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Under the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) initiative, 45 two- and four-year colleges have undertaken reforms that aim to provide students with seamless, holistic advising experiences that lead to improved academic outcomes. Colleges participating in iPASS have adopted a data-oriented approach to select and integrate new technologies into their advising practices to facilitate better interactions between students, faculty, advisors, and other student services staff. Based on research on iPASS and other advising redesign efforts, the Community College Research Center (CCRC) developed an evidence-based framework for advising redesign called SSIPP, which emphasizes a "sustained," "strategic," "integrated," "proactive," and "personalized" approach to advising. This paper describes the key principles of the SSIPP framework and illustrates how these principles have been adopted in reforms. The information and recommendations shared here are derived primarily from qualitative research conducted when iPASS reforms were being developed. The focus is on examples of practice and lessons learned.

Within the context of this paper, a balanced, or year-round, school year calendar is not one that necessarily increases either the length or number of school days. It is one that provides for "more continuous learning" by dividing up the traditional summer break into shorter intersessions during the year. It might seem to be a common-sense proposition that such a schedule would counter the so-called "summer slide" where students fail to retain much of what they learned during the previous nine months. Many experts like Paul T. von Hipple from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas Austin note that: Once thought to be positive, these effects now appear to be neutral at best. Although year-round calendars do increase summer learning, they reduce learning at other times of year, so that the total amount learned over a 12-month period is no greater under a year-round calendar than under a nine-month calendar. As is often the case in education (and other fields), a study or two emerges that seems to dominate the research landscape. Everybody starts citing these same studies, giving them a kind of superlegitimacy, and as a result, researchers move on to other subjects. In the case of balanced, or year round school calendars and their impact on student achievement, two such studies have had this kind of impact. The first is a meta-analysis by Cooper and associates that found achievement effects to be minimal at best, and the second is von Hippel's review of Early Childhood Longitudinal Study (ECLS) data that, in essence, supported the same claim. As with many educational strategies, the research on balanced calendars in actuality is very sparse. The instructional stance of teachers, schools, and districts may be fundamentally transformed by a balanced calendar approach. At the very least, the adaptation of a balanced calendar indicates that these districts are serious about reform.

This paper was written in 2018 by NCWD/Youth [National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability for Youth] to inform the development of the Guideposts for Success 2.0, an update to the original Guideposts for Success published in 2005. Since it was created in 2005, the Guideposts for Success has become nationally recognized as a valuable research-based framework to inform policies and practices designed to prepare and support youth in transition to adulthood. In 2012, NCWD/Youth began an in-depth process aimed at updating the Guideposts for Success to reflect the latest research studies and current professional standards of practice for supporting youth in transition to adulthood across multiple service systems and sectors. The process included reviewing literature related to youth transition from multiple disciplines.

The fiscal and educational consequences of charter expansion for non-charter students are central issues in the debate over charter schools. Do charter schools drain resources and high-achieving peers from non-charter schools? This paper answers these questions using an empirical strategy that exploits a 2011 reform that lifted caps on charter schools for underperforming districts in Massachusetts. We use complementary synthetic control instrumental variables (IV-SC) and differences-in-differences instrumental variables (IV-DiD) estimators. The results suggest greater charter attendance increases per-pupil expenditures in traditional public schools and induces them to shift expenditure from support services to instruction and salaries. At the same time, charter expansion has a small positive effect on non-charter students' achievement.

The author discusses valid and reliable ways to assign grades in an academic course in any discipline. "Validity" means the accuracy of a grade's reflection of student learning and achievement. "Reliability" concerns the degree of random error that might be present and affect validity. First the author defines a grade as a measure of achievement, then identifies problems with existing grading practices and outlines principles that lead to valid grading. Grading criteria, which should be carefully and thoughtfully selected, are reviewed and categorized as "highly recommended," "controversial," and "inappropriate." Whichever grading method instructors choose should accurately measure their students' achievement, because a grade represents a contract between instructor and student that accurately reflects a particular level of learning. Finally, the author discusses grade inflation.

The authors illustrate models and procedures that can be applied to calculate overall composite scores in order to identify an indicator of English language proficiency, based on composite scores for English learners with 504 or individualized education plans who are missing one or more domain scores on the Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State-to-State for English Language Learners assessment for state monitoring, achievement, and accountability determinations. As a technical reference, the appendix includes tables and statistical programming code used to compute the different methods. The analyses and results provide clear and concise frameworks for approaching accountability criteria and decisions.

