these schools experience higher turnover, on average, than other schools, the impact on the quality of instruction depends on whether more productive teachers are more likely to depart. In Texas, the availability of matched panel data of students and teachers enables the isolation of teachers' contributions to achievement. Teachers who remain in their school tend to outperform those who leave, particularly those who exit Texas public schools entirely. This gap is larger for schools serving mainly low income students— evidence that high turnover is not nearly as damaging as many suggest.

Published: May 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 701KB) 



 


Value Added of Teachers in High-Poverty Schools and Lower-Poverty Schools:Implications for Research, Policy, and Management
Working Paper 41- Forthcoming
Author(s): Jane Hannaway, Zeyu Xu, Tim R. Sass, David N. Figlio, and Li Feng

Using student-level microdata from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 from Florida and North Carolina, this paper compares the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty elementary schools (>70% FRL students) with that of teachers in lower-poverty elementary schools (<70% FRL students and <30% FRL students). Teachers in high-poverty schools are on average less effective than those in lower-poverty schools, as measured by their value-added to math and reading achievement. The gap in the effectiveness of teachers between high- and lower-poverty schools is most pronounced at the bottom of the teacher performance distribution. The best teachers, by comparison, are equally effective across school poverty settings. This gap in teacher effectiveness cannot simply be explained by the higher concentration of inexperienced teachers in high-poverty schools. In fact, it is largely driven by the lower “pay off” to experience in high-poverty schools. That is, the productivity gain associated with increase in experience is systematically lower in high-poverty schools than in other schools. The findings suggest policies that rely on redistributing teacher experience are insufficient to narrow the achievement gap between high- and- low-poverty schools. The findings suggest that policymakers should look beyond the number of years of experience in crafting policies aimed that the redistribution of effective teachers in high-poverty schools, and instead focus on policies aimed at recruiting qualified experienced teachers. Additionally, while the focus on teacher retention is right, policymakers must also focus on the productivity growth of teachers.



2009 | Back to Top

 


How Career Concerns Influence Public Workers' Effort: Evidence from the Teacher Labor Market
Working Paper 40
Author(s): Michael Hansen

This study presents a generalization to the standard career concerns model and applies it to the public teacher labor market. The model predicts optimal teacher effort levels decline with both tenure at a school and experience, all things being equal. Using administrative data from North Carolina spanning 14 school years through 2008, the author finds significant changes in teacher sick leave consistent with the generalized career concerns model. By exploiting exogenous variation in career concerns in the form of principal turnover, the author shows the observed behaviors cannot be due to the endogeneity of teacher mobility decisions alone. Also examined are the effects of career concerns incentives breaking down. There is evidence suggestive of teacher shirking, and evidence on an unobservable measure of effort taken from the Schools and Staffing Survey that corroborates findings from observable teacher absence behavior. In sum,teachers exert considerable discretion over their own effort levels in response to these incentives.This has important policy implications.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 591KB) 



 


Distribution of Benefits in Teacher Retirement Systems and Their Implications for Mobility
Working Paper 39
Author(s): Robert M. Costrell and Michael J. Podgursky

While it is generally understood that defined benefit pension systems concentrate benefits on career teachers and impose costs on mobile teachers, there has been very little analysis of the magnitude of these effects. The authors develop a measure of implicit redistribution of pension wealth among teachers at varying ages of separation. Compared to a neutral system, often about half of an entering cohort's net pension wealth is redistributed to teachers who separate in their fifties from those who separate earlier. There is some variation across six state systems. This implies large costs for interstate mobility. Estimates show teachers who split a thirty-year career between two pension plans often lose over half their net pension wealth compared to teachers who complete a career in a single system. Plan options that permit purchases of service years mitigate few or none of these losses. It is difficult to explain these patterns of costs and benefits on efficiency grounds. More likely explanations include the relative influence of senior versus junior educators in interest group politics and a coordination problem between states.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 569KB) | journal article Journal Publication | podcast Podcast
['Peaks, Cliffs, and Valleys'. Education Finance and Policy 4(2):175-211(2009)]



 


School Principals and School Performance
Working Paper 38
Author(s): Damon Clark, Paco Martorell, and Jonah E. Rockoff

This paper uses data from New York City to estimate how the characteristics of school principals relate to school performance, as measured by students' standardized exam scores and other outcomes. There is little evidence of any relationship between school performance and principal education and pre-principal work experience, but some evidence that experience as an assistant principal at the principal's current school is associated with higher performance among inexperienced principals. There is a positive relationship between principal experience and school performance, particularly for math test scores and student absences. The experience profile is especially steep over the first few years of principal experience. Finally, there is mixed evidence on the relationship between formal principal training and professional development programs and school performance, with the caveat that the selection and assignment of New York City principals participating in these programs make it hard to isolate their effects. The positive returns to principal experience suggest that policies which cause principals to leave their posts early (e.g., via early retirement or a move into district administration) will be costly, and the tendency for less-advantaged schools to be run by less experienced principals could exacerbate educational inequality.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 330KB)



 


Effective Schools: Managing the Recruitment, Development, and Retention of High‐Quality Teachers
Working Paper 37
Author(s): Tara Beteille, Demetra Kalogrides, and Susanna Loeb

