Search

The significant decrease in student achievement levels following the pandemic has become a pressing national problem, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts showed some of the sharpest academic achievement declines in the country. To assist schools in recovering from the pandemic, the federal government allocated three waves of funding through its Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) package. Massachusetts received over $2.9 billion in ESSER funding that districts have largely allocated for academic remediation programs, such as high-dosage tutoring, summer learning programs, and after-school remedial instruction. This paper reviews these short-term learning loss recovery interventions. Evidence from this review indicates that while these popular learning loss interventions are underpinned by a strong research base, they are difficult to extend to all students and may be unsustainable after one-time federal relief funding is exhausted. To consider long-run policy responses, this paper examines differentiated teacher compensation, permanently extended instructional time, family engagement programs, and college, career, and technical education initiatives as potential strategies for sustaining student success in Massachusetts. Research suggests that if well-designed, these approaches hold promise for not only supporting learning loss recovery efforts but also creating a foundation for continued academic growth over the long run.

While current higher education literature stresses the importance of equity, diversity, and inclusivity, these imperatives have been mainly absent from conversations related to boards of higher education. In this paper, the authors present a historical overview of the demographic landscape of trustee boards from inception to the present. Using critical literacy as a methodology, the authors problematize the lack of discourses regarding Board's diversity. The authors juxtapose the longstanding homogeneity of boards with the increasing heterogeneity of higher education students and argue that systemic forms of racism have denied the opportunity to diversify those in charge of making decisions in higher education. Additionally, using the case of California, the authors problematize how diversity gaps in board composition manifest even within one of the most diverse and liberal states in the country. Ultimately, the authors make a case for diversifying the board of trustees as an instrumental step to align with the national push for enhanced diversity and equity in higher education.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced widespread school closures and a shift to remote learning. A growing body of research has examined the effects of remote learning on student outcomes. But the accuracy of the school modality measures used in these studies is questionable. The most common measures--based on self-reports or district website information--are often inconsistent and lack nationwide coverage. Some studies have used cell phone mobility data to identify school modalities, but there is no consensus yet on how to translate device pings into modality measures. This paper contributes to the literature on modality measurement by examining the relationship between mobile device signals and school modality prior to the pandemic and applies those findings to the pandemic period in Michigan and Washington. We compare our results to state-provided closure data and other nationwide sources, including the Return to Learn Tracker and the COVID-19 School Data Hub. Our findings indicate that cell phone mobility data can accurately predict school modality under normal conditions, but the accuracy drops during the pandemic. These results have implications for future research on educational and health outcomes during both pandemic and non-pandemic-related school closures.

This paper examines the long-term impact of the 1993 Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) and the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) on postsecondary education outcomes, with a focus on historically underserved students. MERA aimed to improve educational standards and close achievement gaps through the introduction of MCAS, a statewide assessment system, and the high school Competency Determination (CD) requirement for graduation. More than two decades later, questions remain about how these reforms have influenced students' readiness for and success in postsecondary education. This analysis addresses three key areas: (1) Changes in 10th-grade MCAS performance over time; (2) Student participation and success in key college readiness benchmarks such as advanced coursework, SAT, and high school graduation; and (3) Postsecondary enrollment and degree completion rates.

This paper reviews overall student performance as well as the performance of student subgroups on the assessment system developed in response to the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 (MERA), the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS). Comparing students in Massachusetts to students in the rest of the United States or against students in other countries can not only confirm the rigor of the MCAS, but the comparison can also provide meaning to MCAS scores and ensure that they accurately measure student performance. There are two primary international exams given at regular intervals: (1) the Trends in International Math and Science Study (TIMSS); and (2) the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). The strong performance on the international exams across several years and subjects, especially on TIMSS, confirmed the quality of Massachusetts K-12 schools.

