Search

Research has shown that there is a gap in educational achievement between socioeconomic and racial groups in the public education system in the United States. This paper identifies the link between resources and academic achievement. Through examining educational resources, from in-school factors, such as facilities and teacher quality, to out-of-school factors, such as family structure, socioeconomic status, and community values, this study serves to evaluate several theories of social capital in the hopes of providing an explanation for why this achievement gap exists. The review of the literature provided an inconsistent view on which factor has the most impact on educational achievement across diverse groups. In turn, this paper explores the possibility that the factors are interrelated and therefore difficult to compare. By outlining an analogy between Jared Diamond's (1999) geographic luck theory from "Guns, Germs, and Steel" and the public education system in the United States, this paper shows the importance of resources to academic achievement and how social capital plays a consequential role in students' performance in school.

The purpose of this report is to summarize the key elements of school and district level Performance Index scores (PI scores) for the 50 states and the District of Columbia (D.C.) across the United States. PI scores are partial or overall summative ratings of schools or districts currently used across US state accountability systems to assess organizational performance. In this study, we first extracted 14 elements from 49 PI calculation metrics for states in the U.S and conducted a descriptive analysis to provide an overview of which data elements are used across the different calculation metrics for each state and what role PI scores play in state accountability systems. Second, we categorized the fourteen elements into seven categories proposed by the most recent ESSA regulations (81 FR 34539 §200.14-16, 2016) and examined how each state integrated each element in their PI score calculations. Third, we conducted a multidimensional scaling (MDS) analysis to compare the similarities and differences of PI calculation metrics across the states. The results indicate that there are few commonalities in PI score calculation metrics across the states, as each state has its own methods in addressing the requirements of NCLB and now ESSA. The goal of this report is to inform decisions across states on PI score calculations through summarizing overall ratings and metrics nationally used to hold schools and districts accountable as states move toward implementing the recent Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) regulations.

Although states and school districts have begun to evaluate school principals, there is little evidence on the validity of principal evaluation measures. To fill this gap, we examined Pennsylvania's Framework for Leadership (FFL), a tool for measuring and evaluating principals' professional practices. Using data on more than 300 principals, we find that FFL evaluation scores are significantly and positively correlated with estimates of principals' contributions to student achievement. The strongest relationships are in the domains of (1) systems leadership and (2) professional and community leadership. Contributions to math achievement were more highly correlated than contributions to achievement in other subjects. The results are driven mainly by evaluations of principals who have led their schools for at least three years. This is the first study to find evidence that ratings of principals' professional practice are correlated with credible measures of principals' contributions to student achievement.

I provide a new, systematic profile of more than 18,000 homeless students in Michigan, utilizing rich administrative data from all test-taking students in grades 3-9 during the 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2012-13 school years. These data are part of a larger study of school choice and student mobility in that state. Homelessness is a condition found disproportionately away from suburban school districts. African American and Hispanic students are more frequently homeless and homeless students are almost universally impoverished. They are far more mobile between districts and zip codes than their non-homeless peers and are more likely to participate in inter-district school choice and charter schools. Finally, homeless students score far lower on state math and reading tests.

Peers affect individual's productivity in the workforce, in education, and in other team-based tasks. Using large-scale language data from an online college course, we measure the impacts of peer interactions on student learning outcomes and persistence. In our setting, students are quasi-randomly assigned to peers, and as such, we are able to overcome selection biases stemming from endogenous peer grouping. We also mitigate reflection bias by utilizing rich student interaction data. We find that females and older students are more likely to engage in student interactions. Students are also more likely to interact with peers of same gender and with peers from roughly the same geographic region. For students who are relatively less likely to be engaged in online discussion, exposure to more interactive peers increases their probabilities of passing the course, improves their grade in the course, and increases their likelihood of enrolling in the following academic term. This study demonstrates how the use of large-scale, text-based data can provide insights into students' learning processes.