Teachers are systematically sorted across schools. Often, schools serving the lowest-achieving students staffed by the least-skilled teachers. While teachers' school preferences account for some of the sorting, school practices are also likely to be a key factor. Using value-added methods, the authors examine the relationship between a school's effectiveness during a given principal's tenure and the retention, recruitment and development of its teachers. Three key findings emerge about principal effectiveness. More effective principals: (1) are able to retain higher-quality teachers and remove less-effective teachers; (2) are able to attract and hire higher-quality teachers to fill vacancies; (3) have teachers who improve at a greater pace than those in schools with less effective leadership (there is some evidence for this, albeit weak). These findings drive home the importance of personnel practices for effective school leadership.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 732KB) 



 


Principal Preferences and the Unequal Distribution of Principals Across Schools
Working Paper 36
Author(s): Eileen Horng, Demetra Kalogrides, and Susanna Loeb

In this study authors use longitudinal data from one large school district – Miami-Dade County Public Schools, to investigate the distribution of principals across schools. They find schools serving many low-income, non-white, and low-achieving students have principals with less experience, less education, and who attended less selective colleges. This distribution of principals is partially driven by the initial match of first-time principals to schools at the beginning of their careers and is exacerbated by systematic attrition and transfer away from these schools. Supplementing these data with surveys of principals, the authors find principals' stated preferences for school characteristics mirror observed distribution and transfer patterns. Principals prefer to work in easier to serve schools with favorable working conditions which also tend to be schools with fewer poor, minority and/or low-achieving students.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 354KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 32(2):205-229 (2010)]



 


Triangulating Principal Effectiveness: How Perspectives of Parents, Teachers, and Assistant Principals Identify the Central Importance of Managerial Skills
Working Paper 35
Author(s): Jason Grissom and Susanna Loeb

While the importance of effective principals is undisputed, few studies have addressed what specific skills principals need to promote school success. This study draws on unique data combining survey responses from principals, assistant principals, teachers and parents with rich administrative data to identify which principal skills matter most for school outcomes. Factor analysis of a 42-item task inventory distinguishes five skill categories, yet only one of them, the principals' organization management skills, consistently predicts student achievement growth and other success measures. Analysis of evaluations of principals by assistant principals confirms this central result. The analysis argues for a broad view of instructional leadership that includes general organizational management skills as a key complement to the work of supporting curriculum and instruction.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 751KB)



 


Principal Time-Use and School Effectiveness
Working Paper 34
Author(s): Eileen Lai Horng, Daniel Klasik, and Susanna Loeb

School principals have complex jobs. To better understand the work lives of principals, this study uses observational time-use data for all high school principals in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. This paper examines the relationship between the time principals spent on different types of activities and school outcomes including student achievement, teacher and parent assessments of the school, and teacher satisfaction. Time spent on Organization Management activities is associated with positive school outcomes, such as student test score gains and positive teacher and parent assessments of the instructional climate, whereas Day-to-Day Instruction activities are marginally or not at all related to improvements in student performance and often have a negative relationship with teacher and parent assessments. This paper suggests that a single-minded focus on principals as instructional leaders operationalized through direct contact with teachers may be detrimental if it forsakes the important role of principals as organizational leaders.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 610KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[American Journal of Education 116 (4, August 2010)]



 


Teachers' Perceptions of their Working Conditions: How Predictive of Policy-Relevant Outcomes?
Working Paper 33
Author(s): Helen F. Ladd

This study uses data from North Carolina to examine the extent to which survey based perceptions of working conditions are predictive of policy-relevant outcomes, independent of other school characteristics such as the demographic mix of the school's students. Working conditions emerge as highly predictive of teachers' stated intentions to remain in or leave their schools, with leadership emerging as the most salient dimension. Teachers' perceptions of their working conditions are also predictive of one-year actual departure rates and student achievement, but the predictive power isfar lower. These weaker findings for actual outcome measures help to highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of using teacher survey data for understanding outcomes of policy interest.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 390KB)



 


Estimating Principal Effectiveness
Working Paper 32
Author(s): Gregory F. Branch, Eric A. Hanushek, and Steven G. Rivkin

Much has been written about the importance of school leadership, but there is surprisingly little systematic evidence on this topic. This paper presents preliminary estimates of key elements of the market for school principals, employing rich panel data on principals from Texas State. The consideration of teacher movements across schools suggests that principals follow patterns quite similar to those of teachers – preferring schools that have less demands as indicated by higher income students, higher achieving students, and fewer minority students. Looking at the impact of principals on student achievement, there are some small but significant effects of the tenure of a principal in a school. Moreover, the variation in principal effectiveness tends to be largest in high poverty schools, consistent with hypothesis that principal ability is most important in schools serving the most disadvantaged students. Finally, principals who stay in a school tend to be more effective than those who move to other schools.

Published: December 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 290KB)


 


 


Assessing the Potential of Using Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making High-Stakes Personnel Decisions
Working Paper 31
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen

Reforming teacher tenure is an idea that appears to be gaining traction with the underlying assumption being that one can infer to a reasonable degree how well a teacher will perform over her career based on estimates of her early-career effectiveness. Here we explore the potential for using value-added models to estimate performance and inform tenure decisions. We find little evidence of convergence or divergence in teacher effectiveness across teachers as they advance in their careers, but strong evidence that prior year estimates of job performance for individual teachers predict student achievement even when there is a multi-year lag between the two.

