Teacher and Leader Development
Measuring and Summarizing the Multiple Dimensions of Teacher Effectiveness
There is an emerging consensus that teachers impact multiple student outcomes, but it remains unclear how to measure and summarize the multiple dimensions of teacher effectiveness into simple metrics for research or personnel decisions. We present a multidimensional empirical Bayes framework and… more →
Teacher Preparation Programs and Graduates' Growth in Instructional Effectiveness
Many prior studies have examined whether there are average differences in levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs); other studies have investigated which features of preparation predict graduates’ average levels of teaching effectiveness… more →
Teacher Licensing, Teacher Supply, and Student Achievement: Nationwide Implementation of edTPA
The debate on the stringency of licensure exams for prospective public school teachers is on-going, including the recent controversial roll-out of the educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA). We leverage the quasi-experimental setting of different adoption timing by states and analyze… more →
Does Where Students Come From Affect Where Teachers Go?
We show that fade out biases value-added estimates at the teacher-level. To do so, we use administrative data from North Carolina and show that teachers' value-added depend on the quality of the teacher that preceded them. Value-added estimators that control for fade out feature no such teacher-… more →
Identifying and Producing Effective Teachers
Teachers are among the most important school-provided determinants of student success. Effective teachers improve students’ test scores as well as their attendance, behavior, and earnings as adults. However, students do not enjoy equal access to effective teachers. This article reviews some of… more →
Building Experience and Retention: The influence of principal tenure on teacher retention rates
This study investigates the influence of principal tenure on the retention rates of the teachers they hire over time. We analyzed the hiring practices and teacher retention rates of 11,717 Texas principals from 1999 to 2017 employing both individual and year fixed effects. Main findings indicate… more →
Sustaining a Sense of Success: The Protective Role of Teacher Working Conditions During the COVID-19 Pandemic
COVID-19 shuttered schools across the United States, upending traditional approaches to education. We examine teachers’ experiences during emergency remote teaching in the spring of 2020 using responses to a working conditions survey from a sample of 7,841 teachers across 206 schools and 9… more →
Ready to Lead on Day One: Predicting Novice Principal Effectiveness with Information Available at Time of Hire
High rates of principal turnover nationally mean that school districts constantly are called on to recruit and select new principals. The importance of a school’s principal makes choosing candidates who will be effective paramount, yet we have little evidence linking information known to school… more →
Assistant Principal Mobility and its Relationship with Principal Turnover
Assistant principals are important education personnel, both as essential members of school leadership teams and apprentice principals. However, empirical evidence on their career outcomes remains scarce. Using statewide administrative data from Tennessee and Missouri, we provide the first… more →
Descriptive evidence on school leaders' prior professional experiences and instructional effectiveness
Many education policymakers and system leaders prioritize recruiting and developing effective school leaders as key mechanisms to improve school climate and student learning. Despite efforts to select and support successful school leaders, however, relatively little is understood about the prior… more →
Stress Test: Examining the Evolution of Teachers’ Mental Health Over Time
Teaching is often assumed to be a relatively stressful occupation and occupational stress among teachers has been linked to poor mental health, attrition from the profession, and decreased effectiveness in the classroom. Despite widespread concern about teachers’ mental health, however, little… more →
Teacher Evaluation, Ambitious Mathematics Instruction, and Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching: Evidence from Early Career Teachers
While teacher evaluation policies have been central to efforts to enhance teaching quality over the past decade, little is known about how teachers change their instructional practices in response to such policies. To address this question, this paper drew on classroom observation and survey… more →
First Impressions: The Case of Teacher Racial Bias
We 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 →
Bias in the Air: A Nationwide Exploration of Teachers' Implicit Racial Attitudes, Aggregate Bias, and Student Outcomes
Theory 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 →
Does Principal Professional Development Improve Schooling Outcomes? Evidence from Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership Induction Program
Principals shape the academic setting of schools. Yet, there is limited evidence on whether principal professional development improves schooling outcomes. Beginning in 2008-09, Pennsylvania’s Inspired Leadership (PIL) induction program required that newly hired principals complete targeted in-… more →
Diversifying the Teaching Profession: How to Recruit and Retain Teachers of Color
Research illustrates the importance of greater teacher diversity because of the substantial benefits teachers of color provide to all students, and to students of color in particular. Studies also show that policies must focus more effectively on retention of teachers of color, if diversity in… more →
Taking the Long View: State Efforts to Solve Teacher Shortages by Strengthening the Profession
Much is known about how to attract, develop, and retain a strong and stable teacher workforce, and states across the country are taking action to address their teacher shortages in ways that strengthen their overall teacher workforce.
Effective Teacher Professional Development
Teacher professional learning is of increasing interest as one way to support the increasingly complex skills students need to succeed in the 21st century. However, many teacher professional development initiatives appear ineffective in supporting changes in teacher practices and student… more →
Teacher Evaluation and Teacher Turnover, New Evidence from District of Columbia Public Schools
Few topics in education policy have received more attention than teacher turnover—and rightly so. The cost of losing a good teacher can be substantial and is born most directly by students. It is now widely recognized that teachers differ considerably in their ability to improve student outcomes… more →
Is Effective Teacher Evaluation Sustainable? Evidence from DCPS
Ten years ago, many policymakers viewed the reform of teacher evaluation as a highly promising mechanism to improve teacher effectiveness and student achievement. Recently, that enthusiasm has dimmed as the available evidence suggests the subsequent reforms had a mixed record of implementation… more →