K-12 Education
Policy Implementation, Principal Agency, and Strategic Action: Improving Teaching Effectiveness in New York City Middle Schools
Ten years ago, the reform of teacher evaluation was touted as a mechanism to improve teacher effectiveness. In response, virtually every state redesigned its teacher evaluation system. Recently, a growing narrative suggests these reforms failed and should be abandoned. This response may be… more →
Delayed Benefits: Effects of California School District Bond Elections on Achievement by Socioeconomic Status
Contradictory evidence of the relationship between education funding and student achievement could reflect heterogeneous effects by revenue source or student characteristics. This study examines potential heterogeneous effects of a particular type of local revenue – bond funds for capital… more →
Interpreting Effect Sizes of Education Interventions
Researchers commonly interpret effect sizes by applying benchmarks proposed by Cohen over a half century ago. However, effects that are small by Cohen’s standards are large relative to the impacts of most field-based interventions. These benchmarks also fail to consider important differences in… more →
Engaging Teachers: Measuring the Impact of Teachers on Student Attendance in Secondary School
Teachers’ impact on student long-run success is only partially explained by their contributions to students’ short-run academic performance. For this study, we explore a second dimension of teacher effectiveness by creating measures of teachers’ contributions to student class-attendance. We find… more →