Private school choice options are being proposed and adopted in numerous states across the country. As of the spring of 2019, 62 private school choice programs were in operation in 29 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 400,000 children. Although growth in private school choice programs and enrollment has been considerable over the past decade, the percentage of private schools participating in school choice options varies considerably by program. Understanding how program design impacts the supply of private schools participating in these programs will be critical for policymakers as they work to create and expand education choice options for families. This report considers whether certain regulations governing school choice programs reduce specialization and diversity in the supply of private schools that participate. Expanding on the prior analysis of the impact of regulations in three locations, the authors chart how schools self-identify prior to and after switching into private school choice program environments in each of the five locations. The authors found that private school leaders in all five locations are more likely to classify their schools as less specialized than they were prior to entering the programs. The authors also found evidence to suggest that more homogenization occurred in more highly regulated voucher programs. These findings suggest a potential homogenizing effect of regulations on school supply, limiting the diversity of the private school market. These findings also suggest policymakers should carefully weigh the costs of regulating private school choice programs, as overregulation could reduce specialization and diversity of school supply in a given school choice program, limiting the options that are available to families.

This study develops, validates, and applies a typology of teachers using labor market data. We construct our typology by applying a correlated topic model to 17,000 personal statements teachers submitted as part of their applications to open positions in Wisconsin public schools. We identify seven types of teachers active on the labor market: Inclusivists, Idealists, Nurturers, Generalists, Classroom Experts, Guides, and External Experts. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, we explore trends within and among types as well as demographic relationships and labor market behaviors. This research provides novel insights into the philosophies, mission, vision, and values of teachers; links these characteristics to teachers' job market preferences; and provides a sound psychometric foundation for these measures of teacher type to be applied in subsequent research.

The Canadian literature on postsecondary access has identified many of its key determinants including parental education and income, academic performance, and sex. However, relatively little work has investigated the independent role of disability in postsecondary enrollment. This study fills that gap by estimating the relationship between mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions diagnosed in childhood (available from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth [NLSCY]) and postsecondary enrollment during early adulthood (available from the tax credits on the T1 Family File [T1FF]). The study is possible as a result of the recent linkage between the NLSCY and T1FF. The findings suggest that 77% of youth who were not diagnosed with any long-term health condition in their school years (the comparison group) enrolled in postsecondary education (PSE) by their early 20s. In contrast, 60% of youth diagnosed with a neurodevelopmental condition (NDC) enrolled in PSE in the same time frame (a gap of 17 percentage points), while only 48% of youth diagnosed with a mental health condition (MHC) enrolled in PSE (a gap of 29 percentage points compared with youth in the comparison group). Youth diagnosed with both an NDC and an MHC were even less likely to enroll, with only 36% going on to PSE (41 percentage points behind youth in the comparison group). Differences in sex, academic performance and family background (e.g., parental income and education) explain only about one-third of these gaps. Among the MHCs, the most common diagnosis was Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Youth with an ADHD diagnosis were less likely to pursue PSE than youth diagnosed with other types of MHCs such as emotional, psychological or nervous difficulties. These findings suggest that youth diagnosed with NDCs and MHCs in their school years face barriers to enrolling in PSE that are distinct from those confronting other youth.

Free and reduced-price meal (FRM) data are used ubiquitously to proxy for student disadvantage in education research and policy applications. The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP)--a recently-implemented policy change to the federally-administered National School Lunch Program--allows schools serving low-income populations to identify all students as FRM-eligible regardless of individual circumstances. We study the CEP's effect on FRM eligibility as a proxy for student disadvantage, and relatedly, we examine the viability of direct certification (DC) status as an alternative disadvantage measure. Our findings on whether the CEP degrades the informational content of FRM data are mixed. At the individual level there is essentially no effect, but the CEP does meaningfully change the information conveyed by the FRM-eligible share of students in a school. Our comparison of FRM and DC data in the post-CEP era shows that these measures are similarly informative as proxies for disadvantage, despite the CEP-induced information loss in FRM data. Using both measures together can improve the identification of disadvantaged students, but only marginally.

The Kentucky Board of Education is currently considering changes to Kentucky's high school graduation requirement policy to address concerns that Kentucky students are not graduating with the skills necessary to ensure their success after high school. A key component of this policy change would require students to pass a high school exit exam before receiving a diploma. Empirical evidence from studies examining exit exams demonstrates that choices made when crafting the policy and establishing the exam may greatly affect the success of the policy and should be carefully considered. This literature review in this report synthesizes evidence addressing characteristics of the Kentucky exit exam policy. These characteristics include: (1) student outcomes of underperforming and underserved populations; (2) level of exit exam difficulty; (3) inclusion of multiple subject areas in exit exams; and (3) inclusion of alternative pathways to graduation.

