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Seth Gershenson
On-the-Job Learning: How Peers and Experience Drive Productivity among Teachers
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Elementary schoolsWorkers learn on the job from both repetition and peers. Less understood is how specific types of experience and peer characteristics affect on-the-job learning. This likely differs by context (e.g., occupation, tasks, or roles). Absent such knowledge, it is unclear how to optimally… more →
How Teachers Learn Racial Competency: The Role of Peers and Contexts
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThis paper investigates how teachers learn about race in the school context, with a particular focus on teachers’ development of racial competency. Using in-depth, semi-structured interviews we find that teachers learn through three sources: from their peers, from years of experience, and from… more →
Do Grow-Your-Own Programs Work? Evidence from the Teacher Academy of Maryland
Local teacher recruitment through “grow-your-own” programs is a prominent strategy to address workforce shortages and ensure that incoming teachers resemble, understand, and have strong connections to their communities. We exploit the staggered rollout of the Teacher Academy of Maryland career… more →
Disparate Pathways: Understanding Racial Disparities in Teaching
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentMounting evidence supporting the advantages of a diverse teacher workforce prompts policymakers to scrutinize existing recruitment pathways. Following four cohorts of Maryland public high-school students over 12 years reveals several insights. Early barriers require timely interventions, aiding… more →
Spillover Effects of Black Teachers on White Teachers’ Racial Competency: Mixed Methods Evidence from North Carolina
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe US teaching force remains disproportionately white while the student body grows more diverse. It is therefore important to understand how and under what conditions white teachers learn racial competency. This study applies a mixed-methods approach to investigate the hypothesis that Black… more →
Who refers whom? The effects of teacher characteristics on disciplinary office referrals
Topics: Student Well-BeingTeachers affect a wide range of students’ educational and social outcomes, but how they contribute to students’ involvement in school discipline is less understood. We estimate the impact of teacher demographics and other observed qualifications on students’ likelihood of receiving a… more →
Making the Grade: The Effect of Teacher Grading Standards on Student Outcomes
Topics: Student LearningTags: Instructional practicesTeachers are among the most important inputs in the education production function. One mechanism by which teachers might affect student learning is through the grading standards they set for their classrooms. However, the effects of grading standards on student outcomes are relatively… more →
Blurred Boundaries: A Day in the Life of a Teacher
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe burnout, stress, and work-life balance challenges faced by teachers have received renewed interest due to the myriad disruptions and changes to K-12 schooling brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, even prior to the pandemic relatively little was known about teachers’ time use… more →
From Referrals to Suspensions: New Evidence on Racial Disparities in Exclusionary Discipline
Topics: Student Well-BeingWe use novel data on disciplinary referrals, including those that do not lead to suspensions, to better understand the origins of racial disparities in exclusionary discipline. We find significant differences between Black and white students in both referral rates and the rate at which referrals… more →
The Short- and Long-Run Impacts of Secondary School Absences
Topics: Student LearningTags: AbsenteeismWe provide novel evidence on the causal impacts of student absences in middle and high school on state test scores, course grades, and educational attainment using a rich administrative dataset that tracks the date and class period of each absence. We use two similar but distinct identification… more →
Identifying and Producing Effective Teachers
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeachers are among the most important school-provided determinants of student success. Effective teachers improve students’ test scores as well as their attendance, behavior, and earnings as adults. However, students do not enjoy equal access to effective teachers. This article reviews some of… more →
Stress Test: Examining the Evolution of Teachers’ Mental Health Over Time
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeaching is often assumed to be a relatively stressful occupation and occupational stress among teachers has been linked to poor mental health, attrition from the profession, and decreased effectiveness in the classroom. Despite widespread concern about teachers’ mental health, however, little… more →
The Long-Run Impacts of Same-Race Teachers
We examine the long-run impacts of having a same-race teacher. First, we leverage data from the Tennessee STAR class-size experiment to show that black students randomly assigned to a black teacher in grades K-3 are 5 percentage points (7%) more likely to graduate from high school and 4… more →