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This study examines the community-wide effects of two statewide early childhood policy initiatives in North Carolina. One initiative provides funding to improve the quality of child care services at the county level for all children between the ages of 0 to 5, and the other provides funding for preschool slots for disadvantaged four-year-olds. Differences across counties in the timing of the rollout and in the magnitude of the state financial investments per child provide the variation in programs needed to estimate their effects on schooling outcomes in third grade. We find robust positive effects of each program on third-grade test scores in both reading and math. These effects can best be explained by a combination of direct benefits for participants and spillover benefits for others. Our preferred models suggest that the combined average effects on test scores of investments in both programs at 2009 funding levels are equivalent to two to four months of instruction in grade 3.

This study uses detailed administrative data on teachers and students from the state of North Carolina to revisit the empirical evidence on master's degrees, with attention to teachers at the middle and high school levels. It provides descriptive information on which types of teachers obtain master's degrees, for which subjects, at which institutions, and during what phase of their career. The study estimates returns to master's degrees using teacher fixed effects to control for time-invariant characteristics of teachers, thus separating the effects of teacher decisions to get an advanced degree from the effects of having one. Even with this careful attention to selection bias, we confirm the findings of prior studies showing that teachers with master's degrees are no more effective than those without. The only consistently positive effect of attaining a master's degree emerging from this study relates not to student test scores but rather to lower student absentee rates in middle school.

We examine the relative labor market gains experienced by first-time college students who enrolled in five community colleges in Michigan in 2003 and 2004. We track credentials, credits, earnings, and employment for these students through 2011. We compare labor market outcomes of those who earned a credential (associate degree or certificate) to those who enrolled but did not earn a credential. The data sources consist of administrative records data from the colleges, Unemployment Insurance earnings data from the State of Michigan, and enrollment and graduation data from the National Student Clearinghouse. Our analytic sample consists of 20,581 students. We find that students who were awarded a long-term certificate (referred to as a "diploma" in some states, including North Carolina) earned $2,500 to $3,600 more per year than did those without a credential, with the larger returns concentrated among men. For associate degrees, the estimated returns were $9,400 for women and $5,600 for men. Women saw little gain when awarded a short-term certificate, while men gained $5,200 per year. Estimated returns were highest in health-related and technical fields. Two appendices are included: (1) Analysis of Non-Credit Courses and Awards; and (2) Coding of Fields and Subfields of Study.

In this paper we examine how failing to make adequate yearly progress under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and the accountability pressure that ensues, affects various non-achievement student behaviors. Using administrative data from North Carolina and leveraging a discontinuity in the determination of school failure, we examine the causal impact of accountability pressure both on student behaviors that are incentivized by NCLB and on those that are not. We find evidence that, as NCLB intends, pressure encourages students to show up at school and to do so on time. Accountability pressure also has the unintended effect, however, of increasing the number of student misbehaviors such as suspensions, fights, and offenses reportable to law enforcement. Further, this negative response is most pronounced among minorities and low performing students, who are the most likely to be left behind. The following are appended: (1) Descriptive Statistics; (2) Offense Measures Used; (3) Supplemental Analyses; and (4) Alternate Model Specifications.

Of the copious research on the labor market returns to college, very little has adequately modeled the pathways of non-completers or compared their outcomes with those of award holders. In this paper, we present a novel method for linking non-completers with completers according to their program of study. This method allows us to calculate the labor market returns to programs of study, accounting both for those who obtain an award and those who do not. We use a large dataset of community college transcripts matched with earnings data. We find that different classification systems--by algorithm, intent, or goal--yield very different enrollment patterns across programs. These classifications make a substantial difference to earnings patterns. Our results show that returns vary not only by program completion, but they also vary by program non-completion. Consequently, combining completers and non-completers yields a new pattern of returns. For some awards, this leads to wider earnings differentials. However, we find that the variance in returns by subject of study is reduced when we combine data on completers and non-completers. Finally, we find that progression in a program per se does not lead to higher earnings for students who do not complete (even as it demonstrably does for students who complete their program). If validated, these findings have significant implications for policies on program choice and on student retention policies. A supplementary figure is appended.