Last revised: February 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 576KB)

 

 


What Makes for a Good Teacher and Who Can Tell?
Working Paper 30
Author(s): Douglas N. Harris and Tim R. Sass

Mounting pressure in the policy arena to improve teacher productivity either by improving signals that predict teacher performance or through creating incentive contracts based on performance—has spurred two related questions: Are there important determinants of teacher productivity that are not captured by teacher credentials but that can be measured by subjective assessments? And would evaluating teachers based on a combination of subjective assessments and student outcomes more accurately gauge teacher performance than student test scores alone? Using data from a midsize Florida school district, this paper explores both questions by calculating teachers' "value added" and comparing those outcomes with subjective ratings of teachers by school principals. Teacher value-added and principals' subjective ratings are positively correlated and principals' evaluations are better predictors of a teacher's value added than traditional approaches to teacher compensation focused on experience and formal education. In settings where schools are judged on student test scores, teachers' ability to raise those scores is important to principals, as reflected in their subjective teacher ratings. Also, teachers' subject knowledge, teaching skill, and intelligence are most closely associated with both the overall subjective teacher ratings and the teacher value added. Finally, while past teacher value added predicts future teacher value added the principals' subjective ratings can provide additional information and substantially increase predictive power.

Published: September 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 410KB)



 


Teacher Career Paths, Teacher Quality, and Persistence in the Classroom: Are Schools Keeping their Best?
Working Paper 29
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber, Betheny Gross, and Daniel Player

Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, even though these proxies correlate only weakly with student performance. This paper examines the attrition and mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality using value-added measures of teacher performance. Unlike previous studies, this paper focuses on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. On average, more effective teachers tend to stay in their initial schools and in teaching. But the lowest performing teachers, who are generally the most likely to transfer between schools, appear to "churn" within the system, and teacher mobility appears significantly affected by student demographics and achievement levels.

Published: August 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 738KB)



 


Before or After the Bell?: School Context and Neighborhood Effects on Student Achievement
Working Paper 28
Author(s): Paul A. Jargowsky and Mohamed El Komi

This paper explores the relative effects of school and neighborhood characteristics on student achievement in Texas. Previous empirical studies have estimated one of these effects in the absence of controls for the other, leading to potentially misleading results. School variables are more robust and explain a greater degree of the variance in test scores than neighborhood characteristics. Neighborhood level variables, as a group, are statistically significant even in the presence of school variables. The particular pattern of effects varies by the manner in which the school context was controlled, by poverty status, move status, and location in the conditional achievement distribution. But neighborhood always mattered. Even if neighborhood conditions are less robust than school context effects, concern about neighborhood conditions is still justified. Reducing the concentration of poverty and economic segregation may be the easiest way to decrease the "savage inequalities" that exist between schools.

Published: July 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 282KB)



 


The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools
Working Paper 27
Author(s): Celeste K. Carruthers

Do charter schools draw good teachers from traditional, mainstream public schools? Using an eleven-year panel of North Carolina public school teachers, the author finds nuanced patterns of teacher quality flowing into charter schools. High rates of inexperienced and unlicensed teachers moved to charter schools, but among regularly licensed teachers changing schools, charter movers had higher licensure test scores than other moving teachers, and they were more likely to be highly experienced. The author estimates measures of value added for a subset of elementary teachers and show that charter movers were less effective than other mobile teachers and colleagues within their sending schools, by 3 to 4 percent of a student-level standard deviation in achievement.

Last Revised: June 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 470KB)



 


The Effects of Open Enrollment on School Choice and Student Outcomes
Working Paper 26
Author(s): Umut Özek

This paper analyzes households' response to the introduction of intra-district school choice and examines the impact of this choice on student test scores in Pinellas County Schools, one of the largest school districts in the United States. Households react strongly to the incentives created by such programs, leading to significant changes in the frequency of exercising alternative public schooling options, as well as changes in the composition of the "opt out" students. However, using proximity to public alternatives as an instrument for opting out of the assigned public school, the author finds no significant benefit of opting out on student achievement and that those who opt out of their default public schools often perform significantly worse on standardized tests than similar students who stay behind. The results further suggest that the short-run detrimental effects of opting out are stronger for students who opt out closer to the terminal grade of the school level. Yet the detrimental effects are weaker for disadvantaged students, who typically constitute the proposed target of school choice reforms.

Published: May 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 898KB) 



 


The Influence of School Administrators on Teacher Retention Decisions
Working Paper 25
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Pamela L. Grossman, Marsha Ing, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James H. Wyckoff

When given the opportunity, many teachers choose to leave schools serving poor, low-performing, and minority students. While substantial research has documented this phenomenon, far less effort has gone into understanding what features of the working conditions in these schools drive this relatively high turnover rate. This paper explores the relationship between school contextual factors and teacher retention decisions in New York City. The methodological approach separates the effects of teacher characteristics from school characteristics by modeling the relationship between the assessments of school contextual factors by one set of teachers and the turnover decisions by other teachers within the same school. Teachers' perceptions of the school administration have by far the greatest influence on teacher-retention decisions. This effect of administration is consistent for first-year teachers and the full sample of teachers and is confirmed by a survey of teachers who have recently left teaching in New York City.