Education resources matter when they are allocated and used effectively. Yet, the upstream decisions school boards make about district budgets and resource allocation are understudied. In this descriptive study, we analyze data from 400 publicly available video recordings of financial deliberations in school board budget meetings between spring 2022 and spring 2023. Half of the video recordings are from school boards that received education finance training from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. We find school boards discussed student outcomes in only 15-25% of board meetings focused on financial deliberations. Only about 11% of the variation in financial deliberations can be explained by district characteristics, student achievement, and community characteristics. We find no differences in the discussion of student outcomes for districts with and without the Edunomics training. However, descriptive evidence suggests a positive relationship between the Edunomics training and some summary measures of financial deliberations: the overall level of engagement in budgetary discussions; the likelihood per-unit cost and internal barriers (such as decision-making structure) were mentioned; and the likelihood that the budget was linked to outcomes. These findings underscore the variation in school board deliberations and suggest the potential value of training school board members to influence those deliberations.

The effect of remote learning on student performance has been a frequent topic of research and discussion in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet little is known about the impact of remote instruction on the performance of teachers. This study documents how relative effectiveness of teachers changed when moving from in-person to remote instruction and analyzes the characteristics of teachers associated with greater relative effectiveness during remote instruction. Using matched student/teacher-level data from three large metro-Atlanta school districts, we estimate teacher value-added models to measure the association between teacher characteristics and a teacher's relative contribution to test score growth before and during the period of virtual instruction in the 2020-21 school year. We find evidence of increased variation in overall teacher effectiveness during remote instruction. Results are driven by veteran teachers, who appear relatively more effective in virtual instruction than their less-experienced peers, and by the very best in-person teachers, some of which experience large declines in relative effectiveness when shifting to remote instruction.

Four-day school week (4DSW) schedules are growing rapidly across the U.S., with school districts citing perceived benefits to teacher recruitment and retention and student attendance as motivations for adopting the schedule. This study uses panel data from Colorado, one of the states with the highest prevalence of 4DSWs, to investigate the impacts of the 4DSWs on the percentage of teachers with shortage credentials, teacher attrition rates, and student attendance rates. Utilizing a synthetic control difference-in-differences research design, we find 4DSWs have small negative or statistically insignificant effects on teacher recruitment and retention outcomes and find little variation in these effects by school rurality. Examining student attendance outcomes, we estimate a meaningfully small 0.76 percentage point reduction in attendance rates associated with adopting a 4DSW in non-rural schools (equivalent to 46% of these schools' typical yearly fluctuations in ADA) but do not detect an effect in small rural or non-rural schools. These findings suggest that these purported benefits of 4DSWs are not realized in Colorado, warranting concern about the continued use and expansion of this schedule given prior evidence of its negative average impacts on student achievement.

More than half of states have implemented tuition-free college policies aimed at reducing attendance costs and incentivizing enrollment. We review the academic literature on the design features and impacts of these tuition-free policies, and we analyze an initiative Virginia implemented in 2021 called Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3), which provides tuition-free community college to students enrolled in eligible associate degree, certificate, and noncredit occupational training programs in five high-demand fields. Our descriptive analysis of G3 from 2016-17 through 2022-23 shows that both institutions and students responded to the tuition-free messaging and eligibility criteria. Specifically, G3-eligible institutional program offerings and student enrollment in such programs both increased by roughly 30% within the first two years of program implementation. While Virginia's tuition-free policy promotes enrollment in targeted occupational programs, overall enrollment effects are partially offset by a 3% enrollment reduction in aid-ineligible transfer-oriented programs. To promote skill development and improve labor market outcomes, policymakers should ensure that programs eligible for tuition-free college include pathways to longer term credentials.

Student service member/veteran (SSM/V) university enrollment has grown exponentially in recent years. In response, many U.S. universities have developed military-focused student services to address navigational and social challenges SSM/Vs face on campus. While research suggests these services are beneficial, few studies have empirically examined how often contemporary SSM/Vs engage with them across universities, how engagement connects to predictors of university success, or how SSM/Vs describe such connections. Using social capital theory, surveys (n=531), and interviews (n=59) of SSM/Vs across four universities, we analyze SSM/V military-focused service engagement levels, correlations between engagement and campus belonging and institutional satisfaction, and SSM/V perspectives on engagement. Findings suggest SSM/Vs very rarely engage in these services. Higher engagement, however, is significantly associated with more campus belonging and institutional satisfaction. Interviewees describe how the moral support military-focused service staff offer while providing reliable administrative assistance, as well as SSM/V-dedicated spaces and community building, foster belonging and satisfaction.