Many recent high school graduates remain inadequately prepared for college and are required to enroll in remedial or developmental education courses in mathematics or English upon enrollment in college. High rates of college remediation are associated with lower progression and college completion rates. To address this problem, some states, districts, and individual high schools have introduced "transition courses" to prepare students for college-level math and English coursework. Transition courses are typically offered to high school seniors who have been assessed as being underprepared for college math or English. This study uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the effect of participation in a mathematics transition course on college-level math outcomes in West Virginia for the 2011-12 and 2012-13 high school senior cohorts. Our findings suggest that, among students who scored very close to the cutoff score on an assessment used to decide what students took the course, the math transition course had no statistically significant effect on improving college readiness (as measured by exemption from remedial education upon college entry due to a passing score on a placement test) and in fact had a negative impact on students' likelihood of passing a college gatekeeper math course. Possible explanations for these outcomes include that (1) the transition course may have displaced traditional senior-year courses that were in practice more rigorous than the transition course or that provided positive impacts from inclusion of higher performing peers, and that (2) the transition course curricula may not have been well aligned to the skills required for success on the COMPASS placement test. Most students who took the transition course did not pass the COMPASS, which was taken at the conclusion of the course. The specific math course studied is no longer offered; math transition courses in West Virginia now use a different curriculum.

This is the executive summary for "Structuring State Policy for Student Success: Applying Incentives in the Volunteer State." For many years, state funding to public colleges and universities in Tennessee and across the nation was distributed based primarily on enrollment, rather than degree production or efficiency. This led or allowed institutions to seek more funding through efforts such as boosting enrollment and engaging in mission creep, with little incentive for completion. To address this ill effect and promote better outcomes tied to state goals, Tennessee has implemented two primary types of direct economic incentives for institutions: performance funding (1979) and an outcomes-based funding formula for public higher education (2010). Under these initiatives, institutional performance, as measured by the funding model, leads directly to the institution's amount and share of state appropriations for institutional operating expenses. In Tennessee's experience, incentives work. This experience is pertinent to other states because: with only 36 percent of its adult residents holding a postsecondary certificate or higher, Tennessee has a long way to go in terms of educational attainment; it has made substantial strides in a short time; and it shares enough characteristics with enough states to make its experience relevant across a variety of state contexts. [For the full report, see ED587412.]

Recent studies continue to shine light on high-performing charter schools. While Boston-area charter schools--a concentrated group of high-performers--garner more attention than others, many excellent schools outside of Boston have been quietly chipping away at the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. One of these schools is the SABIS International Charter School (SICS) in Springfield, MA, a school that has been named a "top high school". What makes SICS a "top school?" It prepares students to persist in college and enables it students, the vast majority of whom are economically disadvantaged, to "perform better than statistical expectations." That is, students at SICS not only outperform their peers in similar schools on standardized tests of achievement, they also embody the idea that "demography is not destiny." Founded in 1995, SICS was among the first charter schools established in Massachusetts. It serves students in grades K-12 and has a clear, two-pronged mission. The first part of the mission is academic: to prepare students for success in college and to be critical thinkers who are intellectually engaged and excited about life-long learning. The second part of the SICS mission is to produce ethical, responsible "citizens of the world"; people who care about their community and are engaged with social issues. To understand how SICS students defy "statistical expectations," it is necessary to understand the SABIS approach to curriculum, instruction, and assessment. This report provides their best practices by data-driven instruction, answers how they meet the demand for better school options, and offers recommendations for struggling schools.

Educators raise concerns about what happens to students when they are exposed to new teachers or teachers who are new to a school. These teachers face the challenge of preparing a year's worth of new material, perhaps in an unfamiliar work environment. However, even when teachers remain in the same school they can switch assignments--teaching either a different grade or a different subject than they have taught before. While there exists some quasi-experimental literature on the effects for student achievement of being new to the profession (e.g., Rockoff, 2004) or to a school (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010), to date there is little evidence about how much within-school churn typically happens and how it affects students. We use longitudinal panel data from New York City from 1974 to 2010 to document the phenomenon, and we tie assignment-switching behaviors to available student achievement in the period since 1999.

In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large, positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Employing a quasi-experimental design based on data from the first year years of IMPACT, we find that, on average, DCPS replaced teachers who left with teachers who increased student achievement by 0.08 SD in math. When we isolate the effects of lower-performing teachers who were induced to leave DCPS for poor performance, we find that student achievement improves by larger and statistically significant amounts (i.e., 0.14 SD in reading and 0.21 SD in math). In contrast, the effect of exits by teachers not sanctioned under IMPACT is typically negative but not statistically significant.

Using administrative longitudinal data from five states, we study how value-added measures of teacher performance are affected by changes in state standards and assessments. We first document the stability of teachers' value-added rankings during transitions to new standard and assessment regimes and compare our findings to stability during stable standard and assessment regimes. We also examine the predictive validity of value-added estimates during nontransition years over transition-year student achievement. In most cases we find that measures of teacher value added are similarly stable in transition years and nontransition years. Moreover, there is no evidence that the level of disadvantage of students taught disproportionately influences teacher rankings in transition years relative to stable years. In the states we study, student achievement in math can consistently be forecasted accurately--although not perfectly--using value-added estimates for teachers during stable standards and assessment regimes. There was somewhat less consistency in reading, because we find cases where test transitions significantly reduced forecasting accuracy.