Published: May 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 552 KB)



 


Are Teacher Absences Worth Worrying about in the U.S.?
Working Paper 24
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L.Vigdor

Using detailed data from North Carolina, this paper examines the frequency, incidence, and consequences of teacher absences in public schools, as well as the impact of a policy designed to reduce absences. The incidence of teacher absences is regressive: when schools are ranked by the fraction of students receiving free or reduced-price lunch, schools in the poorest quartile averaged almost one extra sick day per teacher than schools in the highest income quartile, and schools with persistently high rates of teacher absence were much more likely to serve low-income than high-income students. In regression models incorporating teacher fixed effects, absences are associated with lower student achievement in elementary grades. There is evidence that the demand for discretionary absences is price-elastic. Our estimates suggest that a policy intervention that simultaneously raised teacher base salaries and broadened financial penalties for absences could both raise teachers' expected income and lower districts' expected costs.

Published: April 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 379KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Education Finance and Policy 4(2):115-149 (2009)]



 


Who Leaves? Teacher Attrition and Student Achievement
Working Paper 23
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Pamela L. Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James H. Wyckoff

Teacher attrition has attracted considerable attention as federal, state and local policies- intended to improve student outcomes, increasingly focus on recruiting and retaining more qualified and effective teachers. But policy makers are often frustrated by the seemingly high rates of attrition among teachers earlier on in their careers. This paper analyzes attrition patterns among teachers in New York City elementary and middle schools and explores whether teachers who transfer among schools, or leave teaching entirely, are more or less effective than those who remain. Findings show first-year teachers who are less effective in improving student math scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers. This raises important questions about current retention and transfer policies.

Published: March 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 335KB)



 


Student Transience in North Carolina:The Effect of School Mobility on Student Outcomes Using Longitudinal Data
Working Paper 22
Author(s): Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, and Stephanie D'Souza

This paper describes the school mobility rates for elementary and middle school students in North Carolina and attempts to estimate the effect of school mobility on the performance of different groups of students using student fixed effects models. School mobility is defined as changing schools at times that are non-promotional (e.g., moving from middle to high school). We used detailed administrative data on North Carolina students and schools from 1996 to 2005 and followed four cohorts of 3rd graders for six years each. School mobility rates were highest for minority and disadvantaged students. School mobility rates for Hispanic students declined across successive cohorts, but increased for Black students. Findings on effects were most pronounced in math. School mobility hurt the math performance of Black and Hispanic students, but not the math performance of white students. School mobility improved the reading performance of white and more advantaged students, but had no effect on the reading performance of minority students. "Strategic" school moves (cross-district) benefitted or had no effect on student performance, but "reactive" moves (within district) hurt all groups of students. White and Hispanic students were more likely to move to a higher quality school while Blacks were more likely to move to a lower quality school. The negative effects of school mobility increased with the number of school moves.

Published: March 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 580KB)



 


Status vs. Growth: The Distributional Effects of School Accountability Policies
Working Paper 21
Author(s): Helen F. Ladd and Douglas L. Lauen

No Child Left Behind judges the effectiveness of schools based on their students' achievement status. However, many policy analysts argue that schools should be measured, instead, by their students' achievement growth. Using a ten-year student-level panel dataset from North Carolina, we examine how school-specific pressure related to two school accountability approaches (status and growth) affects student achievement at different points in the prior-year achievement distribution. Achievement gains for students below the proficiency cut point emerge in response to both types of accountability systems. We find little or no evidence that schools in North Carolina ignore students far below proficiency under either approach. Importantly, we find that the status, but not the growth, approach reduces the reading achievement of higher performing students, with the losses in the aggregate exceeding the gains at the bottom. The distributional effects of accountability pressure depend on the type of pressure for which schools are held accountable and the tested subject.

Published: March 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 523KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29(3):426-450 (2010)]



2008 | Back to Top

 


Teacher Preparation and Student Achievement
Working Paper 20
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Pamela L. Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James H. Wyckoff

There are fierce debates over the best way to prepare teachers. Some argue that easing entry into teaching is necessary to attract strong candidates, while others argue that investing in high quality teacher preparation is the most promising approach. Most agree, however, that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This paper is one of the first to estimate the effects of features of teachers' preparation on teachers' value-added to student test score performance in Math and English Language Arts. Our results indicate variation across preparation programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers they are supplying to New York City schools. In particular, preparation directly linked to practice appears to benefit teachers in their first year.

Published: August 2008 | Downloads: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 664KB) | journal article Journal Publication 
[Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 31(4):416-440 (2009)]



 


Measuring Effect Sizes: The Effect of Measurement Error
Working Paper 19
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Pamela L. Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James H. Wyckoff

Value-added models in education research allow researchers to explore how a wide variety of policies and measured school inputs affect the academic performance of students. The impacts of such interventions are typically quantified in terms of effect sizes. We estimate the overall extent of test measurement error and how this varies across students using the covariance structure of student test scores across grades in New York City from 1999 to 2007. Results reinforce the importance of accounting for measurement error, as it meaningfully increases effect size estimates associated with teacher attributes. There are important differences in teacher effectiveness that are systematically related to observed teacher attributes. Such effects are important in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies.