We exploit within-teacher variation in the years that teachers host an apprentice ("student teacher") in Washington State to estimate the causal effect of these apprenticeships on student achievement, both during the apprenticeship and afterwards. The average causal effect of hosting a student teacher on student performance in the year of the apprenticeship is precisely estimated and indistinguishable from zero in both math and reading, though effects are large and negative in math when ineffective teachers host an apprentice. Hosting a student teacher is also found to have modest positive impacts on student math and reading achievement in a teacher's classroom in following years.

This study describes the measurement properties of two curated surveys, consisting of previously developed scales, assessing student perceptions of their social-emotional competencies (SEC) and the school culture/climate (CC). The surveys were administered through the Transforming Education/NewSchools Venture Fund partnership that worked with the NewSchools Invent Cohort, a network of 23 schools across 11 states, to expand the definition of student success. The analytic sample for this study includes more than 3,000 students in grades 4 through 12 at 18 schools surveyed in the 2016-17 school year. Using classical test theory as our conceptual and analytic lens, we conducted tests of internal consistency, item discrimination, omit rates, differential item functioning, and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Our findings provide initial evidence of the validity of the survey scores for measuring student perceptions of their SEC and the school CC in the NewSchools Invent schools, suggesting that the surveys are suitable for school and cohort-level decision-making related to students' social emotional competencies and experiences within the school. [Written with Education Analytics.]

The issuing of badges for achievement is not necessarily a new concept for adults (consider the military), nor for children (look at scouting). Yet, except for sports trophies and award days, the concept is alien to education where letter grades and scores on standardized tests remain the primary means of recognition. This document shares alternative means to measure growth and learning in education, with an emphasis on "soft skills." The document discusses Open Badges--visual tokens of achievement, affiliation, authorization, or other trust relationship sharable across the web--as one way to recognize learning beyond formal credentialing systems. A parallel effort exists in Ohio. While not an open badging system, per se, students in the Class of 2018 may earn the "Ohio Means Jobs Readiness Seal," which also serves as one of the qualifiers under Option One of the 2018 Ohio Graduation Requirements. The document also discusses Credly, a thought leader in the digital credentials movement. Credly is committed to "access and equity by making the Credly platform universally available to anyone looking to be part of the Digital Credentials movement."

Does a school district that expands school choice provide better outcomes for students than a neighborhood-based assignment system? This paper studies the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program, a school choice initiative of the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left attendance-zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We study market-level impacts of choice on student achievement and college enrollment using a differences-in-differences design. Student outcomes in ZOC markets increased markedly, narrowing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. The effects of ZOC are larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel. Demand estimates suggest families place substantial weight on schools' academic quality, providing schools with competition-induced incentives to improve their effectiveness. The evidence demonstrates that public school choice programs have the potential to improve school quality and reduce neighborhood-based disparities in educational opportunity. [Funding was provided by the Center for Labor Economics.]

Asian Americans are the fastest-growing racial group in the US but we know little about how Asian immigration has affected cities, neighborhoods and schools. This paper studies white flight from Asian arrivals in high-socioeconomic-status Californian school districts from 2000-2016 using initial settlement patterns and national immigrant flows to instrument for entry. We find that, as Asian students arrive, white student enrollment declines in higher-income suburbs. These patterns cannot be fully explained by racial animus, housing prices, or correlations with Black/Hispanic arrivals. Parental fears of academic competition may play a role.

A concern in higher education policy is that students are taking longer to graduate. One possible reason for this observation is an increase in off-campus labor market participation among college students. Financial aid may play a role in the labor/study choice of college students--as college becomes more affordable, students my substitute away from work and toward increased study. I use data from the National Postsecondary Student Aid Study (NPSAS) to exploit nonlinearity in the Pell Grant formula to estimate a regression kink and regression discontinuity designs. I find that conditional on receiving the minimum of $550, students reduce their labor supply by 0.4 hours per week, which translates to a 2.4 percent decrease in hours worked. Students who receive the average Pell Grant of $2,250 are 7.6 percentage points (or around 12 percent) less likely to work and, if working, supply 5.10 less hours per week, or around 30.67 percent reduction. I find Pell Grants do increase academic achievement, implying that students substitute study time for work.

While spring of 2020 introduced virtual instruction to all public schools, virtual schooling had already been growing in most states. We focus on pre-COVID-19 changes to fulltime virtual school enrollment in public schools, and provide evidence on the relationship between virtual school enrollment, internet speed, community demographics, and traditional K-12 school achievement levels. We find negative associations between online enrollment and test achievement in brick-and-mortar schools, and low internet speeds. There is some evidence that students are less likely to enroll in virtual schools as the share of students of their own demographic in brick-and-mortar schools increases.

