Teacher and Leader Development
The Returns to Experience for School Principals
Despite increasing recognition of the importance of high-quality school leadership, we know remarkably little about principal skill development. Using administrative data from Tennessee, Oregon, and New York City, we estimate the returns to principal experience as measured by student outcomes,… more →
Pathways into the CTE Teaching Profession: A Descriptive Analysis of Degrees, Licenses, and Race in Maryland
Despite substantial interest in Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses in U.S. high schools—and associated scholarship on this topic—very little is known about characteristics of CTE teachers who are a critical resource for program implementation and expansion. Using eight years of… more →
How Teachers Learn Racial Competency: The Role of Peers and Contexts
This 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 →
The Reform Logics of Teaching: How Institutionalized Conceptions of Teaching Shape Teacher Professional Identity
Teachers’ professional identities are the foundation of their practice. Previous scholarship has largely overlooked the extent to which the broader institutional environment shapes teachers’ professional identities. In this study, I bridge institutional logics with theory on teacher professional… more →
Disparate Pathways: Understanding Racial Disparities in Teaching
Mounting 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 →
The extent and consequences of teacher biases against immigrants
We study the extent and consequences of biases against immigrants exhibited by high school teachers in Finland. Compared to native students, immigrant students receive 0.06 standard deviation units lower scores from teachers than from blind graders. This effect is almost entirely driven by… more →
Parsing Coaching Practice: A Systematic Framework for Describing Coaching Discourse
Despite the common title of “coach,” definitions of high-quality coaching vary tremendously across models and programs. Yet, few studies make comparisons across different models to understand what is most helpful, for whom, and under what circumstances. As a result, practitioners are left with… more →
Teacher Licensure and Workforce Quality: Insights from Covid-Era Emergency Licenses in Massachusetts
Much recent debate among policymakers and policy advocates focuses on whether states should reduce teacher licensure requirements to ease the burdens of recruiting high quality teachers to the workforce. We examine the effectiveness of individuals who entered the teacher workforce in… more →
Next-Generation Teacher Evaluation in Rural Missouri: Main and Moderated Effects on Student Achievement and Effects-to-Expenditure Ratios
We extend teacher evaluation research by estimating a reformed evaluation system's plausibly causal average effects on rural student achievement, identifying the settings where evaluation works, and incorporating evaluation expenditures. That the literature omits these contributions is… more →
What matters and for whom? Exploring characteristics of teacher residency programs and their relationship to participant perceptions
This concurrent mixed methods study descriptively explores teacher residency programs (TRPs) across the nation. We examine program and participant survey data from the National Center for Teacher Residencies (NCTR) to identify important TRP structures for resident support.
Clinical teaching learning trajectory: Exploring field supervisor written feedback on clinical teacher pedagogy
Field supervisors are central to clinical teaching, but little is known about how their feedback informs preservice teachers (PSTs) development. This sequential mixed methods study examines over 3,000 supervisor observation evaluations. We qualitatively code supervisor written feedback, which… more →
Grow Your Own: An Umbrella Term for Very Different Localized Teacher Pipeline Programs
“Grow Your Own” (GYO) programs have recently emerged as a promising approach to expand teacher supply, address localized teacher shortages, and diversify the profession. However, little is known about the scale and design of GYO programs, which recruit and support individuals from the local… more →
Making Moves: The Role of Demotion in School Leadership
This study examines the experience of demotion from a principalship to an assistant principalship and how race and gender can differentially impact career trajectories. Using administrative state dataset of 10,946 observations at the principal level, we used probit regression to determine the… more →
Automated Feedback Improves Teachers’ Questioning Quality in Brick-and-Mortar Classrooms: Opportunities for Further Enhancement
AI-powered professional learning tools that provide teachers with individualized feedback on their instruction have proven effective at improving instruction and student engagement in virtual learning contexts. Despite the need for consistent, personalized professional learning in K-12 settings… more →
Practice-Based Teacher Education Pedagogies Improve Responsiveness: Evidence from a Lab Experiment
Given the limited time available during teacher preparation, teacher educators must make zerosum choices about the pedagogies they choose to prepare pre-service teachers. Yet the field lacks rigorous causal evidence regarding the relative efficacy of different pedagogies to inform teacher… more →
Different methods for assessing pre-service teachers’ instruction: Why measures matter
Teacher preparation programs are increasingly expected to use data on pre-service teacher (PST) skills to drive program improvement and provide targeted supports. Observational ratings are especially vital, but also prone to measurement issues. Scores may be influenced by factors unrelated to… more →
A Profile of Career and Technical Education Teachers in the 21st Century
Though Career and Technical Education (CTE) teachers are pivotal to students’ academic and career outcomes, research describing CTE teachers remains scant. In this study, we use nationally-representative data to describe changes in the nation’s CTE teacher workforce during a period of… more →
Who becomes a teacher when entry requirements are reduced? An analysis of emergency licenses in Massachusetts
The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted teacher candidates’ capacity to complete licensure requirements. In response, many states temporarily reduced professional entry requirements to prevent a pandemic-induced teacher shortage. Using mixed methods, we examine the role of the emergency teaching license… more →
“Refining” Our Understanding of Early Career Teacher Skill Development: Evidence From Classroom Observations
Novice teachers improve substantially in their first years on the job, but we know remarkably little about the nature of this skill development. Using data from Tennessee, we leverage a feature of the classroom observation protocol that asks school administrators to identify an item on which the… more →
Teacher Working Conditions and Dissatisfaction Before and During the COVID-19 Pandemic
With a goal of contextualizing teacher job dissatisfaction during the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, we contrast teachers’ experiences to the decade and a half leading up to the pandemic. We draw on nationally representative data from the Schools and Staffing Survey and… more →