Published: June 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 365KB)



 


Classroom Peer Effects and Student Achievement
Working Paper 18
Author(s): Mary A. Burke and Tim R. Sass

Using a unique longitudinal dataset covering all Florida public school students in grades 3–10 over a five-year period, we analyze the impact of classroom peers on individual student performance. Unlike many previous data sets used to study peer effects in education, our data allow us to identify each member of a given student's classroom peer group in elementary, middle and high school as well as the classroom teacher responsible for instruction. As a result, we can control for individual student fixed effects simultaneously with individual teacher fixed effects, thereby alleviating biases due to endogenous assignment of both peers and teachers, including some dynamic aspects of such assignments. We find some sizable, significant peer effects within nonlinear models, but not with linear specifications. We find peer effects depend on a student's own ability and on the ability of the peers under consideration. Peer effects tend to be smaller when teacher fixed effects are included, a result that suggests co-movement of peer and teacher quality within a student over time. We also find that peer effects tend to be stronger at the classroom level than the grade level.

Published: June 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 593KB)



 


Making a Difference?: The Effects of Teach for America in High School
Working Paper 17
Author(s): Zeyu Xu, Jane Hannaway, and Colin Taylor

Teach for America (TFA) selects and places graduates from the most competitive colleges as teachers in the lowest-performing schools in the country. This paper is the first study that examines TFA effects in high school. We use rich longitudinal data from North Carolina and estimate TFA effects through cross-subject student and school fixed-effects models. We find that TFA teachers tend to have a positive effect on high school student test scores relative to non-TFA teachers, including those who are certified in-field. Such effects exceed the impact of additional years of experience and are particularly strong in math and science.

Last Revised: March 2009 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 392KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 30(3):447-469 (2011)]




School Segregation under Color-Blind Jurisprudence: The Case of North Carolina
Working Paper 16
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor

This paper uses administrative data for the public K-12 schools of North Carolina to measure racial segregation in the public schools of North Carolina. Using data for the 2005/06 school year, the authors update previous calculations that measure segregation in terms of unevenness in racial enrollment patterns both between schools and within schools. They find that classroom segregation generally increased between 2000/01 and 2005/06, continuing, albeit at a slightly slower rate, the trend observed over the preceding six years. Segregation increased sharply in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which introduced a new choice plan in 2002. Over the same period, racial and economic disparities in teacher quality widened in that district.

Published: February 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 301KB) 



 


Teacher Salary Bonuses in North Carolina
Working Paper 15
Author(s): Jacob L. Vigdor

Since the 1996/97 school year, North Carolina has awarded bonuses of up to $1,500 to teachers in schools that exhibit test score gains above certain thresholds. This article reviews the details of the bonus program, describes patterns of differences between schools that qualify for bonuses of differing amounts, and presents basic data to address the question of whether the bonus program has improved student achievement, or has led to a narrowing of racial or socioeconomic achievement gaps. There is some evidence to suggest an improvement in overall test scores, particularly in math, but less evidence to suggest that achievement gaps have narrowed.

Published: February 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 420KB)



 


Public School Choice and Integration: Evidence from Durham, North Carolina
Working Paper 14
Author(s): Robert Bifulco, Helen F. Ladd, and Stephen Ross

This paper uses evidence from Durham, North Carolina to examine the impact of school choice on racial and class-based segregation across schools. The findings suggest that school choice increases segregation. Furthermore, the effects of choice on segregation by class are larger than the effects on segregation by race. These results are consistent with the theoretical argument—developed in sociology and economics literature—that the segregating choices of students from advantaged backgrounds are likely to outweigh any integrating choices by disadvantaged students.

Published: February 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 275KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Social Science Research 38(1):71-85 (2009)]



2007 | Back to Top

 


Feeling the Florida Heat?: How Low-Performing Schools Respond to Voucher and Accountability Pressure
Working Paper 13
Author(s): Cecilia Elena Rouse, Jane Hannaway, Dan Goldhaber, and David N. Figlio

This paper examines the effect of accountability policy on school practices and student outcomes with remarkably comprehensive and detailed data that include a multi-wave five-year survey of the census of public schools in Florida and administrative data on individual student performance over time. The authors show that low-performing schools facing accountability pressure changed their instructional practices in meaningful ways. In addition, they present medium-run evidence school accountability promotes improved student test scores, and find that a significant portion of these test score gains can likely be attributed to the changes in school policies and practices uncovered in these surveys.

Published: November 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 623KB)



 


Are Public Schools Really Losing Their Best? Assessing the Career Transitions of Teachers and Their Implications for the Quality of the Teacher Workforce
Working Paper 12
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber, Betheny Gross, and Daniel Player

Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of high-quality teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, which recent research finds to be only weakly correlated with value-added measures of teachers' performance. We examine attrition and mobility of teachers using teacher value-added measures for early-career teachers in North Carolina public schools from 1996 to 2002. Our findings suggest that the most-effective teachers tend to stay in teaching and in specific schools. Contrary to common expectations, we do not find that more-effective teachers are more likely to leave more-challenging schools.

Published: October 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 340KB)



 


Teacher Credentials and Student Achievement in High School: A Cross-Subject Analysis with Student Fixed Effects
Working Paper 11
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor

One of the first papers to ever estimate teacher effects at the secondary school level, this groundbreaking work presents evidence that teacher credentials affect secondary school student success in systematic ways and to a significant, policy-relevant extent. We use data on statewide end-of-course tests in North Carolina to examine the relationship between teacher credentials and student achievement at the high school level. We find compelling evidence that teacher credentials affect student achievement in systematic ways and that the magnitudes are large enough to be policy relevant. As a result, the uneven distribution of teacher credentials by race and socio-economic status of high school students- a pattern we also document- contributes to achievement gaps in high school.