Our partnership with a Ghanaian school is often used to promote International School Partnership (ISP) programmes. This study aims to explore our 'success story' from the perspective of our colleagues in Ghana. Do they consider our partnership to be successful or is our partner school merely serving a dominant Northern global citizenship agenda? The research considers teacher understandings and applications of global citizenship education (GCE) within a partnership context, from the perspective of teachers in the Global South through an ethnographically-informed case study approach. Findings show that teachers in Ghana highlighted many successful aspects of learning and teaching around GCE within our ISP context. There is evidence of teachers taking a 'writerly approach' to our partnership work which creates space for a wider perspective of global citizenship and GCE. Data also highlights challenges around equity and the place of 'restorative justice' is discussed. Perhaps the most surprising and significant outcome of the study was the importance of relationships and emotions within ISPs, and the impact it has on perceptions of 'success'.

This paper examines how financial aid reform based on postsecondary institutional performance impacts student choice. Federal and state regulations often reflect concerns about the private, for-profit sector's poor employment outcomes and high loan defaults, despite the sector's possible theoretical advantages. We use student-level data to examine how eliminating public subsidies to attend low-performing for-profit institutions impacts students' college enrollment and completion behavior. Beginning in 2011, California tightened eligibility standards for their state aid program, effectively eliminating most for-profit eligibility. Linking data on aid application to administrative payment and postsecondary enrollment records, this paper utilizes a difference-in differences strategy to investigate students' enrollment and degree completion responses to changes in subsidies. We find that restricting the use of the Cal Grant at for-profit institutions resulted in significant state savings but led to relatively small changes in students' postsecondary trajectories. For older, nontraditional students we find no impact on enrollment or degree completion outcomes. Similarly, for high school graduates, we find that for-profit enrollment remains strong. Unlike the older, nontraditional students, however, there is some evidence of declines in for-profit degree completion and increased enrollment at community colleges among the high school graduates, but these results are fairly small and sensitive to empirical specification. Overall, our results suggest that both traditional and nontraditional students have relatively inelastic preferences for for-profit colleges under aid-restricting policies. [Additional funding for this report was provided by the Center for American Progress Equitable Growth Fund and the W.E. Upjohn Institute Early Career Research Award program.]

University life is widely publicized as an adventure--a chance to engage with new ideas, people, and opportunities. While these vibrant interactions can be part of the college experience, participation in a competitive, high-stakes academic environment like University of Michigan (U-M) can pose very real challenges. Students must learn to navigate campus norms and culture, meet rigorous academic expectations, and manage financial, social, and personal pressures. Navigating these often-competing demands can create or exacerbate mental health concerns and jeopardize student well-being. In addition to these general complexities, individuals who hold identities that are marginalized in U.S. higher education spaces (e.g., students of color, LGBTQ+ students, undocumented students, students from low income families, international students) face additional burdens: emotional stress and labor arising from daily microaggressions, taunting, harassment, or worse. Mental health challenges are a common concern for students at U-M. Findings from the National Alliance on Mental Health's report "College Students Speak" (Gruttadaro & Crudo, 2012) show that 64% of students who have dropped out of college connect their departure to a mental health concern. In recent years, U-M's Counseling and Psychological Services unit (CAPS) has seen a surge in demand for its services. Their 2016-17 annual report highlights that service requests have nearly quadrupled since 2010, with an average increase of 5% per year that significantly exceeds U-M's annual increase in enrollment. In 2017-18, this annual increase continued with CAPS reporting a 6.7% increase from the previous academic year. The growth in demand for services, though alarming enough in its own right, is likely to be an underestimate of the actual incidence of mental health distress experienced by U-M students. Students may not access counseling support due to stigma surrounding mental health issues. They might also choose not to seek support via formal mechanisms because of cultural norms related to their identities or because of an actual or perceived lack of support professionals who share relevant identities. Both U-M students and instructors have identified a need for instructors to respond knowledgeably and compassionately to student mental health concerns. This Occasional Paper is designed to assist instructors in developing their capacity to support and assist students experiencing mental health concerns. It will introduce them to role-appropriate strategies to facilitate positive academic and health outcomes for their students, and shares strategies for proactively supporting student well-being. The paper presents principles that can proactively shape interactions with students who disclose a mild to moderate level of distress and distills best practices for responding to students experiencing severe distress.

