Erica Harbatkin
Taking Teacher Evaluation to Scale: The Effect of State Reforms on Achievement and Attainment
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: School reformFederal incentives and requirements under the Obama administration spurred states to adopt major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. We examine the effects of these reforms on student achievement and attainment at a national scale by exploiting their staggered implementation across… more →
State Accountability Decisions under the Every Student Succeeds Act and the Validity, Stability, and Equity of School Ratings
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceTags: School reformThe Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) began a new wave of school accountability under which states draw on multiple measures to assess school quality. States have options in terms of how to weight components in their school quality indices and how many years of data to use to determine school… more →
School Turnaround in a Pandemic: An Examination of the Outsized Implications of COVID-19 for Low-Performing Schools and Their Communities
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: Covid-19 recoveryTurnaround schools and districts that were charged with making rapid and dramatic improvements before the COVID-19 pandemic struck faced considerable challenges carrying out improvement efforts during pandemic schooling. Using survey and administrative data collected during the pandemic, we… more →
Should I Stay or Should I Go (Later)? Teacher Intentions and Turnover in Low-Performing Schools and Districts Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeacher turnover is a perennial concern that became more salient during the COVID-19 pandemic as teacher-reported intentions to leave teaching escalated. The extent to which these teacher reports may translate into actual turnover remains an open question—especially given the pandemic context.… more →
The Role of School Climate in School Turnaround
School climate is critical to school effectiveness, but there is limited large-scale data available to examine the magnitude and nature of the relationship between school climate and school improvement. Drawing on statewide administrative data linked with unique teacher survey data in Michigan,… more →
Accountability-Driven School Reform: Are There Unintended Effects on Younger Children in Untested Grades?
Topics: Student LearningTest-based accountability pressures have been shown to result in transferring less effective teachers into untested early grades and more effective teachers to tested grades. In this paper, we evaluate whether a state initiative to turnaround its lowest performing schools reproduced a similar… more →
The Next Generation of State Reforms to Improve their Lowest Performing Schools: An Evaluation of North Carolina’s School Transformation Initiative
Topics: Policy, Politics, and GovernanceIn contrast to prior federally mandated school reforms, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states more discretion in reforming their lowest performing schools, removes requirements to disrupt the status quo, and does not allocate substantial additional funds. Using a regression… more →
Turnover at the Top: Estimating the Effects of Principal Turnover on Student, Teacher, and School Outcomes
Tags: Principals, School districtsOne in five schools loses its principal each year. Despite the prevalence of principal turnover, little empirical research has examined its effects on school outcomes. Because principal turnover may occur in response to or contemporaneous with a downturn in student achievement, the effect of a… more →