Many states have implemented or expanded state-funded prekindergarten programs in the last decade, encouraged by claims about the benefits that can be expected and the importance of early experiences for children's development, especially for economically disadvantaged children. However, there is remarkably little methodologically adequate evidence about the effects of such programs. Using a subsample of children with parental consent from a larger sample of children randomly assigned to attend the Tennessee pre-k program or not, this study examined effects on cognitive and noncognitive outcomes through third grade. At the end of the pre-k year, program participants showed better outcomes than comparable nonparticipants on achievement measures and ratings of school readiness by kindergarten teachers. But those effects were not sustained in subsequent years and, indeed, by the end of third grade the pre-k participants scored lower on the achievement measures than nonparticipants. These results raise questions about the way state pre-k programs have been designed and implemented.

In practice, teacher turnover appears to have negative effects on school quality as measured by student performance. However, some simulations suggest that turnover can instead have large, positive effects under a policy regime in which low-performing teachers can be accurately identified and replaced with more effective teachers. This study examines this question by evaluating the effects of teacher turnover on student achievement under IMPACT, the unique performance-assessment and incentive system in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS). Employing a quasi-experimental design based on data from the first year years of IMPACT, we find that, on average, DCPS replaced teachers who left with teachers who increased student achievement by 0.08 SD in math. When we isolate the effects of lower-performing teachers who were induced to leave DCPS for poor performance, we find that student achievement improves by larger and statistically significant amounts (i.e., 0.14 SD in reading and 0.21 SD in math). In contrast, the effect of exits by teachers not sanctioned under IMPACT is typically negative but not statistically significant.

Student peer effects are well documented. We know far less, however, about peer effects among teachers. We hypothesize that a relatively effective teacher may positively affect the performance of their peers, while a relatively ineffective teacher may negatively impact the performance of other teachers with whom they work closely. Utilizing a decade of data on teacher transfers between schools that result in changes of peers when transfer teachers enter grade-level team in the new school, we find evidence of strong positive spillover effects associated with the introduction of peers who are more effective than the incumbent teacher himself or herself. Interestingly, the incumbent teacher's students are not meaningfully disadvantaged by the entry of relatively ineffective peers. This finding implies that mixing teachers with diverse performance levels can be a strategy for increasing student achievement in the aggregate. These results are robust to several student sorting and teacher selection issues.

The capacity of the nation's public schools to recruit and retain highly skilled teachers is a perennial concern of policy makers and school leaders. Over the past two decades, major policy strategies including the federal No Child Left Behind Act and alternative pathways to teaching, as well as changes in the broader labor market, have altered the context in which academically skilled college graduates choose whether to enter teaching, and, if so, where to teach. Using data from 1993 to 2008, we find that schools nationwide are recruiting a greater share of highly skilled college graduates into teaching, and that increases in teachers' academic skills are especially large in urban school districts that serve predominantly non-white students. On the other hand, the increase in the share of academically skilled teachers coincides with the lower likelihood of non-white teachers being hired. Once hired, non-white teachers report substantially lower job satisfaction than other teachers. The issue of how to recruit and support highly skilled and diverse teacher workforce remains pressing.

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data and teacher survey data from a large urban school district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers who produce greater student achievement gains in math and reading are more likely to be placed in a tested grade-subject combination in the following year and that the relationship between prior performance and assignment is stronger in schools where principals have more influence over assignments. This strategic response has the consequence of disadvantaging achievement in early grades, however, concentrating less effective teachers in K-2 classrooms, which in turn produces lower achievement for those students, as measured by low-stakes assessments, that may persist into tested grades as well.