The gender gap reversal in educational attainment is ubiquitous in high-income countries, as well as in a growing share of low- and middle-income countries. To account for the reversal, this paper proposes a theoretical framework in which the interplay between the distributions of academic aptitudes and changes in the net benefits of schooling over time affect the gender composition of those getting more schooling. The framework is used to formulate and test alternative hypotheses to explain the reversal. The paper introduces the tail dynamics hypothesis, which builds on the lower dispersion of academic achievement among females observed empirically. It also studies the mean dynamics hypothesis, which is based on previous literature. Both hypotheses can explain the reversal in this framework. However, the assumption behind the tail hypothesis is better supported by the data. Its predictions are also consistent with gender differences in Scholastic Achievement Test score dynamics and in international test score distributions that cannot be explained by previous theories.

Meaningful and sustained assessment is best achieved when a campus unit takes a collaborative leadership role to work with other departments, offices, and groups. Simply developing and implementing assessment in isolation and for the unit itself is not enough. While the value of collaboration among diverse campus constituents is widely recognized, it is not easily achieved. This occasional paper synthesizes the results of the program Assessment in Action: Academic Libraries and Student Success (AiA) by the Association of College and Research Libraries, which involved over 200 campus teams led by librarians. Five particularly compelling AiA findings are the positive connections documented between various functions of the library and aspects of student learning and success: (1) Students benefit from library instruction in their initial coursework; (2) Library use increases student success; (3) Collaborative academic programs and services involving the library enhance student learning; (4) Information literacy instruction strengthens general education outcomes; and (5) Library research consultations boost student learning. These findings emerged from an assessment process grounded in collaborative planning, decision-making, and implementation. In this paper, we describe the collaborative practices advanced by the AiA program and explain how these practices promote assessment aligned with institutional priorities, encourage common understanding among stakeholder groups about attributes of academic success, produce meaningful measures of student learning, create a unified campus message about student learning and success, and focus on transformative and sustainable change. This paper asserts that the AiA experience serves as a framework for designing assessment approaches that build partnerships and generate results for improving student learning and success through action research, and that the program results demonstrate how libraries contribute to fostering broad student outcomes essential to contemporary postsecondary education. The assessment practices that emerged from the AiA projects can be implemented in a variety of institutional settings and with varying campus priorities. [Foreword by Lisa Janicke Hinchliffe.]

A major factor in the overall enrollment decline in elementary and secondary Catholic schools during the past 50 years has been the migration of families from urban parish schools to suburban public education. Nearly 13,000 Catholic schools operated in the early 1960s. By 2016 that number was down to roughly 6,400. The enrollment decline coincided with rising expenses at Catholic schools. Schools in the Chicago-based Cristo Rey Network serve low-income families in urban areas, are doing what many thought impossible. Rather than losing students they are adding them. In its unique model, students receive a college-preparatory education and participate in a work-study program in which they learn employable skills and earn money to help pay for their tuition. Since the first Cristo Rey school was founded in Chicago in 1996, 31 others have opened in 21 states and the District of Columbia, including in Boston and Lawrence, MA, with plans to add eight more by 2020. This paper examines Cristo Rey schools, why they work, how they work and what parts of their education/business design can be successfully transferred to other Catholic high schools. It looks at the Cristo Rey Network, a cooperative organization formed to standardize the Cristo Rey approach, offer resources to the individual schools and help promote the spread of Cristo Rey schools to cities that can support them. Through interviews with founders and early backers this paper reviews the origins of the Cristo Rey method and how it has been replicated in places such as Cristo Rey Boston High School and Notre Dame Cristo Rey High School in Lawrence. And it looks to see see what lessons can be drawn by other Catholic high schools wrestling with sliding enrollment and shrinking income.

This working paper summarizes the results of a study of leadership in elementary and secondary schools. The study focused in particular on instructional leadership -- the extent to which school leaders focus on the core activities of teaching and learning -- and teacher leadership -- the extent to which teachers have input into school decision-making. This paper is drawn from the full report of the study, entitled "School Leadership Counts" (Ingersoll, Dougherty and Sirinides 2017), available at www.newteachercenter.org. [This research was supported by a grant to the New Teacher Center from the Carnegie Corporation.]

This paper quantifies the learning gain that accrues to 15-year-old students over one year of schooling in 18 countries and economies, where the cohort eligible to sit the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA)ISA test overlaps with two distinct school cohorts. School-entry regulations are used as an exogenous source of variation for grade levels in an instrumental- variables framework. The focus on the joint effect of schooling and age, together with (local) linearity assumptions, make it possible to account for differences in school-starting age across students who are expected to be in different grades. On average, students' test scores increase by about one-fifth of a standard deviation over a school year. While estimates of the grade gain for individual countries and economies come with wide confidence intervals, this study also shows the annual learning gain of students around the age of 15 tends to be larger in high-income countries compared to middle-income countries.

