Search and Filter
Instructional practices
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 →
The NCTE Transcripts: A Dataset of Elementary Math Classroom Transcripts
Topics: MethodsClassroom discourse is a core medium of instruction --- analyzing it can provide a window into teaching and learning as well as driving the development of new tools for improving instruction. We introduce the largest dataset of mathematics classroom transcripts available to researchers, and… more →
Time in School: A Conceptual Framework, Synthesis of the Causal Research, and Empirical Exploration
We examine the fundamental and complex role that time plays in the learning process. We begin by developing a conceptual framework to elucidate the multiple obstacles schools face in converting total time in school into active learning time. We then synthesize the causal research and document 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 →
Computationally Identifying Funneling and Focusing Questions in Classroom Discourse
Topics: Student LearningResponsive teaching is a highly effective strategy that promotes student learning. In math classrooms, teachers might funnel students towards a normative answer or focus students to reflect on their own thinking, deepening their understanding of math concepts. When teachers focus, they treat… more →
The Enduring Struggle of Standards-Based Reform: Lessons from a National Research Center on College and Career-Ready Standards
Morgan S. Polikoff, Laura M. Desimone, Andrew C. Porter, Michael S. Garet, Amy Stornaiuolo, Katie Pak, Toni M. Smith, Mengli Song, Nelson Flores, Lynn S. Fuchs, Douglas Fuchs, T. Philip Nichols.Standards have been at the heart of state and federal efforts to improve education for several decades. Most recently, standards-based reforms have evolved with a focus on more ambitious "college- and career-ready" (CCR) standards. This paper synthesizes the results of a seven-year national… more →
U.S. Middle School Mathematics Instruction, 2016
Topics: Student LearningIn recent decades, U.S. education leaders have advocated for more intellectually ambitious mathematics instruction in classrooms. Evidence about whether more ambitious mathematics instruction has filtered into contemporary classrooms, however, is largely anecdotal. To address this issue, we… more →
Does Teacher Professional Development Improve Student Learning? Evidence from Leading Educators’ Fellowship Model
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTeachers are the most important school-specific factor in student learning. Yet, little evidence exists linking teacher professional development programs and the strategies or activities that comprise them to student achievement. In this paper, we examine a fellowship model for professional… more →
Challenges and Tradeoffs of “Good” Teaching: The Pursuit of Multiple Educational Outcomes
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentThe pursuit of multiple educational outcomes makes teaching a complex craft subject to potential conflicts and competing commitments. Using a dataset in which teachers were randomly assigned to students paired with videotapes of instruction, we both document and unpack such a tradeoff. Upper-… more →
The Effect of Active Learning Professional Development Training on College Students’ Academic Outcomes
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentGrowing literature documents the promise of active learning instruction in engaging students in college classrooms. Accordingly, faculty professional development (PD) programs on active learning have become increasingly popular in postsecondary institutions; yet, quantitative evidence on the… more →
A Meta-Analysis of the Experimental Evidence Linking STEM Classroom Interventions to Teacher Knowledge, Classroom Instruction, and Student Achievement
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentTags: Instructional practicesDespite growing evidence that classroom interventions in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) can increase student achievement, there is little evidence regarding how these interventions affect teachers themselves and whether these changes predict student learning.
Does Monitoring Change Teacher Pedagogy and Student Outcomes?
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentIn theory, monitoring can improve employee motivation and effort, particularly in settings lacking measurable outputs, but research assessing monitoring as a motivator is limited to laboratory settings. To address this gap, I leverage exogenous variation in the presence and intensity of teacher… more →
Can Automated Feedback Improve Teachers’ Uptake of Student Ideas? Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial In a Large-Scale Online Course
Topics: Teacher and Leader DevelopmentProviding consistent, individualized feedback to teachers is essential for improving instruction but can be prohibitively resource-intensive in most educational contexts. We develop M-Powering Teachers, an automated tool based on natural language processing to give teachers feedback on their… more →
Spread Too Thin: The Effects of Teacher Specialization on Student Achievement
Topics: Student LearningAlthough the majority of elementary school teachers are in self-contained classrooms and teach all major subjects, a growing number of teachers specialize in teaching fewer subjects to higher numbers of students. We use administrative data from Indiana to estimate the effect of teacher… more →
The Revealed Preferences for School Reopening: Evidence from Public-School Disenrollment
Topics: Families and CommunitiesBefore the 2020-21 school year, educators, policymakers, and parents confronted the stark and uncertain trade-offs implied by the health, educational, and economic consequences of offering instruction remotely, in person, or through a hybrid of the two. Most public schools in the U.S. chose… more →
Cramming: Short- and Long-Run Effects
Tags: Instructional practicesAn administrative rule allowed students who failed an exam to retake it shortly after, triggering strong `teach to the test' incentives to raise these students' test scores for the retake. We develop a model that accounts for truncation and find that these students score 0.14 standard deviations… more →
Measuring Conversational Uptake: A Case Study on Student-Teacher Interactions
Dorottya Demszky, Jing Liu, Zid Mancenido, Julie Cohen, Heather C. Hill, Dan Jurafsky, Tatsunori Hashimoto.Topics: MethodsTags: Instructional practicesIn conversation, uptake happens when a speaker builds on the contribution of their interlocutor by, for example, acknowledging, repeating or reformulating what they have said. In education, teachers' uptake of student contributions has been linked to higher student achievement. Yet measuring and… more →
Do students improve their academic achievement when assigned to a growth mindset teacher? Evidence from Census Data in Chile using a Student Fixed Effect Design
Topics: Student LearningGrowing evidence shows that a student's growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is malleable) can benefit their academic achievement. However, due to limited information, little is known about how a teachers’ growth mindset affects their students’ academic achievement. In this paper, we… more →
Measuring Teaching Practices at Scale: A Novel Application of Text-as-Data Methods
Topics: MethodsValid and reliable measurements of teaching quality facilitate school-level decision-making and policies pertaining to teachers. Using nearly 1,000 word-to-word transcriptions of 4th- and 5th-grade English language arts classes, we apply novel text-as-data methods to develop automated measures… more →
Higher-Quality Elementary Schools Sustain the Prekindergarten Boost: Evidence from an Exploration of Variation in the Boston Prekindergarten Program’s Impacts
Topics: Student LearningWhile there is a consensus that attending preschool better prepares children for kindergarten, evidence on the factors that sustain the preschool boost into the early elementary years is still emerging. To add to this literature, we use lottery data from applicants to oversubscribed… more →