Since the 1990s, there has been a growing demand for evidence-based education policy and practice. This demand stems from concerns that education systems are not meeting the needs of a changing world and that education research lacks rigor. While this demand aims to improve the quality of education, silos between different actors often hinder how evidence informs policymaking. We encourage researchers to use a collaborative research approach by involving multiple education actors in the research process to close the gaps between research, policy, and practice. This paper is the third in a series of three working papers meant to serve as references and conversation starters for policymakers and researchers as they navigate pedagogical reform for education system transformation in their local contexts. Together, the three working papers emphasize the need for more locally driven collaborative research on how the interaction of culture, local education ecosystems, and learning theories--collectively called Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets--influences teachers' pedagogical choices in the classroom. Primarily intended for education researchers, Working Paper III advocates the use of collaborative research approaches to actively include multiple education actors in the research process, foster complementary relationships between actors with different expertise, and make research findings more relevant and responsive to the local education ecosystem. The paper has three parts that discuss the need for flexible research approaches to inform policy given the complexities of education decision-making, the importance of communication and dissemination, and how collaborative research can bridge the gaps between research, policy, and practice. The paper concludes by looking at the ongoing work of the SPARKS project at the Center for Universal Education and how collaborative research can contribute to education systems transformation.

Although global access to schooling has increased over the last several decades, Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4), which champions inclusive, equitable, quality education, is far from being achieved. Experts predict that if the global community continues to operate education systems in the same way, by 2030, only one in six countries will reach the universal secondary school completion targets, and approximately 300 million students in school will continue to lack basic numeracy and literacy skills. The 2022 United Nations Transforming Education Summit emphasized the urgent need for a complete overhaul of education systems to meet SDG 4 targets. One significant outcome of the summit was a call to improve student learning by transforming teacher classroom practice. This paper is the first in a series of three working papers meant to serve as references and conversation starters for policymakers and researchers as they navigate pedagogical reform for education system transformation in their local contexts. This paper explores various definitions of pedagogies, the lack of consensus on what pedagogy means in practice, and the effects of Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets on pedagogical approaches.

In many low- and medium-income countries (LMICs), student-centered pedagogies are often implicitly or explicitly at the heart of innovative pedagogical reforms. In recent years, there has been a growing emphasis on student-centered pedagogies, which aim to shift power dynamics, increase interaction, and prioritize the needs of learners. Many international agencies, governments, and education experts view these pedagogies as "best practices" or a pedagogical "silver bullet" to improve classroom practice. This paper is the second in a series of three working papers meant to serve as references and conversation starters for policymakers and researchers as they navigate pedagogical reform for education system transformation in their local contexts. Together, the three working papers emphasize the need for more locally driven collaborative research on how the interaction of culture, local education ecosystems, and learning theories--collectively called Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets--influences teachers' pedagogical choices in the classroom. This paper details why the authors recommend policymakers examine Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets in their local context to inform pedagogical reforms. The authors discuss the reasons why generalized "best practices"--namely "student-centered pedagogies" as currently implemented--do not often successfully transfer to new cultures, countries, and contexts and argue that many pedagogical reforms do not adequately consider the Invisible Pedagogical Mindsets embedded in each local context.

This paper presents a rationale for using professional and continuing education (PaCE) units at post-secondary institutions throughout California to design and implement talent-pipelines, research and development collaborations, and other knowledge ecosystems where emerging and returning professionals can acquire the knowledge, skills, and abilities (KSAs), as well as the experience, they need to address the challenges of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). The paper provides an analysis of the reasons why PaCE units are uniquely positioned to address the needs of industry and job seekers, and on a timetable that keeps pace with 4IR velocity.