This paper presents findings on the implementation and impacts of Leveled Literacy Intervention (LLI) in Oakland, California, where the school district conducted the nation's first randomized controlled trial of LLI in secondary grades. LLI is a short-term, intensive intervention designed to help teachers provide small-group instruction to struggling readers. Many school districts across the country have used LLI, which research evidence has shown to rapidly improve outcomes for students in early elementary grades. During the trial, secondary schools in Oakland faced various challenges implementing LLI, leading students to experience different levels of LLI duration, intensity, and fidelity. LLI had no impact on students' reading comprehension and a negative impact on their mastery of English language arts/literacy standards. Students who were pulled out of other classes to receive LLI were particularly negatively affected, possibly as a result of missing grade-level content. This study's findings highlight challenges in implementing effective literacy interventions for struggling adolescent readers.

This paper examines what parents value as they make choices among available charter schools, with primary attention to the racial mix of a school's students. We estimate conditional logit models of the charter school choices made by all parents in North Carolina who switched their child from a traditional public school to a charter school in 2014/15. Our findings that parents care about the school's racial mix of students and that such preferences differ by the race and income of the choosers highlight the pressures that lead charter schools to be racially imbalanced. Our models also include other factors that parents may value such as the distance to the charter, the school's academic performance, the services provided by the charter, such as subsidized lunch and transportation, and the school's mission and approach.

Measures of school-level growth in student outcomes are common tools used to assess the impacts of schools. The vast majority of these measures are based on standardized tests, even though emerging evidence demonstrates the importance of social-emotional skills (SEL). This paper uses the first large-scale panel surveys of students on SEL to produce and evaluate school-level value-added measures by grade for growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness. We find substantive differences across schools in SEL growth, of magnitudes similar to those for academic achievement. This result suggests that schools might contribute to students' SEL. However, we also find that the models are not as well specified for SEL as they are for achievement gains, raising the possibility that the estimated school effects include school-level measurement error and potential omitted variables bias. In addition, the across-school variance in the average level of the SEL measures is proportionally much smaller than for academic measures, which would not be expected if substantial impacts of schools on SEL outcomes persisted over time. These findings recommend caution in interpreting measures as the causal impacts of schools on SEL, though they also do not rule out important school effects.

A student's ranking in the grade point average (GPA) distribution has emerged as an admission variable that increases admission rates of both segregated minorities and high-performance individuals. In 2012, Chile's centralized university admission system introduced a GPA ranking variable relative to the previous cohorts' average GPA. Such a system introduces academic incentives to exert effort, but also to inflate GPA. In this paper, we analyze the effects of that reform on the GPA distribution and achievement measures. Our results, based on difference-in-differences and simulated instruments methods, suggest that: (i) GPA increased across the entire distribution, independently of the incentive structure; and (ii) GPA increases were unrelated to improvements in achievement. We interpret the results as evidence that the introduction of the new variable caused GPA inflation rather than increased learning.

Recent research has established that teachers matter for student achievements, albeit because of dimensions of 'teacher quality' that are largely unexplained. A less closely investigated issue is whether teacher turnover directly harms student academic achievement. In this paper, we examine whether teacher turnover affects academic achievement of 16 year old state secondary school students using a unique data set of linked students and teachers in England. Identification comes from either: a school fixed effects design which exploits year-on-year variation in turnover in different subject groups, within schools; or student fixed effect design that where the variation comes from the cross sectional variation in turnover in different subjects, in the same school, experienced by a student. Both methods give similar results, suggesting that a higher teacher entry rate reduces students' test scores, albeit by small amounts.

This paper studies how rewards based on class rank affect student effort and performance using a game-theoretic classroom competition model and data from the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in the US. The paper finds that variation in the presence of strong or weak students changes the incentives and test scores of incumbent students depending on their ability group in accord with the competition model, with increases in the number of strong students lowering effort among strong and weak incumbents but raising the test scores of weak incumbents. The results suggest that competition induced by rank-based rewards within homogeneous ability groups lowers overall effort levels, while the presence of strong students directly augments the performance, but not the effort levels, of weak students despite the competition. The paper also rules out a number of alternative explanations for these school composition effects, including disruptions, teacher-initiated changes in curriculum in response to changing class composition, selective incumbent-student school exit, and endogenous responses of refugee location choices to school performance. [This report was funded by the China National Natural Science Foundation.]