Teacher and student sorting within and between schools has historically garnered national attention and controversy. Scholars have recently examined how school leaders make data-driven decisions to create more equitable schools, particularly through teacher and student assignment practices. School leaders use student test scores to strategically sort students into classes to create "balance." Student achievement data is also linked to teacher reassignment, in which ineffective teachers are strategically reassigned to non-tested grades or subjects, while effective teachers may be promoted to leadership positions. Scholars have found that a combination of data-driven strategic staffing, accountability pressures, and micro-politics are prime drivers of assignment strategies within schools. Within the literature on assignment practices, one strand examines the impact of assignment practices on students but does not engage with principals' decision-making strategies despite the central role principals play in school decisions. The second strand of research delves deeply into leadership decision making but seldom provides data on the actual assignment practices. This includes observed data regarding the two types of assignment strategies dominant within the literature: privilege- and learning-centric. A learning-centric assignment is the placement of highly knowledgeable teachers with students who need effective teachers more than do other peers (Donaldson, 2011, In contrast, privilege-centric assignments place experienced teachers in classrooms with higher achieving students. School leaders may also use privilege-centric staffing to appease affluent parents and increase retention of their more experienced teachers. Although privilege-centric assignments may be counterproductive to the student experience, many schools employ this strategy despite principals' reports of using data to increase school equitability. The assignment of teachers to students and classes is presumed to be an entirely local (school-level) decision, with school leaders having substantial authority over this process. The findings of the preceding research underscore the importance of principals in this process, and yet we know little about the ability of leadership to interrupt systems of privilege and institute more equitable staffing arrangements. Because of this potential inconsistency between principals reporting that they make data-driven decisions and their actual assignment practices, we see the need for continued research in this area. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap within the literature by first examining the relationship between principals' reported data-driven decisions and teacher and student assignment strategies within schools, and then looking at the relationship between assignment practices and student learning. This study couples survey data from 213 Florida elementary and middle schools with 8 years of longitudinal, statewide data to address the following questions: (1) To what extent are privilege- and learning-centric assignment practices used within schools? Are these practices changing over time?; (2) How do privilege- and learning-centric assignments impact student-learning gains?; (3) What drives student-assignment practices--is this phenomenon embedded in the culture of a school or do principals dictate assignment practices?; and (4) How are principals' reported uses of data related to observed privilege- and learning-centric sorting?

One in five school-age children in the U.S. speaks a language other than English at home (Zeigler & Camarota, 2014). Roughly half of these emerging bilingual students (Garcia, 2009) are classified as English learners (ELs) when they enter school, meaning they do not meet state or district criteria for English proficiency (NCES, 2015). As the fastest growing official subgroup of students, ELs are transforming schools across the country, in cities as well as suburban and rural communities; in traditional immigrant-receiving areas as well as in new immigrant destinations. Emerging bilingual students, and the subset of them that are classified as ELs, bring with them important linguistic, social, cultural, and intellectual assets that can enrich and strengthen education for all students (González, Moll & Amanti, 2013). But questions persist around how best to ensure that students who are not yet proficient in English can thrive in school, academically, linguistically, and socially. Should ELs be taught in bilingual classrooms that promote fluency in their home language while ensuring access to core academic content and developing English language skills? Or should they be taught in English immersion classrooms in order to maximize exposure to English? How do we ensure that emerging bilingual students develop both English proficiency and strong academic skills, while maintaining and developing literacy in their home language? How can schools best build on ELs' linguistic assets and support their educational needs?

Despite educational gains in recent decades for many Latino students, there are still significant barriers to universal quality education in the U.S.; among these are the stresses of current U.S. immigration policy and political discourse, which serve as negative multipliers to pre-existing social, economic, and health inequities. This report captures the experiences of educators in UnidosUS K-12 programs across the U.S. to document the effects of immigration policy on UnidosUS-affiliated students' well-being and classroom climates.

Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs) can play a central role in skill development and higher education expansion, yet their quality varies greatly within and among countries. In this paper we explore the relationship between programs' practices and inputs (quality determinants) and student academic and labor market outcomes. We design and conduct a novel survey to collect program-level information on quality determinants and average outcomes for Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, and Peru. Categories of quality determinants include training and curriculum, infrastructure, faculty, link with productive sector, costs and funding, and other practices on student admission and institutional governance. We also collect administrative, student-level data on higher education and formal employment for SCP students in Brazil and Ecuador and match it to survey data. Using machine learning methods, we select the quality determinants that predict outcomes at the program and student levels. Estimates indicate that some quality determinants may favor academic and labor market outcomes while others may hinder them. Two practices predict improvements in all labor market outcomes in Brazil and Ecuador--teaching numerical competencies and providing job market information--and one practice--teaching numerical competencies--additionally predicts improvements in labor market outcomes for all survey countries. Since quality determinants account for 20-40 percent of the explained variation in student-level outcomes, estimates indicate a role for quality determinants to shrink the quality gap among programs. These findings have implications for the design and replication of high-quality SCPs, their regulation, and the development of information systems.

