Search

This study investigates why teachers, identified by their school principal as being leaders or having leadership potential, chose not to become school principals. At a time in which the literature is reporting a shortage of qualified applicants for school administrative positions the identified reasons most cited by teacher leaders include testing/accountability pressures too great, job generally too stressful, too much time required, and societal problems make it difficult to focus on instruction. The key factors for teacher leaders choosing not to pursue a career in school administration are categorized as stress and time demands are too great. (Contains 5 tables.)

Effects of the high school environment, part-time university instructors, and classroom ethnic/racial diversity on first-year student preparation and enrollment persistence are estimated via hierarchical linear and logistic regression. After controlling for student socio-demographic characteristics and motivation to enter college, high school attributes bear little relevance to level of academic preparation at the start of the first year of study. In contrast, academic performance of low-income students at the end of the first year is negatively associated with several features of the high school environment. There is little evidence that student persistence is negatively affected by exposure to part-time instructors during the first year in college. Ethnic/racial diversity in the classroom appears to slightly enhance persistence of non-Asian minority students, but shows no positive relationship with cognitive growth. Unmet financial need marginally increases the dropout risk of students taking greater course loads net of socio-demographic background, academic preparation, first-year grades, on-campus residency, and type of aid received. Results are based on institutional matriculation records of 2,800 first-year students at a moderately selective public university and official high school accountability reports collected by the state's department of education. (Contains 8 tables and 6 footnotes.)

This report focuses on the initial design, implementation and baseline results of the five-year Longitudinal Educational Growth Study (LEGS) of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) being conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP). The LEGS will be the first evaluation of the participant effects of the MPCP using student-level data to be implemented since the initial pilot program expanded dramatically in 1995. Included this initial report are baseline descriptions of achievement tests for a representative sample of MPCP students in grades 3 through 9, as well as outcomes for comparable samples of students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Also included are a descriptive analysis of survey results of MPCP parents and a carefully matched sample of MPS parents as well as a brief description of the results of student surveys for both samples. The first section of the baseline report discusses the construction of a sample of 2,727 MPCP students in grades 3-9. The report also discusses the selection of 2,727 similar Milwaukee Public School students. For both samples the core of this longitudinal study will be to track the educational progress across the two samples through school year 2011-12. We demonstrate that the sample of MPS students constructed by the SCDP is more similar to the representative MPCP sample along demographic and initial achievement criteria than other potential comparison groups of MPS students. The baseline results indicate that MPCP students in grades 3 to 5 are currently scoring slightly lower on the math and reading portions of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examinations (WKCE) than their MPS counterparts. However, no such difference exists for students in grades 6 to 8. Benchmark Test results for 9th graders are also similar between the two groups. The differences in grades 3 to 5 are almost exclusively due to lower MPCP math scores that disappear in grades 6 to 8. According to our surveys of parents and students, MPCP parents had lower incomes, but higher levels of education than MPS parents. The two groups were also quite similar on how they learned of their child's school and the qualities they sought in schools. A key difference was that MPCP parents got more information from churches and valued religious instruction more than MPS parents. In both groups, over 70 percent of students were attending their parents' first choice of schools. Both MPCP and MPS parents and students showed high levels of satisfaction with their schools--in some cases higher than national averages. However, MPCP parents and students were generally more positive about their schooling experience than their counterparts in MPS. MPCP parents were less likely to report problems at school such as school violence, and had slightly higher educational expectations for their children, than comparable MPS parents. Students were also very positive about their schools, differing only slightly in their evaluation of their school climate depending on whether they were in the MPCP or MPS. Five appendices are included: (1) Description of the Study Mandate; (2) Constructing the Sample for Study; (3) Data Collection Procedures and Protocols; (4) Parental Survey Tables; and (5) Student Survey Tables. (Contains 2 figures, 6 tables and 16 footnotes.)

The greatest limitation in establishing causality in observational studies on the effect of financial aid is the presence of endogeneity or selection bias associated with aid status. To control for this statistical confoundedness that besets the research corpus to date, this study estimates the effect of financial aid on freshmen retention at a moderately selective, public university using propensity score-matching in multi-stage regression analyses. The correlational pattern that emerged from twenty-four logit models suggests higher-income students accrue a retention benefit from financial aid, unlike low-income students, net of first-year academic experience and type and amount of aid received. Conversely, retention of low-income freshmen is more likely due to academic performance compared to those from high-income background. Findings on the effect of aid are consistent with the economics of moral hazard and unobservable behavior. (Contains 6 footnotes, 8 tables, and 2 figures.)

In the positive theory of public bureaucracy, the prevailing view is that the structure of public agencies is designed from the top down by political superiors. Faced with bureaucrats who may disagree with them on policy and who are advantaged by private information, superiors choose rules and procedures to try to ensure that agencies do what they are supposed to do. At least some portion of bureaucratic structure, however, cannot be explained in this way. It emerges from the bottom up through collective bargaining, it is driven by the organizational power of ordinary bureaucrats rather than by their information power, and it results in work rules intended to promote their occupational interests rather than to have any specific effects on implementation or policy--although the unintended consequences for the latter may be significant. When this happens, the theory overlooks an aspect of structure that is essential for understanding the way government operates. This paper begins to explore the connections between collective bargaining, bottom-up structure, and bureaucratic behavior. The empirical focus is on the public schools, the bureaucrats are public school teachers, and the analysis shows that a very common type of contract rule--which gives senior teachers transfer rights over jobs--affects the way teachers distribute themselves across schools, and leads to a situation in which disadvantaged schools (those with high percentages of minorities) find it especially difficult to attract quality teachers. What the analysis shows, more generally, is that even very simple types of bottom-up structure can have significant effects on bureaucrats and their agencies--and the current theory needs to recognize as much. (Contains 5 tables and 23 footnotes.)