The rise of the accountability movement in education has resulted in the proliferation of school report cards, school ratings and rankings, and other kinds of performance reporting for public consumption and policy use. To understand the strengths and limitations of school rating systems and the role they play in shaping public perceptions and school improvement practices, this paper situates rating systems within the broader field of comparative organizational assessments and neo-institutional theory; describes school rankings and rating systems in use by states and consumer-oriented enterprises; and details four aspects of school ratings (measurement, transformation, integration, and presentation) that affect their use and interpretation.

It is well established that teachers are the most important in-school factor in determining student outcomes. However, to date there is scant robust quantitative research demonstrating that teacher training programs can have lasting impacts on student test scores. To address this gap, we conduct and evaluate a teacher peer-to-peer observation and feedback program under Randomized Control Trial (RCT) conditions. Half of 181 volunteer primary schools in England were randomly selected to participate in the two year program. We find that students of treated teachers perform no better on national tests a year after the program ended. The absence of external observers and incentives in our program may explain the contrast of these results with the small body of work which shows a positive influence of teacher observation and feedback on pupil outcomes. [Support for this research was provided by the German Science Foundation.]

The field of learning analytics holds considerable promise for higher education, with reports of successful uses now emerging in selected institutions. At the same time, critics have expressed concerns regarding privacy, ethics, and intrusions into teachers' pedagogy. Without attentive planning, higher-education professionals applying learning analytics may inadvertently undermine their institutions' core teaching and learning missions. The authors offer a framework for moving forward with learning analytics, organized around three principles: (a) Institutions should take the lead in their conversations with vendors, emphasizing the distinctive values of higher education; (b) Learning analytics data should be balanced with other forms of evidence that analytics cannot capture, especially participant experiences; and (c) Successful implementations will leave room for adaptations by people on the ground--to notice what is working and integrate the tools into their practices. Only by empowering students, faculty, and staff can these tools fulfill their potential in higher education.

Questions form the core of both the learning experience and the teaching experience. Because of their importance in the educational enterprise, questions (i.e., their structure and use) should receive more attention from educators. The authors construct what they call productive questions (those questions that produce meaningful responses) and describe effective approaches for using them. They provide examples of productive questions from multiple disciplines and offer standard question formats, so that educators can create their own productive questions to use in their classrooms. The best practices and question formats that they present are applicable to any learning environment, be it small, discussion-focused classrooms; online courses; or large lecture-style classes. The authors conclude by outlining next steps for educators to increase and assess the impact of questions in their classrooms.

Nearly two dozen states now administer online exams. These tests have real consequences: their results feed into accountability systems, which have been used for more than a decade to hold schools and districts accountable for their students' learning. We examine the rollout of computer-based testing in Massachusetts over 2 years to investigate test mode effects. Crucial to the study design is the fact that the state administers the same exam (PARCC) in online and offline formats each year during the transitional period. We find mode effects of about 0.10 standard deviations in math and 0.25 standard deviations in English language arts (ELA). Our preferred estimates of the effects of online testing in the second year of administration suggest that mode effects for second-time test takers were about one third as large as the first year in math and about half as large in ELA. There is little evidence of systematic variation in mode effects by student demographic groups, although on ELA tests they are larger for students scoring at the bottom of the achievement distribution.

High school course grades are a primary source of information about students' academic readiness, yet they are often viewed as inconsistent measures of student achievement-- influenced by idiosyncratic practices across schools and teachers, systematic differences in course content and structure, compositional effects of peers, and student demographics. Prior research has not quantified the extent of this variation relative to the influence of students' academic skills and effort, or examined multiple sources of influence simultaneously. This study employed cross-classified random-effects models with a dataset of 2.1 million grade records from 125,223 students and 11,000 teachers at 118 schools to identify sources of variation in students' grades. Grades varied based on which teacher students had for a given class and the conditions of the class (course subject, classroom peer achievement, time of day, class size and term). There were systematic differences in course grades by race and gender, even among students taking the same classes under the same conditions with the same test scores and attendance in the course. However, students' effort and skills, measured through attendance and test scores, dwarfed other sources of variation. Within- and between-student variation in attendance across classes also explained a substantial portion of variation by teacher, school and course conditions. Rather than finding large unexplained differences in grades based on which school a student attended, or which teacher they had, we found observable factors systematically explained differences in the grades that students received, particularly in students' aggregate grade point averages.