This paper studies the effect of parental job loss on children's school performance during the Great Recession in Spain, using an original panel dataset for students observed since the beginning of the crisis in a school in the province of Barcelona. By using fixed effects, this paper is more likely to deal with the problem of selection into troubled firms which is prevalent in the literature. Fixed effect estimates show that students experience a negative and significant decrease on average grades of about 13% of a standard deviation after father's job loss. The impact of paternal job loss is not homogeneous across students, but it is largely concentrated among children whose fathers suffer long unemployment spells after job loss and students in already disadvantaged families in terms of the father's education level. These results suggest that paternal job loss is a mechanism through which further inequalities might develop during and after a deep economic crisis. The following are appended: (1) The impact of parental job loss on grades. A simple theoretical framework; and (2) More details on the data.

This paper tests if gender-discrimination in grading affects pupils' achievements and course choices. I use a unique dataset containing grades given by teachers, scores obtained anonymously by pupils at different ages, and their course choice during high school. Based on double-differences, the identification of the gender bias in grades suggests that girls benefit from a substantive positive discrimination in math but not in French. This bias is not explained by girls' better behavior and only marginally by their lower initial achievement. I then use the heterogeneity in teachers' discriminatory behavior to show that classes in which teachers present a high degree of discrimination in favor of girls are also classes in which girls tend to progress significantly more than boys, during the school year but also during the next four years. Teachers' biases also increase the relative probability that girls attend a general high school and chose science courses. The following are appended: (1) Do teachers' characteristics affect the gender bias?; (2) Estimation of the gender bias if the blind and non-blind scores do not measure the same abilities; and (3) Measure of the omitted variable bias affecting ? and a[subscript 2]. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Education Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.]

This paper investigates how legal cannabis access affects student performance. Identification comes from an exceptional policy introduced in the city of Maastricht which discriminated legal access based on individuals' nationality. We apply a difference-in-difference approach using administrative panel data on over 54,000 course grades of local students enrolled at Maastricht University before and during the partial cannabis prohibition. We find that the academic performance of students who are no longer legally permitted to buy cannabis increases substantially. Grade improvements are driven by younger students, and the effects are stronger for women and low performers. In line with how THC consumption affects cognitive functioning, we find that performance gains are larger for courses that require more numerical/mathematical skills. We investigate the underlying channels using students' course evaluations and present suggestive evidence that performance gains are driven by improved understanding of material rather than changes in students' study effort. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre's Education Programme. The Centre for Economic Performance is financed by the Economic and Social Research Council.]

There is a growing consensus that teacher evaluation in the United States is fundamentally broken. Few would argue that a system that tells 98 percent of teachers they are "satisfactory" benefits anyone--including teachers. The nation's collective failure to invest in high-quality professional feedback to teachers is inconsistent with decades of research reporting large disparities in student learning gains in different teachers' classrooms (even within the same schools). Many states and school districts are looking to reinvent the way they do teacher evaluation and feedback, and they want better tools. With the help of nearly 3,000 teacher-volunteers, the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project is evaluating alternative ways to provide valid and reliable feedback to teachers for professional development and improvement. In this report, the authors focus on the value of classroom observations. They test five different approaches to classroom observations. Each observation instrument is designed to do two things: (1) focus an observer's attention on specific aspects of teaching practice and (2) establish common evidentiary standards for each level of practice. In this report, the authors investigate the properties of the following five instruments: (1) Framework for Teaching (or FFT, developed by Charlotte Danielson of the Danielson Group); (2) Classroom Assessment Scoring System (or CLASS, developed by Robert Pianta, Karen La Paro, and Bridget Hamre at the University of Virginia); (3) Protocol for Language Arts Teaching Observations (or PLATO, developed by Pam Grossman at Stanford University); (4) Mathematical Quality of Instruction (or MQI, developed by Heather Hill of Harvard University); and (5) UTeach Teacher Observation Protocol (or UTOP, developed by Michael Marder and Candace Walkington at the University of Texas-Austin). Appended are: (1) Sample Restrictions Leading to Video Sample; and (2) Regression Coefficients Used for Criterion-Based Weighting. (This report was written with the assistance of Steve Cantrell, Jeff Archer, Sarah Buhayar, Kerri Kerr, Todd Kawakita, and David Parker. Contains 10 figures, 20 tables, and 45 footnotes.) [For related reports, see "Gathering Feedback for Teaching: Combining High-Quality Observations with Student Surveys and Achievement Gains. Policy and Practice Summary. MET Project" (ED540961) and "Gathering Feedback for Teaching: Combining High-Quality Observations with Student Surveys and Achievement Gains. Policy and Practice Brief. MET Project" (ED540962).]