An ongoing debate in K-12 education policy has been between the "reform" agenda, including charter schools and school vouchers, and advocates of traditional public schools, led by educator unions. A similar split has emerged in higher education, particularly community colleges. Using California as an example, this paper: 1) summarizes the evolution of the current political divide between advocates of the "completion and success" agenda and faculty-led opponents, including the major reforms involved, 2) discusses the claims that leading organizations on each side have made, including their policy priorities, and 3) argues that the two sides share do share some areas of mutual agreement. The paper concludes by noting future policy considerations that could complicate reform efforts.

In recent years, American universities have implemented many innovative strategies to enhance the academic success of students, especially those from underrepresented backgrounds. Yet first-generation and/or low-income (FLI) college students continue to encounter barriers to success because they do not have authentic access to digital technology needed to graduate and be career-ready in our rapidly changing economy. This paper analyzes the current state of digital inequity among FLI students at Stanford University. It also reviews existing programs to address digital inequity at California State University, Fresno (Fresno State), the University of Michigan and Bowdoin College and provides guidance on developing a device program. Finally, the paper recommends strategies to better understand digital inequity and to address it in a sustainable way.

In this paper we examine academic recovery in 12 mid- to large-sized school districts across 10 states during the 2021-22 school year. Our findings highlight the challenges that recovery efforts faced during the 2021-22 school year. Although, on average, math and reading test score gains during the school year reached the pace of pre-pandemic school years, they were not accelerated beyond that pace. This is not surprising given that we found that districts struggled to implement recovery programs at the scale they had planned. In the districts where we had detailed data on student participation in academic interventions, we found that recovery efforts often fell short of original expectations for program scale, intensity of treatment, and impact. Interviews with a subsample of district leaders revealed several implementation challenges, including difficulty engaging targeted students consistently across schools, issues with staffing and limitations to staff capacity, challenges with scheduling, and limited engagement of parents as partners in recovery initiatives. Our findings on the pace and trajectory of recovery and the challenges of implementing recovery initiatives raise important questions about the scale of district recovery efforts. [The working paper received additional funding from Kenneth C. Griffin and AIR Equity Initiative.]

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated student achievement, with declines rivaling those after Hurricane Katrina. These losses widened achievement gaps between historically marginalized students and their peers. Three years later, achievement remains behind pre-pandemic levels for many students. This paper examines 2022-23 academic recovery efforts across eight districts, including tutoring, small group instruction, after-school, extended year, double-dose, digital learning, and expert teacher interventions. Across 22 math and reading interventions, most were delivered to fewer students and for less time than planned. We find positive effects for one tutoring program on math scores and two tutoring programs on reading scores, ranging from 0.22 to 0.33 SD. Each of these programs served a very small share of the district's students and was unlikely to play a major role in district-wide academic recovery. Finally, we find that having an "expert" teacher with high evaluation scores as opposed to a non-expert teacher significantly improves student achievement by 0.06 SD in math and 0.11 SD in reading. While highlighting the promise of intensive academic interventions, our findings underscore the challenges districts face in scaling such interventions to match their recovery needs. The field needs better evidence regarding successful implementation of large-scale interventions.

Asian Americans as a group are overrepresented among STEM college graduates and have the highest average college enrollment rate of any racial or ethnic category. Thus, Asian Americans are typically excluded from educational interventions directed at improving STEM education for Students of Color because they are not considered to be underrepresented minorities. However, statistics obscure the individual needs of the more than 20 ethnic subgroups that fall under the umbrella term Asian Americans. Using a participatory action research approach, this paper documents the institutional and sociocultural factors that push out HMoob (or Hmong) American college students from STEM programs at one large, predominantly White university; and the coordinate processes of gatekeeping and transactional advising that either redirect those students toward non-STEM programs or force them out of the university completely.