Published: October 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 487KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Human Resources 45(3):655-681 (2010)]



 


The Narrowing Gap in New York City Teacher Qualifications and Its Implications for Student Achievement in High Poverty Schools
Working Paper 10
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, Jonah E. Rockoff, and James H. Wyckoff

This paper explores how the distribution of teacher qualifications and student achievement in New York City have changed from 2000 through 2005 using data on teachers and students. We find: the gap between the qualifications of New York City teachers in high-poverty schools and low-poverty schools has narrowed substantially over this period, and that this gap-narrowing associated with new hires has been driven almost entirely by the substitution of teachers entering through alternative certification routes, for uncertified teachers in high-poverty schools, these changes resulted from a direct policy intervention eliminating unlicensed teachers, and perhaps most intriguing, much larger gains could result if teachers with strong teacher qualifications could be recruited.

Published: September 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 223KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 27(4):793-818 (2008)]



 


Everyone's Doing It, but What Does Teacher Testing Tell Us about Teacher Effectiveness?
Working Paper 9
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber

This paper explores the relationship between teacher testing and teacher effectiveness using a unique dataset that links teachers to their individual students. My findings show a positive relationship between some teacher licensure tests and student achievement. But they also suggest that states face significant tradeoffs when they require particular performance levels as a precondition to becoming a teacher: some teachers whom we might wish were not in the teacher workforce based on their contribution toward student achievement are eligible to teach based on their performance on these tests, while other individuals who would be effective teachers are ineligible.

Published: April 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 707KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Human Resources 52(4):765-794 (2007)]



 


Individual Teacher Incentives And Student Performance
Working Paper 8
Author(s): David N. Figlio and Lawrence W. Kenny

This paper is the first to systematically document the relationship between individual teacher performance incentives and student achievement using United States data. We combine data from the National Education Longitudinal Survey with original survey data regarding the use of teacher incentives. We find that test scores are higher in schools offering individual financial incentives for good performance. Moreover, the relationship between the presence of merit pay and student test scores is strongest in schools that may have the least parental oversight. The association between teacher incentives and student performance could be due to better schools adopting teacher incentives or to teacher incentives eliciting more effort from teachers.

Published: April 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 559KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Public Economics 91(5-6):901-914 (2007)]



 


Cramming: The Effects of School Accountability on College-Bound Students
Working Paper 7
Author(s): Colleen Donovan, David N. Figlio, and Mark Rush

This paper is the first to explore the effects of school accountability systems on high-achieving students' long-term performance. Using data from a large state university, we relate school accountability pressure in high school to a student's university-level grades and study habits. We find that an accountability system based on a low-level test of basic skills apparently led to reduced performance by high-achieving students, while an accountability system based on a more challenging criterion-referenced exam apparently led to improved performance in college on mathematics and other technical subjects. Both types of systems are associated with increased "cramming" by students in college. The results indicate that the nature of an accountability system can influence its effectiveness.

Published: April 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 452KB)



 


Efficiency and Equity in the Time Pattern of Teacher Pension Benefits
Working Paper 6
Author(s): Robert M. Costrell and Michael Podgursky

Defined Benefit pension plans often generate odd time patterns of benefits. One typical pattern exhibits low accrual in early years, accelerating in mid-late years, followed by dramatic decline, or even negative returns in years that are relatively young for retirement. We consider four states for specific analysis: Arkansas, Missouri, California and Massachusetts. There are interesting variations among these states' formulas, which affect the incentive to retire early. We identify key factors in the defined benefit formulas that drive such patterns and likely consequences for employee behavior. We examine the efficiency and equity consequences of these systems and lessons that might be drawn for pension reform.

Published: April 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 451KB)



 


Teacher Pensions and Retirement Behavior: How Teacher Pension Rules Affect Behavior, Mobility, and Retirement
Working Paper 5
Author(s): Michael J. Podgursky and Mark W. Ehlert

This paper examines late career mobility and retirement decisions for a cohort of mid-career Missouri public school teachers. The rate of accrual of traditional defined benefit pension systems is highly nonlinear and back-loaded with most of the gain occurring in the final years prior to retirement. Also, these pension systems have rules that introduce kinks or discontinuities in the rate of accrual after 30 years. This paper explores the effect of these pension rules on retirement patterns. Missouri permits teachers to continue teaching part-time while collecting benefits. Teachers can also retire from one pension system and begin teaching in another. The paper examines both types of behavior.

Published: April 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 873KB) 



 


The Effects of NBPTS-Certified Teachers on Student Achievement
Working Paper 4
Author(s): Douglas N. Harris and Tim R. Sass

This study considers the efficacy of a certification system for teachers established by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). The authors utilize a four-year span of the longitudinal data from Florida to determine the relationship between teacher NBPTS certification and student test scores on low-stakes and high-stakes exams. They find evidence that NBPTS certification provides a positive signal of teacher productivity in some cases, but it is highly variable. The process of becoming NBPTS certified does not appear to increase teacher productivity nor do NBPTS-certified teachers appear to enhance the productivity of their colleagues.