This systematic review investigates the relevance of general pedagogical knowledge for successful teaching. It synthesises the empirical evidence of 10 769 teaching professionals and 853 452 students from primary to tertiary education in 21 countries. The meta-analysis of 20 quantitative studies revealed significant effects for teaching quality and student outcomes (Cohen's d = 0.64 and 0.26), indicating that more knowledgeable teachers achieve a three-month additional progress for students. The three themes emerging from 31 qualitative studies underline that general pedagogical knowledge is a crucial resource for teaching. Results also show that teaching requires knowledge about a range of topics, specific skills and other competences to transform knowledge into practice. Teachers need training and practical experience to acquire knowledge, which they apply according to the pedagogical situation at hand. The results allow for important conclusions for policy, practice and research.

Good teaching matters. There is persuasive evidence that students benefit from high quality instruction and that these benefits are cumulative for students who have good teachers for several years. Teacher effectiveness matters so much that low-income students lucky enough to have three very good teachers in a row in elementary school earn test scores that, on average, are similar to middle-class children. Conversely, almost all children, regardless of their socio-economic status, will be harmed academically by poor teaching three years running. Nearly 3.8 million teachers work in schools, but there are simply not enough good ones to go around, especially in the schools and districts serving high-poverty, large-minority student populations. And although one focal point of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2002 was to address this problem, the policies states developed in response to NCLB's call have not achieved this goal. The quality of teaching is not simply determined by an individual's knowledge or ability, but also by the contexts in which teachers work. Improving teacher quality thus entails policies concerning recruitment, early preparation, retention (including attention to working conditions), as well as professional development. This paper provides recommendations that address each of these domains. (Contains 32 notes.)

This study examines the relationship between student goal orientation and student satisfaction, academic engagement, and achievement. A variety of studies has shown that the type of goal orientation determines students' cognitive and behavioral reactions as well as their educational performance. Using data on 2309 college students from the University of California Undergraduate Experience Survey (UCUES), this study analyzes the relationship between different types of goal orientations and student behavior and academic outcomes. Three questions are addressed in this paper: First, it explores how students can be classified according to their goal orientation. Second, the study examines how multiple achievement goals relate to different socio-demographic characteristics. Third, the relative influence of goal orientation on indices of satisfaction, achievement, and academic engagement among undergraduate students is assessed. The results support the notion that students pursuing both mastery and performance goals are more satisfied with their academic experience, show a higher degree of academic engagement, and achieve better grades than students who pursue a mastery orientation alone or a work-avoidance/performance orientation. One practical implication of the study of goal orientation is that student applicants could be screened on the basis of both a high mastery as well as a high performance orientation. Items and Reliabilities for Scales Used in the Study are appended. (Contains 1 table and 7 figures.)

We study the origins of what has become one of the most radical and encompassing programmes of school reform seen in the recent past amongst advanced countries--the introduction of academy schools to English secondary education. Academies are state schools that are allowed to run in an autonomous manner which is free from local authority control. Almost all academies are conversions from already existent state schools and so are school takeovers that enable more autonomy. Our analysis shows that this first round of academy conversions that took place in the 2000s generated significant improvements in the quality of pupil intake and in pupil performance. There is evidence of heterogeneity as improvements only occur for schools experiencing the largest increase in their school autonomy relative to their predecessor state. Analysis of mechanisms points to changes in head teachers and management structure as key factors underpinning these improvements in pupil outcomes. An appendix contains the Data Description. [This paper was produced as part of the Centre for Economic Performance's Education and Skills Programme.]

Educators raise concerns about what happens to students when they are exposed to new teachers or teachers who are new to a school. These teachers face the challenge of preparing a year's worth of new material, perhaps in an unfamiliar work environment. However, even when teachers remain in the same school they can switch jobs--teaching either a different grade or a different subject than they have taught before. There is an extensive literature that explores the various aspects of the challenges confronting new teachers (see, for example, Feiman-Nemser, 2003; Johnson, 2007). While there exists some quasi-experimental literature on the effects for student achievement of being new to the profession (e.g., Rockoff, 2004) or to a school (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010), to date there is little evidence about how much within-school churn typically happens and how it affects students. In this paper, we use longitudinal panel data from New York City from 1974 to 2010 to document the phenomenon, and we tie assignment-switching behaviors to student achievement in the period since 1999, when student-level data is available. We find that students are far more likely to have a teacher who has undergone a within-school switch than one who is new to the school or new to teaching. We therefore use a variety of fixed effects approaches to estimate the link between student achievement and these three forms of being to new one's job assignment--new to teaching, new to school, or new to position within the same school--with a particular focus on the latter given that so many teachers experience within-school reassignments and we know so little about how students are affected by it.

