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Educator perceptions
Education Leaders’ Knowledge of Causal Research Design: A Measurement Challenge
Federal policy has both incentivized and supported better use of research evidence by educational leaders. However, the extent to which these leaders are well-positioned to understand foundational principles from research design and statistics, including those that underlie the What Works… more →
First Impressions: The Case of Teacher Racial Bias
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentWe study racial bias and the persistence of first impressions in the context of education. Teachers who begin their careers in classrooms with large black-white score gaps carry negative views into evaluations of future cohorts of black students. Our evidence is based on novel data on blind… more →
The Big Problem with Little Interruptions to Classroom Learning
Narrative accounts of classroom instruction suggest that external interruptions, such as intercom announcements and visits from staff, are a regular occurrence in U.S. public schools. We study the frequency, nature, and duration of external interruptions in the Providence Public School District… more →
Bias in the Air: A Nationwide Exploration of Teachers' Implicit Racial Attitudes, Aggregate Bias, and Student Outcomes
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTheory suggests that teachers’ implicit racial attitudes affect their students, but we lack large-scale evidence on US teachers’ implicit biases and their correlates. Using nationwide data from Project Implicit, we find that teachers’ implicit White/Black biases (as measured by the implicit… more →
Gender Stereotypes in the Classroom and Effects on Achievement
Topics: Student LearningWe study the effect of elementary school teachers’ beliefs about gender roles on student achievement. We exploit a natural experiment where teachers are prevented from self-selecting into schools, and conditional on school, students are allocated to teachers randomly. We show that girls who are… more →
Improving Student Teachers’ Feelings of Preparedness to Teach Through Recruitment of Instructionally Effective and Experienced Cooperating Teachers: A Randomized Experiment
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentPrior work suggests that recent graduates from teacher education programs feel better prepared to teach and are more instructionally effective when they learned to teach with more instructionally effective cooperating teachers. However, we do not know if these relationships are causal. Even if they… more →
English Learner Labeling: How English Learner Status Shapes Teacher Perceptions of Student Skills & the Moderating Role of Bilingual Instructional Settings
Topics: Student LearningPrior research has shown that EL classification is consequential for students, however, less is known about how EL classification impacts students’ outcomes. In this study, we examine one hypothesized mechanism: teacher perceptions. Using nationally-representative data (ECLS-K:2011), we use… more →