Of the copious research on the labor market returns to college, very little has adequately modeled the pathways of non-completers or compared their outcomes with those of award holders. In this paper, we present a novel method for linking non-completers with completers according to their program of study. This method allows us to calculate the labor market returns to programs of study, accounting both for those who obtain an award and those who do not. We use a large dataset of community college transcripts matched with earnings data. We find that different classification systems--by algorithm, intent, or goal--yield very different enrollment patterns across programs. These classifications make a substantial difference to earnings patterns. Our results show that returns vary not only by program completion, but they also vary by program non-completion. Consequently, combining completers and non-completers yields a new pattern of returns. For some awards, this leads to wider earnings differentials. However, we find that the variance in returns by subject of study is reduced when we combine data on completers and non-completers. Finally, we find that progression in a program "per se" does not lead to higher earnings for students who do not complete (even as it demonstrably does for students who complete their program). If validated, these findings have significant implications for policies on program choice and on student retention policies. Appended is Figure A.1: Assignment of Students to Programs.

Nationally, about two thirds of community college students are referred to developmental education. Thus far, research on the effectiveness of developmental education has focused on students' academic outcomes; in this paper, we examine the economic consequences of developmental education for students. Using longitudinal student-unit record data from two large community college systems linked to wage record data, we estimate the labor market returns to developmental credits versus college-level credits for two cohorts of students who attended community college in North Carolina and Virginia. While both states' implemented new placement exams and developmental education course structures and curricula beginning in 2012, during the time period under study, both states' developmental education programs and policies were fairly traditional and similar to those of other states nationwide. We find that, in both states, earning developmental reading and writing credits led to an increase in earnings, which is primarily attributed to an increased likelihood of employment. These findings suggest that earning developmental English credits may represent an improvement in academic literacy skills that are valuable in the labor market and improve individuals' employability. In contrast, in both states, developmental math credits had negative impacts on earnings. That is, the opportunity costs associated with developmental math credits, particularly for those assigned to the lowest levels of the developmental math (and thus to the longest course sequences), tended to outweigh the potential labor market value these credits may bring. The negative impact of developmental math coursework on wages provides support for nationwide efforts to shorten the long-sequence structure of developmental mathematics, and to teach math skills that are applicable to students' real-world needs. An appendix contains a section entitled "Full Results."

While instructional time is viewed as crucial to learning, little is known about the effectiveness of reducing absences relative to increasing the number of school days. In this regard, this paper jointly estimates the effect of absences and length of the school calendar on test score performance. Using administrative data from North Carolina public schools, we exploit a state policy that provides variation in the number of days prior to standardized testing and find substantial differences between these effects. Extending the school calendar by ten days increases math and reading test scores by only 0.8% and 0.2% of a standard deviation, respectively; a similar reduction in absences would lead to gains of 5.8% and 3% in math and reading. We perform a number of robustness checks including utilizing u data to instrument for absences, family-year fixed effects, separating excused and unexcused absences, and controlling for a contemporaneous measure of student disengagement. Our results are robust to these alternative specifications. In addition, our findings indicate considerable heterogeneity across student ability, suggesting that targeting absenteeism among low performing students could aid in narrowing current gaps in performance. Four tables and one figure are appended.

The extent to which community college students experience labor market success depends on both the attributes of the individual students and the characteristics of the community colleges they attend. In this paper, we examine the impact of community college characteristics on the earnings of first-time college students who enrolled in the North Carolina Community College System in 2002-03. We estimate multilevel models that incorporate variables representing institutional features of community colleges along with individual characteristics obtained from student-level administrative college transcripts data, Unemployment Insurance wage data, and enrollment and graduation data from the National Student Clearinghouse across 830,000 community college students between 2001 and 2010. We find that a number of characteristics of community colleges enhance earnings independently of the attributes of individuals. In particular, students attending community colleges in service areas with higher unemployment rates receive lower earnings, and students from colleges that serve a single county and (especially women) in colleges with larger enrollments earn more.

The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for K-12 English language arts/literacy and mathematics, released in 2010, have been adopted by 49 states and territories; the District of Columbia; and the U.S. Department of Defense schools, which serve the children of U.S. service members around the world. The widespread adoption of the CCSS is a major step forward, yet significant work remains for states to successfully implement the new more rigorous and relevant academic standards--notably, the adoption of new tests to measure students' progress against the CCSS. This paper reports on states' challenges and progress in creating and launching assessments of students' learning that are aligned with the CCSS.