The degree to which students are able to make adequate repayments on their student loans and avoid default is of special concern for colleges. If too many former students go into default, the college will face sanctions by the federal government and lose eligibility to provide currently enrolled students federal financial aid, such as the Pell grant. To avoid these sanctions, some colleges have chosen not to participate in federal loan programs by excluding loans from students' financial aid packages. In this paper, I investigate the student-level impacts associated with the decision of community colleges to opt out of the Stafford loan program. Utilizing administrative records from over 50 community colleges located in a single state, I estimate the within-college differences in outcomes for Pell-eligible students before and after an institution opts out of the federal loan program. I find that Pell-eligible students enrolling when the community college offered federal loans were 7.6 percentage points more likely to borrow than Pell-eligible students who enrolled when the institutions opted out. Overall borrowing also increased by $368 a year. I also find that students borrowing a loan attempted 19 additional credits in their first year of enrollment and were more likely to attempt and complete math and science courses than non-borrowers.

This paper examines the returns to math courses relative to courses in other subjects for students in community college. Using matched college transcript and earnings data on over 80,000 students entering community college during the 2000s, we find that college-level math coursework has an indirect positive effect on award completion that is stronger than that of coursework in other subjects. In terms of direct effects, we find mixed evidence on the direct effect of enhanced math skills on earnings over other college-level skills. Overall, the combined direct and indirect effect appears to be adverse: compared with other courses or college pathways, more math coursework in community college is modestly associated with relatively lower earnings in later adulthood. However, this association is sensitive to modeling, and we do find heterogeneous results by gender, race/ethnicity, and initial college ability, as well as by math field and level. Two supplementary tables are appended.

The majority of existing research on mobility indicates that students do worse in the year of a school move. This research, however, has been unsuccessful in isolating the causal effects of mobility and often fails to distinguish the heterogeneous impacts of moves, conflating structural moves (mandated by a school's terminal grade) and non-structural moves (induced by residential mobility or by access to a better school) for example. Moreover, there is little evidence on the effects beyond the first year of a move. In this paper, we obtain credibly causal estimates of the impact of mobility on performance in both the short and long run, addressing heterogeneity in the impacts of mobility and the endogeneity of moving. We do so using richly detailed longitudinal data for five cohorts of New York City public school students making standard academic progress from grades 1-8. We estimate the impact of moving to a new school in a model with student fixed effects and two alternative sets of instrumental variables--the grade span of a student's first grade school and foreclosure/building sale--to isolate the causal effect of mobility that is likely planned and mobility that is likely due to unanticipated shocks, respectively. We find negative short-term as well as long-term effects of the structural moves built into the school system. Non-structural moves, however, have a positive effect on academic performance if they are made to join a new school at the beginning of that school's grade span and, thus, more likely made for strategic reasons. Robustness checks indicate results are not sensitive to inclusion of school quality measures, pre-move trends in mobility, or alternative samples. In the conclusions, we discuss the importance of findings on the heterogeneous impact of school moves to the literature and to policy makers.

Governments are increasingly publishing information about the performance of the services they provide, in part to help citizens hold their elected representatives accountable for government service outcomes. Yet there is little evidence concerning the influence of information about government service performance on voter behavior. This paper examines the degree to which school performance information affects incumbent support in school board elections. A regression discontinuity analysis indicates that voters reward incumbents when local schools achieve the highest available measure of school performance. Voters do not respond to information differentiating between schools in the middle of the performance distribution, however, or to information from a source that lacks credibility. The following are appended: (1) Regression Discontinuity Specification; (2) Cross-Validation Procedure to Select Bandwidths; (3) Tables and Figures. [This research has been supported by a Harvard University grant from the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy.]

Good teachers are essential for high-quality educational systems. However, little is known about teachers' skills formation during college. By combining two standardized tests for Colombian students, one taken at the end of senior year in high school and the other when students are near graduation from college, this paper documents the extent to which education majors relatively improve or deteriorate their skills in quantitative reasoning, native language, and foreign language, in comparison to students in other programs. Teachers' skills vis-à-vis those in other majors deteriorate in quantitative reasoning and foreign language, although they deteriorate less for those in math-oriented and foreign language oriented programs. For native language, there is no evidence of robust differences in relative learning mobility. An appendix contains Figure A1 and Tables A1 and A2.