Published: March 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 506KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 28(1):55-80 (2009)]


Read commentary on this working paper by Mary Dilworth of the NBPTS, Daniel McCaffrey of the RAND Corporation, and CALDER researchers, Helen F. Ladd and Tim R. Sass



 


Teacher Training, Teacher Quality and Student Achievement
Working Paper 3
Author(s): Douglas N. Harris and Tim R. Sass

Using longitudinal data from the state of Florida, this study examines the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement. It suggests that teacher training generally has little influence on productivity. One exception is that content-focused teacher professional development is positively associated with productivity in middle and high school math. In addition, more experienced teachers appear more effective in teaching elementary and middle school reading. There is no evidence that either pre-service (undergraduate) training or the scholastic aptitude of teachers influences their ability to increase student achievement.

Published: March 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 439KB) 



 


How and Why Do Teacher Credentials Matter for Student Achievement?
Working Paper 2
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor

In this paper, the authors use a ten-year span of longitudinal data from North Carolina to explore a range of questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials, on the one hand, and student achievement on the other. They conclude that a teacher's experience, test scores and regular licensure all have positive effects on student achievement, with larger effects for math than for reading. Taken together the various teacher credentials exhibit quite large effects on math achievement, whether compared to the effects of changes in class size or to the socio-economics characteristics of students.

Published: March 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 1,183KB)


Read commentary on this working paper by Mary Dilworth of the NBPTS, Daniel McCaffrey of the RAND Corporation, and CALDER researchers, Helen F. Ladd and Tim R. Sass



 


High Poverty Schools and the Distribution of Teachers and Principals
Working Paper 1
Author(s): Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L. Vigdor, and Justin Wheeler

The central question for this study is how the quality of the teachers and principals in high poverty schools in North Carolina compares to that in the schools serving more advantaged students. A related question is why these differences emerge. The consistency of the patterns across many measures of qualifications for both teachers and principals leaves no doubt that students in the high poverty schools are served by school personnel with lower qualifications than those in the lower poverty schools. Moreover, in many cases the differences are large. Additional evidence documents that the differences largely reflect predictable outcomes of the labor market for teachers and principals.

Published: March 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 643KB)



Policy Briefs | Back to Top

 


Public School Choice in the District of Columbia: A Descriptive Analysis
Policy Brief 13
Author(s): Umut Özek

Increasing parental choice has been a leading theme of recent education policy intended to enhance the academic achievement of low-performing students in the United States. These policies aim to “level the playing field” in access to high-quality education for disadvantaged students who cannot otherwise afford higher-quality schooling options. Public school choice programs in D.C. are successful; disadvantaged students are able to attend higher-performing schools than their neighborhood public schools, even with prolonged commutes. Overall, the findings provide evidence that the relatively advantaged students are taking advantage of public school choice programs. However, choice exacerbates student quality disparities between low- and high-poverty schools, casting some doubt on the benefits of such programs.

Published: April 2011 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 694KB)





Teacher Layoffs: An Empirical Illustration of Seniority vs. Measures of Effectiveness
Policy Brief 12
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James H. Wyckoff

Analyzing data on 4th and 5th grade teachers in New York City public schools, CALDER researchers find substantial differences in which teachers get cut under a seniority-based layoff policy versus a policy based on teacher effectiveness (value-added). The authors model the two layoff scenarios to respond to a (fictional) budget shortfall equivalent.The bottom line is that teacher layoffs based on teacher performance, preferably multiple performance measures, lead to a more effective workforce and improved student performance.

Published: July 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 336KB)



 


The Impact of Teacher Experience: Examining the Evidence and Policy Implications
Policy Brief 11
Author(s): Jennifer King Rice

Teacher experience is a cornerstone of traditional single–salary schedules; it drives teacher transfer policies that prioritize seniority; and it is commonly considered a major source of inequity across schools and, therefore, a target for redistribution.The underlying assumption is that experience promotes effectiveness. But is this really the case? Do students attain higher levels of achievement when taught by more experienced teachers? Recent evidence from CALDER studies provides new insight into the effects of teacher experience.

Published: August 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 623KB)



 


Using Performance on the Job to Inform Teacher Tenure Decisions
Policy Brief 10
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen

Race to the Top encourages states to adopt policies that measure the impact of individual teachers on student learning and use those measures to inform human capital decisions including tenure and compensation. As a number of states begin to revamp their tenure-granting policies, the idea that high-stakes personnel decisions need to be linked to direct measures of teacher effectiveness is gaining traction among education policymakers. Contributing to the debate about policies that can enhance the quality of teachers, this brief evaluates how well early-career performance signals teacher effectiveness after tenure.

Published: May 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 651KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[American Economic Review 100(2):250–255 (2010)]



 


Using Value-Added Measures of Teacher Quality
Policy Brief 9
Author(s): Eric A. Hanushek and Steven G. Rivkin

Can value-added measures provide valuable information to assess the quality of teachers and to create incentives for improvement? CALDER researchers tackle this important and timely question by describing the analytic framework of value-added measures, by identifying methodological concerns about value-added estimation and ways to mitigate them, and by discussing the policy uses of value-added estimates of teacher effectiveness.

Published: May 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 296KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[American Economic Review 100(2):267–271 (2010)]



 


Principal Effectiveness and Leadership in an Era of Accountability: What Research Says
Policy Brief 8
Author(s): Jennifer King Rice

In an era of greater school accountability, leadership matters. For decades, principals have been recognized as vital to the effectiveness of schools, but strong empirical evidence on the extent to which, and the ways in which, school leaders matter has not been available. CALDER researchers have advanced our knowledge in this area by skillfully drawing on rich state longitudinal databases. This brief synthesizes new findings on the effectiveness and distribution of principals, the characteristics of good leadership, and how best to prepare principals for this increasingly demanding job.