I use standardized test scores from roughly 45 million students to describe the temporal structure of educational opportunity in over 11,000 school districts--almost every district in the US. For each school district, I construct two measures: the average academic performance of students in grade 3 and the within-cohort growth in test scores from grade 3 to 8. I argue that third grade average test scores can be thought of as measures of the average extent of educational opportunities available to students in a community prior to age 9. Growth rates in average scores from grade 3 to 8 can be thought of as reflecting educational opportunities available to children in a school district between the ages of 9 and 14. I document considerable variation among school districts in both average third grade scores and test score growth rates. Importantly, the two measures are uncorrelated, indicating that the characteristics of communities that provide high levels of early childhood educational opportunity are not the same as those that provide high opportunities for growth from third to eighth grade. This suggests that the role of schools in shaping educational opportunity varies across school districts. Moreover, the variation among districts in the two temporal opportunity dimensions implies that strategies to improve educational opportunity may need to target different age groups in different places. One additional implication of the low correlation between growth rates and average third grade scores is that measures of average test scores are likely very poor measures of school effectiveness. The growth measure I construct does not isolate the contribution of schools to children's academic skills, but is likely closer to a measure of school effectiveness than are measures of average test scores.

We use comprehensive data on student teaching placements from 14 teacher education programs (TEPs) in Washington State to explore the sorting of teacher candidates to the teachers who supervise their student teaching ("cooperating teachers" or CTs) and the schools in which student teaching occurs. All else equal, teachers with more experience and higher degree levels are more likely to host student teachers, as are schools with lower levels of historical teacher turnover but with more open positions the following year. Teacher candidates are also more likely to work with CTs of the same gender and race, and are more likely to be placed with CTs and in schools with administrators who graduated from the candidate's TEP. We then assess the impact of these placements on student achievement in the classrooms in which student teaching occurs, and find that a teacher's students perform only slightly worse in math and not significantly better or worse in English Language Arts, all else equal, in years in which the teacher hosts a student teacher than in other years. The negative effect in math is driven by CTs in the lowest quartile of value added, suggesting that more effective CTs can mitigate the impact of hosting a student teacher on student performance.

Few studies examine employee responses to layoff-induced unemployment risk; none that we know of quantify the impact of job "insecurity" on individual employee productivity. Using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and Washington State during the Great Recession, we provide the first evidence about the impact of the layoff process on teacher productivity. In both sites we find that teachers impacted by the layoff process are less productive than those who do not face layoff-induced job threat. LAUSD teachers who are laid off and then rehired to return to the district are less productive in the two years following the layoff. Washington teachers who are given a reduction-in-force (RIF) notice and are then not laid off have reduced effectiveness in the year of the RIF. We argue that these results are likely driven by impacts of the layoff process on teachers' job commitment and present evidence to rule out alternate explanations.

Many academically-advanced youth take the ACT® test in 7th grade for academic talent searches and again in 11th or 12th grade for college admissions. We leveraged this sample of 460,033 students, taking an exploratory analytic approach to examine trends in academic growth from 1996 to 2016. We examined potential predictors of academic growth, including sociodemographics, interests, high school characteristics, high school coursework and GPA, and extracurriculars. We find these variables account for 29% of the explainable variance in academic growth. Overall, growth improved from 2005 to 2016, but growth for low-income and Hispanic students was stagnant. Students attending Catholic and private schools had the highest growth, whereas homeschooled students and students attending high-poverty public schools showed lowest growth. Elective high school courses in STEM subjects were associated with higher growth, and advanced AP, accelerated, or honors courses were associated with significantly higher growth. In addition, students with Investigative and Conventional interests had higher growth. Some extracurriculars had significant relationships with academic growth, though the effects were small. Factors that had a positive impact on the academic growth trend across time included fewer students being schooled in rural areas, students earning higher grades, more students taking STEM and advanced courses, and an increase in Investigative interests. We discuss leverage points for educational intervention to improve academic growth among academically-advanced students. Better understanding how to improve academic growth in this population can lead to significant improvements in their personal fulfillment and academic achievement as well as societal innovation and GDP.

Despite evidence that many schools and districts have considerable discretion when hiring teachers and the existence of an extensive literature on teacher quality, little is known about how best to hire teachers. This is, in part, because predicting teacher quality using readily-observable teacher characteristics has proven difficult and there is very little evidence linking information collected during the teacher hiring process to teachers' outcomes once they are hired. We contribute to this literature using data from a recently-adopted teacher screening system in the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) that allows applicant records to be linked to student- and teacher-level data for those teachers who are subsequently employed in the district. We find that performance during screening, and especially performance on specific screening assessments, is significantly predictive of applicants' eventual employment in LAUSD and teachers' later contributions to student achievement, evaluation outcomes, and attendance, but not to teacher mobility or retention. However, applicants' performance on individual components of the screening process are differentially predictive of different teacher outcomes, highlighting potential trade-offs faced by districts during screening. In addition, we find suggestive evidence across time and between districts that the shift to the new teacher screening system improved hiring outcomes in LAUSD relative to other similar districts and schools.