Starting in the 2016/17 academic year, high school students in Norway who missed more than 10 percent of the hours in a given course without a medical excuse could not receive a final grade. We examine the impacts of this policy on student absenteeism, the incidence of the no grade penalty and two measures of student achievement. The policy had the intended impact on absenteeism, reducing total absence by 20-28 percent, and chronic absence by 29-39 percent in the high school grades. This behavioral response was largely sufficient to avoid the academic penalty for absence over the 10 percent threshold under the new law. Finally, we find a mixed impact on student achievement: little impact on externally graded, end of year exams, and modest evidence of a positive impact of 6 percent of a standard deviation on teacher awarded GPA.

School assignment in Boston and New York City came to national attention in the 1970s as courts across the country tried to integrate schools. Today, district-wide choice allows Boston and New York students to enroll far from home, perhaps enhancing integration. Urban school transportation is increasingly costly, however, and has unclear integration and education consequences. We estimate the causal effects of non-neighborhood school enrollment and school travel on integration, achievement, and college enrollment using an identification strategy that exploits partly-random assignment in the Boston and New York school matches. Instrumental variables estimates suggest distance and travel boost integration for those who choose to travel, but have little or no effect on test scores and college attendance. We argue that small effects on educational outcomes reflect modest effects of distance and travel on school quality as measured by value-added.

States across the country are developing systems for evaluating school principals on the basis of student achievement growth. A common approach is to hold principals accountable for the value added of their schools--that is, schools' contributions to student achievement growth. In theory, school value added can reflect not only principals' effectiveness, but also other school-specific influences on student achievement growth that are outside of principals' control. In this paper, we isolate principals' effects on student achievement growth and examine the extent to which school value added captures the effects that principals persistently demonstrate. Using longitudinal data on the math and reading outcomes of 4th through 8th grade students in Pennsylvania, our findings indicate that school value added provides very poor information for revealing principals' persistent levels of effectiveness.

Evidence suggests that teacher hiring in public schools is ad hoc and often fails to result in good selection among applicants. Some districts use structured selection instruments in the hiring process, but we know little about the efficacy of such tools. In this paper, we evaluate the ability of applicant selection tools used by the Spokane Public Schools to predict three outcomes: measures of teachers' value-added contributions to student learning, teacher absence behavior, and attrition rates. We observe all applicants to the district and are therefore able to estimate sample selection-corrected models, using random tally errors in selection instruments and differences in the quality of competition across job postings. These two factors influence the probability of being hired by Spokane Public Schools but are unrelated to measures of teacher performance. We find that the screening instruments predict teacher value added in student achievement and teacher attrition but not teacher absences. A one-standard-deviation increase in screening scores is associated with an increase of between 0.03 and 0.07 standard deviations in student achievement and a decrease in teacher attrition of 2.5 percentage points. The following are appended: (1) Tables and Figures; (2) Screening Rubrics and Generation of Applicant Data; and (3) Supplemental Descriptive and Regression Tables.

On April 11 and 12, 2014, the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) held "Causality: School Libraries and Student Success" (CLASS), an IMLS-funded national forum. Dr. Thomas Cook, one of the most influential methodologists in education research, and a five member panel of expert scholars and practitioners led 50 established and emerging school library researchers in articulating a national research agenda to investigate causal phenomena in school library instruction, resources, and services. Research in academic achievement and school librarianship has a strong foundation of over 25 correlational studies in which school librarians' activities and school library programs have been explored in relation to student learning and teacher support. The results of these studies suggest that complementary research should be conducted to establish a causal relationship between the work of effective school librarians and the creation of motivated, engaged, and agile learners. The goals of this white paper are to: (1) Capture the rich discussion emanating from the CLASS forum surrounding research and causality; (2) Propose a progression of research methods and projects that will support efforts toward theory building, exploratory research, and demonstration research; and (3) Outline mechanisms by which a community of scholars can be cultivated and nurtured toward furthering the research agenda and its activities. The following are appended: (1) Participants; (2) Further Reading; (3) Timetable; and (4) Communications Plan.

Woodrow Wilson Senior Fellow James W. Fraser and Audra Watson, the Foundation's Director of Mentoring and Induction Strategy, take a look at emerging trends in clinical preparation for new teachers. This new white paper is based on experience with the Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowships, and includes observations from some of the colleges and universities partnering in the program.