In this paper, the authors examine the relative labor market gains for first-time college students who enrolled in the North Carolina Community College System in 2002-03. The medium-term returns to diplomas, certificates, and degrees are compared with returns for students who accumulated college credits but did not graduate. The authors also investigate the returns to credit accumulation, subject field, and transfer and the early trajectories of wages for different student subgroups during the 2000s. The analysis is based on student-level administrative record data from college transcripts, Unemployment Insurance wage data, and enrollment and graduation data from the National Student Clearinghouse across 830,000 community college students between 2001 and 2010. Findings from this study confirm those from earlier work: The returns to certificates and diplomas were weak, but associate and bachelor's degrees yielded very strong returns; even small accumulations of credits had labor market value; and the returns to health sector credentials were extremely high. Returns were much higher for female students than for male students. Despite the Great Recession, analysis reveals little evidence that the returns to college decreased over the latter half of the 2000s. However, medium-term estimates likely understate the full value of college credentials, particularly bachelor's degrees. The following table is appended: Descriptive Frequencies for 2002-03 NCCCS Cohort by Highest Award Earned.

This study examines the community-wide effects of investments in two early childhood initiatives in North Carolina (Smart Start and More at Four) on the likelihood of a student being placed into special education. We take advantage of variation across North Carolina counties and years in the timing of the introduction and funding levels of the two programs to identify their effects on third-grade outcomes. We find that both programs significantly reduce the likelihood of special education placement in the third grade, resulting in considerable cost savings to the state. The effects of the two programs differ across categories of disability, but do not vary significantly across subgroups of children identified by race, ethnicity, and maternal education levels. The following are appended: (1) Tables and Figures; (2) Exceptionality Classifications by Type of Disability (1997-2010); (3) Variable Description; and (4) Any Exceptionality Models with Additional Covariates.

This report provides a non-technical overview of the guiding research questions and research design for the ACT-led core research program conducted on behalf of the GEAR UP College and Career Readiness Evaluation Consortium (CCREC). The core research program is a longitudinal study of the effectiveness of 14 GEAR UP state grants on the academic achievement, college going and college retention of low-income and other at-risk students who are eligible to receive grant-funded services. This research program will follow Consortium students and a matched comparison group of non-participants over time using assessment data from ACT Explore®, ACT Plan® or ACT Aspire®, and The ACT®, and college enrollment data from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) to examine differences in the academic growth and educational outcomes of these two groups.

Building a stronger teacher workforce requires the thoughtful orchestration of multiple processes working together in a human capital system. This white paper presents a framework that can be used to take stock of current efforts to enhance the teacher workforce in school districts or educational organizations, as well as their underlying theories of how the teacher workforce improves over time. The paper refines and provides evidentiary support for a human capital system framework composed of four subsystems that ideally work together to build a stronger teacher workforce: (1) getting the right teachers in the right positions on time (Acquire); (2) supporting professional growth in school-based learning communities (Develop); (3) nurturing, rewarding, and challenging high-performing teachers (Sustain); and (4) informing evidence-based personnel decisions (Evaluate). Attention to this framework will engender a corps of teachers with the capacity and expertise to collectively facilitate enhanced educational outcomes.

When Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), much of the debate will undoubtedly focus on the accountability requirements added to Title I by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Title I authorizes federal aid to school districts to educate low-achieving children in low-income areas. Among the most controversial of these NCLB requirements are the provisions for determining whether schools and districts have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement in reading and mathematics. This background paper from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) explores some of the factors that have influenced recent trends in the national percentage of public schools that have not made AYP, out of the total number of schools that reported AYP results. This paper is intended to serve as a companion to the report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?" (CEP, 2011). As discussed in more detail in that five-year trend report, the national percentage of public schools failing to make AYP rose from 29% in 2006 to an estimated 38% in 2010 and actually decreased in two of the interim years. Although 38% is a record high percentage of schools not making AYP, it is still lower than what many observers had predicted by this point in NCLB implementation. CEP's analysis focused on 10 large or medium-sized states that had the greatest increases or decreases in the number of schools not making AYP or had other noteworthy AYP trends: California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. Its analysis revealed several factors, in addition to changes in student learning, that appear to account for some of the fluctuations in the national percentage of schools not making AYP and may help explain why these percentages have not escalated as quickly as some analysts have predicted. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) National trends in the percentage of schools not making AYP have been affected disproportionately by trends in a limited subset of states; (2) Changes in state testing policies have slowed, or even reversed, increases in the number of schools failing to make AYP in several states; (3) The NCLB "safe harbor" provision has also helped somewhat in keeping down the share of schools failing to make AYP in certain states; (4) The use of growth models appears to have had a limited impact on AYP trends in most of the growth model states analyzed; (5) In most of the states analyzed, the number of schools failing to make AYP increased substantially in the years when the state's achievement targets went up; (6) States that introduced new tests saw substantial short-term increases or decreases in the number of schools failing to make AYP; (7) In some states, changes in the number of schools not making AYP are largely attributable to changes in the cut scores defining "proficient" performance on state tests; (8) North Carolina's experience suggests that counting proficient scores from retests can reduce the number of schools failing to make AYP--especially in the short term; and (9) Even if most or all states adopt common standards and common assessments, variations in state accountability policies could continue to make it impossible to arrive at meaningful comparisons about the performance of different states. (Contains 6 footnotes.) [For the companion report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?," see ED518993.]