Over a 6-year period, a sociolinguistic and sociocultural project was undertaken by Alaska Native expert educators and linguists (aka the Yup'ik Expert Group) from the Yup'ik community in the Lower Kuskokwim School District, Central Alaska. The native experts developed their own culturally sustainable, valid, and reliable Kindergarten through Grade 6 Alaska Native language (Yugtun) assessment. Yup'ik experts named their assessment the Yugtun Piciryaranek Qaneryaranek-llu Cuqyun (aka Yup'ik Culture and Language Measurement). This paper focuses on a foundational component of the assessment, the Yup'ik Cultural Awareness subtest, which has two components, Nonverbal Communication and Yup'ik Worldview.

This paper examines the impact, characteristics, and entrepreneurial proclivities of foreign-born college graduates in the United States. A significant body of research has found that immigrants are more likely to start businesses than those born in the U.S., and the propensity of international students to concentrate in STEM fields indicates enormous potential for economic contributions and innovation. Yet the static nature of the immigration system, with visa pathways and restrictions that discourage business creation, hamper the nation's ability to take full advantage of the benefits immigrants can provide. In fact, this study finds that the U.S. immigration system likely delays foreign-born graduates from creating incorporated firms by as many as five years. The authors estimate that the creation of 150,000 incorporated firms and 580,000 jobs were delayed between 2013 and 2021. Without reform, the U.S. will continue to depress high-value firm creation by international students and cease to be the primary destination of global talent.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented numerous challenges to students across the United States, particularly those who are parents enrolled in community colleges. California's community college system serves a diverse student population, including a significant number of non-traditional, working adults who are also parents. These students have faced unprecedented challenges due to the pandemic, including the difficulties of balancing childcare responsibilities with academic and professional obligations. This paper summarizes the preliminary findings of a study that intends to contribute to the crucial conversation around childcare needs among community college students. The focus of this study was understanding the experiences of BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) mothers with young children and the impact of COVID-19 on their educational experiences in community colleges across the state of California.

In this paper we present the Advancing Racial Equity in Community College Model which maps out the organizational conditions shaping institutional transformation. Focused on two dimensions, the level of "organizational support" and "shared responsibility" to enact equity, we describe four quadrants with distinct organizational conditions that shape how equity advocates design, build, and sustain equity efforts. With well-documented racial inequities and renewed calls for racial justice across higher education, it demands new ways of exploring and understanding how institutional actors leading equity efforts are nested within differing organizational contexts that can enable as well as restrict the enactment and success of racial equity efforts. Our model helps equity advocates gain an "awareness" of known barriers to implementation in higher education, assess the readiness of their campus for racialized change, and take action to build the necessary institutional support and capacity to move the work forward.

Professional references are widely used in hiring decisions, yet their effectiveness remains largely understudied. This study analyzes structured ratings collected from the professional references of teacher applicants and conduct an experiment to see whether the ratings influence hiring managers' assessments of applicants and hiring decisions. There is little evidence that providing reference ratings to hiring managers influences their evaluations of candidates or hiring choices in productive ways. However, the analysis suggests that reference ratings are predictive of future job performance independent of other applicant information available to hiring managers. The result is a paradox: reference ratings offer potentially low-cost, high-value information, but hiring managers do not appear to make productive use of them.

This report provides formative data about the implementation of projects associated with the Pennsylvania Bureau of Special Education's Attract, Prepare, and Retain (APR) efforts during the 2023-24 school year. We surveyed or interviewed students and educators participating in six such projects: Developing Future Special Educators Grants, APR Mentoring Project, Networking and Learning Communities, Learning Institutes, Accelerated Programs for PK-12 Special Education Teacher Certification Grant, and American Sign Language programs. For the first three APR projects, these findings build on data from the first year of project implementation in the 2022-23 school year. And for the latter three projects that were introduced in 2023-24, these data provide early evidence about how participants view their experiences with these projects. [This project is funded by a contract with PaTTAN Pittsburgh and the Bureau of Special Education at the Pennsylvania Department of Education.]