Published: April 2010 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 266KB) 



2008
| Back to Top

 


Do Disadvantaged Urban Schools Lose Their Best Teachers?
Policy Brief 7
Author(s): Eric A. Hanushek and Steven G. Rivkin

This research brief examines differences in teacher effectiveness by school transition status and school characteristics in a large urban school district in Texas, using estimates of teacher effectiveness based on teacher contributions to student learning outcomes across classrooms. This research finds little or no evidence to support the view that more effective teachers have higher exit probabilities. In fact, the study finds that teachers who exit are significantly less effective, on average, than those who stay.

Published: November 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 232KB)



 


The Narrowing Gap in New York City Teacher Qualifications and Its Implications for Student Achievement in High Poverty Schools
Policy Brief 6
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, Jonah E. Rockoff, and James H. Wyckoff

This important research explores the effects of district policy interventions on the distribution of teacher qualifications and student achievement. Authors use a 5-year span of individual teacher- and student-level longitudinal data from New York City (NYC) from 2000 through 2005 to estimate the differences in the effectiveness of teachers entering NYC schools through different pathways to teaching. The study finds that the gap between the qualifications of NYC teachers in high-poverty and low-poverty NYC schools has narrowed substantially since 2000, mostly ensuing from the city's concentrated effort to match exceptionally capable teachers with very needy students and the virtual substitution of newly hired uncertified teachers in high-poverty schools with new hires from alternative certification routes: NYC Teaching Fellows and Teach for America.

Published: November 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 349KB) | journal article Journal Publication
[Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 27(4):793-818 (2008)]



 


The Texas FERPA Story
Policy Brief 5
Author(s): Daniel M. O'Brien

This research brief describes the legal and operational structure of the Texas longitudinal data system related to recent changes in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA)—which establishes the rights of parents to access their children's educational records and protects the confidentiality of student information—that more closely align law and practice. The U.S. Department of Education's FERPA Final Regulations Amendments took effect January 8, 2009.

Published: November 2008 | Download: pdf icon new  Full Text (PDF 257KB)



 


The Stability of Value-Added Measures of Teacher Quality and Implications for Teacher Compensation Policy
Policy Brief 4
Author(s): Tim R. Sass

There is little doubt that teacher quality is a key determinant of student achievement, but finding ways to identify and reward the best teachers has proven illusive. This research brief considers the stability of value-added measures of teacher effectiveness over time and the resulting implications for the design and implementation of performance-based teacher compensation schemes.

Published: November 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 246KB)



 


Assessing the Potential of Using Value Added-Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making Tenure Decisions
Policy Brief 3
Author(s): Dan Goldhaber and Michael Hansen

Using individual teacher and student-level longitudinal data from North Carolina, this research brief presents selected findings from work examining the stability of value-added model estimates of teacher effectiveness, focusing on their implication for teacher tenure policies and making high stakes personnel decisions. Findings show year-to-year correlations in teacher effects are modest, but pre-tenure estimates of teacher job performance do predict estimated post-tenure performance in both math and reading, and would therefore seem to be a reasonable metric to use as a factor in making substantive teacher selection decisions.

Published: November 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 293KB)



 


Overview of Measuring Effect Sizes: The Effect of Measurement Error
Policy Brief 2
Author(s): Donald J. Boyd, Pamela L. Grossman, Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James H. Wyckoff

This research brief estimates the overall extent of test measurement error and how this varies across students using New York City student- level longitudinal data across grades 3-8 from 1999- 2007. Results reinforce the importance of accounting for measurement error, as it meaningfully increases effect size estimates associated with teacher attributes. There are important differences in teacher effectiveness that are systematically related to observed teacher attributes. Such effects are important in the formulation and implementation of personnel policies. Also, effect sizes as traditionally measured have led analysts to understate the magnitudes of effects because the standard deviation of observed scores overstates the dispersion of true achievement in the student population.

Published: November 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 256KB)



 


Value-Added Analysis and Education Policy
Policy Brief 1
Author(s): Steven G. Rivkin

This brief describes estimation and measurement issues relevant to estimating the quality of instruction in the context of a cumulative model of learning. The discussion highlights the importance of accounting for student differences and the advantages of focusing on student achievement gains as opposed to differences in test scores.

Published: November 2007 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 218KB)



 


High School Diploma and GED Attainment in Florida
Research Note 1
Author(s): Tim R. Sass and Steven Cartwright

This brief calculates graduation rates for the state of Florida using longitudinal data. We describe our measurement strategies and compare them with the state’s official measurement procedures. We calculate the diploma and GED attainment rates of six separate cohorts of Florida 9th graders who began high school between 1995/96 and 2000/01. We then present rates of both diploma receipt and GED receipt at four years and in later years. The results show an increasing trend in graduation rates in the state over the period studied and a substantial bump at five years, with growth flattening out after that time.

Published: July 2008 | Download: pdf icon new Full Text (PDF 217KB)



The research reported here was supported in part by the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant R305A060018 to the American Institutes for Research. The opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, or the American Institutes for Research.

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