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Believe and Prepare is a teacher preparation reform implemented by the Louisiana Department of Education in collaboration with school systems and teacher preparation programs across the state. It was piloted in the 2014/15 school year and became mandatory in July 2018 for incoming teacher candidates in all 18 institutions of higher education that offer traditional teacher preparation programs. The reform focused on competency-based curricula, extended clinical experiences, and rigorous mentor teacher training. A central requirement of the reform is that teacher candidates must participate in a yearlong residency with a mentor teacher. This replaced the prior shorter-term student teaching requirement, typically six weeks. To explore the extent to which the reform is contributing to expected improvement in outcomes for early career teachers, this study examined the association between the reform and in-service teacher performance ratings, teacher retention, student test scores, teacher competency, and the likelihood of three placement outcomes (being placed in the school where the teacher completed a residency, filling a teaching position in a shortage area, and being placed in a rural school). Teachers who completed a program that had implemented Believe and Prepare were 2 percentage points more likely than teachers who completed a program that had not implemented it to stay in Louisiana for at least one year and 7 percentage points more likely to stay in the same school district for at least three years. Grade 4-8 students whose teachers completed a preparation program that had implemented Believe and Prepare during the pilot years scored 0.04 standard deviation lower on English language arts tests than students whose teachers completed a program that had not implemented it. Other teacher outcomes such as in-service performance ratings, competency as measured by Praxis II scores, school placement, and job assignment were not statistically different between teachers who completed a program that had implemented Believe and Prepare and teachers who completed other programs. [For the Study Snapshot, see ED624403. For the appendixes, see ED624404.]

New Mexico is one of 48 states that offer a biliteracy seal to high school graduates to recognize their proficiency in a non -English language. The Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest English Learners Research Partnership collaborated with a large urban district in New Mexico to study the characteristics and college readiness of students who earned different types of biliteracy seals (state, district, and global seals), the number of students who met some requirements for a seal but did not earn one, and the effect of earning a seal on college outcomes. The study used data from three cohorts of grade 12 students in the district from 2017/18 to 2019/20. Between 2017/18 and 2019/20, 7 percent of graduates earned at least one type of biliteracy seal, and these graduates were more likely than graduates who did not earn a seal to be Hispanic, to be eligible for the National School Lunch Program, to be a current English learner student, to have ever been an English learner student, and to speak Spanish at home. Graduates who earned a biliteracy seal were more likely than similar graduates who did not earn a seal to enroll in college within one year of high school graduation. Finally, among graduates who enrolled in college, graduates who earned a biliteracy seal were more likely than graduates who did not earn a seal to enroll in a four-year college and to enroll in college full time. The New Mexico Public Education Department and district leaders can use the findings to decide how to expand access to biliteracy seals. [For the Study Snapshot, see ED624244. For the appendixes, see ED624246.]

The Leading Educators Fellowship program selects promising mid-career teachers through a competitive application process and develops their skills as leaders of school improvement efforts. The specific objectives of the program are to (1) increase the leadership skills and capacity of teacher leaders in order to improve student achievement in high-need schools and (2) retain highly effective teachers in high-need schools by encouraging commitment to the schools and improving the school leadership pipeline. This report presents findings from preliminary analyses of the program's impacts on student achievement and teacher retention in both Louisiana and Missouri in the 2011-2012 through 2013-2014 school years for teachers who are program fellows and for the teachers mentored by fellows. The findings from this early analysis of the program impacts of fellows are promising but mixed, and overall do not conclusively demonstrate that the program has affected student achievement. For mentees, the findings show some positive effects on student achievement among mentees who teach math and social studies in Louisiana. The findings do not point to a consistent pattern of retention impacts across cohorts or states. Future analyses with larger samples of both fellows and mentees will provide greater statistical power for more reliably detecting any true program effects. A technical appendix contains propensity score matching and power analyses.

School districts have begun using estimates of teachers' effects on student test scores (or "valueadded) for diagnostic purposes and allotting monetary rewards. Such estimates must be precise enough to identify high- and low-performing teachers and predict future performance accurately. We study the inter-temporal variability in value-added measures for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers from five large Florida school districts. Consistent with worker productivity measures in other occupations, teacher estimates are moderately stable, with year-to-year correlations ranging from 0.2-0.5 for elementary school and 0.3-0.7 for middle school teachers. Thirty to 60 percent of the variation in measured teacher performance is due to sampling error from "noise" in student test scores. Persistent teacher effects account for about 50 percent (70 percent) of the variation not due to noise for elementary (middle) school teachers; other time-varying factors account for the remaining variance. However, observed teacher characteristics (e.g., experience, advanced degrees and professional development) explain little inter-temporal variation unrelated to sampling errors. Averaging estimates from two years greatly enhances the stability of the estimates and improves their predictive ability. We also explore the sensitivity of stability to the value-added model specification and the achievement test. Technical Appendix is included. (Contains 7 tables, 2 figures and 11 footnotes.)