Teacher turnover is a perennial concern, especially in low-performing, high-poverty schools. While districts and schools may try to anticipate and mitigate turnover by surveying teachers about their future plans, existing research on whether teacher-reported intent is predictive of actual turnover behavior is mixed. Using unique survey data from teachers in 35 low-performing, high-poverty districts in Michigan linked at the teacher level to statewide administrative data, we are able to measure turnover behavior one, two, and three years following reported intent. We find that intent is a significant predictor of turnover and becomes increasingly predictive over time. We also find organizational commitment and school organizational conditions are important factors in teachers' intent and, to a lesser degree, actual turnover behavior.

This article clarifies historical and sociocultural factors that impact the role of STEM in the racialization of Asian Americans. Drawing on critical race and other theories of Asian American racialization, and a review of empirical research on the experiences of Asian American college students in STEM, we develop a conceptual framework called "STEM Asianization" that highlights the role of STEM ideology in the model minority racialization of Asian Americans. Consequences for Asian American students include (1) erasure of the intersectional experiences of minoritized Asian American students; (2) dehumanization of Asian Americans and establishment of a bamboo ceiling; (3) representation of Asian Americans as a perpetual foreigner/Yellow Peril during times of cultural and political crisis; and (4) representation of Asian Americans who cannot or do not conform to the STEM achievement narrative as a failed minority. We argue that STEM Asianization reproduces White supremacy by ideologically reinforcing the colorblind meritocracy of STEM institutions in the United States. [Additional funding provided by the Wisconsin Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation.]

We study the effect of paternity leave on early child development. We collect sur-vey data on 5,000 children under age six in Spain and exploit several extensions of paternity leave that took place between 2017 and 2021. We follow a differences-in-discontinuities research design, based on the date of birth of each child and using cohorts born in non-reform years as controls. We show that the extensions led to significant increases in the length of leave taken by fathers, without affecting that of mothers, thus increasing parental time at home in the first year after birth. Eligibility for four additional weeks of paternity leave led to a significant 12 percentage-point increase in the fraction of children with developmental delays. We provide evidence for two potential mechanisms. First, children exposed to longer paternity leave spend less time alone with their mother, and more time with their father, during their first year of life. Second, treated children use less formal childcare. Our results suggest that paternity leave replaces higher-quality modes of early care. We conclude that the effects of parental leave policies on children depend crucially on the quality of parental versus counterfactual modes of childcare. [Funding for this report was provided by the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI) and the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities.]

This study explores the underrepresentation of Black and Latinx students in California's community college Dual Enrollment (DE) programs. The study investigates how DE staff describe an understanding and commitment towards equity for Black and Latinx students in DE programs and how staff engage in equitably aimed praxis to serve Black and Latinx students through practices and collaborations between feeder high schools. Using a Critical Policy Analysis lens, the research highlights how Black and Latinx students are prioritized through equitable practices focused in advising and outreach. However, not all DE staff prioritize Black and Latinx through practices. Despite this, scant instances reveal that collaborative efforts between DE programs, high schools, and districts improve DE services and outcomes, though majority of K-12 partners are absent from collaborative efforts led by DE programs. The study emphasizes the need for increased collaboration between K-12 partners and integrating equitable approaches to DE outreach and advising to engage and recruit Black and Latinx students. This research advances the conversation of equity in DE programs and offers insights for addressing participation gaps among Black and Latinx students.

We estimate the effects of federal pandemic-relief funding (ESSER III) for K12 schools on district-level student achievement growth in 2023. We rely on student test achievement data from over 5,000 school districts across 30 states. Our novel identification strategy exploits variation in ESSER attributable to its allocation rules and their relationship to Title I. We find that each $1,000 increase in ESSER per pupil funds led to statistically significant increases in district math scores of 0.008 standard deviations and similar but statistically insignificant increases in ELA scores. Our heterogeneity analysis suggests impacts were not even across district pre-pandemic spending levels, student race, or urbanicity. Our estimates provide some insight into how much investment may be needed for a full academic recovery from the pandemic: to recover losses remaining after 2023, we estimate schools would need to spend $9,000 to $13,000 per pupil.

