Simon Burgess
Teachers’ use of class time and student achievement
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe study teachers’ choices about how to allocate class time across different instructional activities, for example, lecturing, open discussion, or individual practice. Our data come from secondary schools in England, specifically classes preceding GCSE exams. Students score higher in math when… more →
Parent Engagement Interventions are Not Costless: Opportunity Cost and Crowd Out of Parental Investment
Topics: Families and CommunitiesTags: ParentingMany educational interventions encourage parents to engage in their child’s education as if parental time and attention is limitless. Sadly, though, it is not. Successfully encouraging certain parental investments may crowd out other productive behaviors.
Teacher peer observation and student test scores: Evidence from a field experiment in English secondary schools
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Professional developmentThis paper reports improvements in teacher job performance, as measured by student test scores, resulting from a program of (zero-) low-stakes peer evaluation. Teachers working at the same school observed and scored each other’s teaching. Students in randomly-assigned treatment schools scored 0.… more →