We study the effect of educational attainment on family formation using regression discontinuity designs generated by centralized admissions processes to both secondary and tertiary education in Finland. Admission to further education at either margin does not increase the likelihood that men form families. In contrast, women admitted to further education are more likely to both live with a partner and have children. We then pre-register and test two hypotheses which could explain each set of results using survey data. These suggest that the positive association between men's education and family formation observed in the data is driven by selection. For women, our estimates are consistent with the idea that, as increased returns to social skills shift the burden of child development from schools to parents and particularly mothers, education can make women more attractive as potential partners. [Funding for this report was provided by The Strategic Research Council, the Research Council of Finland, and Palkansaajasäätiö.]

Most states responded to the onset of the pandemic by temporarily granting teachers Emergency licenses. These licenses allowed teachers to work in classrooms without passing the typical licensure exams. Since then, several states have extended their use of Emergency licenses, raising questions about how these policies impact the composition of the teacher workforce and student outcomes. In this paper, we examine the result of these policies using data on multiple cohorts of Emergency licensed teachers (ELTs) who taught in Massachusetts between 2021 and 2023. We find that ELTs were slightly more likely to remain in the same school and in the teaching workforce than teachers from other entry routes. However, ELTs' students scored significantly lower on standardized tests in math and science than other students in the same school and same year. Our findings are at odds with earlier, more positive assessments of Emergency licensure in Massachusetts. Our updated results appear to be driven by more recent cohorts of ELTs, rather than the teachers who received Emergency licenses at the start of the pandemic. Overall, this study suggests policymakers should be cautious when drawing sweeping conclusions about the impacts of teacher licensure based solely on the earliest cohort of teachers who obtained pandemic-era Emergency licenses.

The guided pathways model, comprising 14 different practices, is a framework for comprehensive, whole-college reform undertaken by community colleges to help all students choose, enter, progress through, and complete a program of study that enables them to secure sustaining-wage employment or transfer with junior standing in a major. Since its introduction in 2015, it has been adopted by hundreds of community colleges across the United States. This paper asks whether guided pathways practices implemented at 62 community and technical colleges in three states--Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington--are associated with improvements in student outcomes during the first year of college. Specifically, using institutional survey and rich administrative data, we construct measures of adoption of guided pathways reforms to examine the association between guided pathways practices and fall-to-fall persistence, college credits earned, college math credits earned, and STEM credits earned. Our study reveals substantial variation in the adoption of guided pathways reforms across the states and across community colleges within the states over time. While we cannot establish a causal relationship between guided pathways adoption and student outcomes, we find significant positive associations between the statewide adoption of guided pathways reforms and early student outcomes in Tennessee. The observed improvements in that state are likely the result of concurrent reforms--guided pathways and others--implemented simultaneously, rather than of guided pathways reforms alone. We do not find evidence of improved student outcomes in either Ohio or Washington following the launch of statewide guided pathways initiatives. Our findings suggest that complementarities among adopted practices within and across areas of practice--rather than the adoption of individual practices or the intensity of adoption--seem to drive larger improvements in early academic success across the three states. Our study is the first of its kind to explore the potential of guided pathways reforms in contributing to improved early academic success, representing a significant descriptive contribution given that whole-college reforms in higher education are understudied.

This study used Postsecondary Student Information System (PSIS) administrative data within the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform to compare enrolment and persistence in postsecondary education (PSE) among high school graduates in British Columbia with and without special needs across five cohorts from 2010/2011 to 2014/2015 before and after controlling for several sociodemographic characteristics and academic achievement. The use of integrated longitudinal administrative data from the British Columbia Ministry of Education, the PSIS and the T1 Family File and the disaggregation of the special needs categorization were two major strengths of this study. Results show that high school graduates with mental health-related or cognitive needs and those with physical or sensory needs were less likely to enrol in PSE compared with high school graduates without special needs, even after controlling for covariates. Moreover, graduates with mental health-related or cognitive needs were less likely to transition to PSE immediately and less likely to persist in PSE two years after enrolment. These findings suggest that high school graduates with special needs, particularly those with mental health-related or cognitive needs, may encounter different types of barriers in transitioning to PSE.

Using British Columbia Ministry of Education administrative school data within the Education and Labour Market Longitudinal Platform, this study compared the proportions of high school graduates among Grade 12 students with and without special needs across nine cohorts from 2010/2011 to 2018/2019 before and after controlling for several sociodemographic characteristics. Two major strengths of this study were the use of longitudinal administrative education data integrated with income tax data from the T1 Family File and the further disaggregation of the special education needs categorization. Students with special needs in all different categories (excluding those with gifted status) were less likely to have graduated across all nine cohorts compared with students without special needs, even after controlling for sociodemographic characteristics and academic achievement, suggesting that students with special needs may face other types of barriers in completing high school. Yet there was diversity among students with special needs, with the highest proportions of graduation among students with learning disabilities or those with sensory needs and the lowest among students with intellectual disabilities. A larger share of females than males graduated high school among students without special needs. However, sex differences were less consistent among students with special needs status (including students with gifted status). As expected, the proportions of graduation were significantly higher at age 19 compared with at age 18 or younger, with the differences being slightly higher among students with special needs (excluding those with gifted status; 5 to 10 percentage points) compared with those without special needs (3 to 7 percentage points). The largest age differences were observed among students with autism spectrum disorder, behavioural needs or mental illness, and those with physical needs across all nine cohorts.

The Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund (ESSER) was the largest onetime federal investment in K-12 schools in history, funneling almost $200 billion to states and school districts. We use novel data from Washington State to investigate the extent to which ESSER funding causally influenced spending on school personnel. We argue one cannot infer this directly from ESSER claims data because of the fungibility of school budgets. Thus, we rely on a more direct signal of district hiring decisions: public education job postings scraped from district hiring websites. To address endogeneity concerns, our preferred approach employs an instrumental variables strategy that exploits a formula mechanism used to determine Title I funding for 2020-21 (and thus ESSER allocations in 2022) based on the number of Title I formula-eligible children. We find strong, arguably causal, evidence that public school hiring increased in response to the availability of ESSER funding. Specifically, we estimate that each $1,000 in ESSER allocations caused districts to seek to hire $206 in additional staff, disproportionately teachers. These estimates suggest that roughly 12,000 new staff (including 5,100 teachers) were hired in Washington because of ESSER. In the absence of new funding, school staffing budgets will likely need to contract substantially following the sunset of ESSER.

Departmentalized instruction, in which teachers specialize in one or more core subjects and instruct multiple groups of students in a day, has become increasingly prominent in elementary schools. Using 8 years of data from Massachusetts and a difference-in-differences design, we estimate the effects of departmentalization on student achievement. We find that departmentalization has positive effects in English language arts (ELA) and science and mixed evidence of positive effects in math. These positive effects are not driven by teacher productivity improvements: Consistent with prior findings on teacher specialization, teachers are less effective when specializing in math and no more effective in ELA than when teaching self-contained classrooms. Rather, consistent with the theoretical underpinnings for specialization, departmentalized schools tend to assign teachers to their stronger subjects.

This study addresses the burgeoning phenomenon of fully online alternative teacher certification programs (ACPs). In Texas where most teachers are prepared via ACPs, our research zeroes in on the proportion of teachers who are prepared fully online and the relative effectiveness of teacher preparation programs on student achievement and teacher retention. Using statewide longitudinal data from 2014-2023, our findings show that 1 in 4 of Texas students are being taught by teachers prepared fully online Students taught by teachers prepared online exhibit comparable levels of achievement to those taught by uncertified teachers, underperforming compared to students taught by teachers from other preparation pathways. Moreover, these teachers exhibit a markedly higher turnover rate. This study contributes to the ongoing discourse on teacher preparation quality, offering insights for policymakers and stakeholders.