This paper examines whether teachers in schools serving students from high-poverty backgrounds are as effective as teachers in schools with more advantaged students. The question is important. Teachers are recognized as the most important school factor affecting student achievement, and the achievement gap between disadvantaged students and their better off peers is large and persistent. Using student-level microdata from 2000-2001 to 2004-2005 from Florida and North Carolina, the authors compare the effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty elementary schools (greater than 70% FRL students) with that of teachers in lower-poverty elementary schools (less than 70% FRL students). The results show that the average effectiveness of teachers in high-poverty schools is in general less than teachers in other schools, but only slightly, and not in all comparisons. The authors also find differences in within-school-type variation in teacher effectiveness in nearly every comparison. These differences are largely driven by the longer tail at the bottom of the teacher effectiveness distribution in high-poverty schools. Teachers at the top of the effectiveness distribution are very similar across school settings. The observed differences in teacher quality between high-poverty and lower-poverty schools are not due to differences in the observed characteristics of teachers, such as experience, certification status and educational attainment. Rather, they appear to arise from differences in the marginal return or payoff from increases in a characteristic. In particular, the gain in productivity from increased experience is much stronger in lower-poverty schools. The lower return to experience in high-poverty schools does not appear to be a result of differences in the quality of teachers who leave teaching or who switch schools. Rather, it may be the case that the effect of experience on teacher productivity may depend on the setting in which the experience is acquired. If there are positive spillovers among teachers that depend on teacher quality (ie. teacher "peer effects") or if exposure to challenging student populations lessens the future productivity of teachers (i.e. leads to "burn out"), teachers in schools serving large proportions of low-income students may simply not improve much as time goes by. These findings suggest that solutions to the achievement gap between high and lower-poverty schools may be complex. Changing the quality of new recruits or importing teachers with good credentials into high-poverty schools may not be sufficient. Rather, the findings suggest that measures that induce highly effective teachers to move to high-poverty schools and which promote an environment in which teachers' skills will improve over time are more likely to be successful. An appendix is included. (Contains 8 figures, 15 tables and 14 footnotes.) [This is an updated version of Working Paper 41.]

This paper examines sorting into interracial friendships at selective universities. We show significant friendship segregation, particularly for blacks. Indeed, black friendships are no more diverse in college than in high school despite the colleges blacks attend having substantially smaller black populations. We show that part of the reason for the segregation patterns is large differences in academic background coupled with students being more likely to form friendships with those of similar academic backgrounds. Within a school, stronger academic backgrounds make interracial friendships with blacks less likely and friendships with Asians more likely. These results suggest that affirmative action admission policies at selective universities which drive a wedge between the academic characteristics of different racial groups may result in increased within school segregation.

In this paper we summarize the findings from five separate papers, with the goal of providing a more complete picture than is normally possible in a single paper, of the extent to which the variation in teacher characteristics contributes to minority achievement gaps. All five papers are based on a rich administrative data set that includes information on all students and all teachers in North Carolina. We document the extent to which students in North Carolina are segregated by race not only across schools but also across classrooms within schools; the extent to which teachers with stronger qualifications are over represented not only in schools serving more advantaged students, but also in the classrooms serving such students within such schools; the extent to which various teacher characteristics affect student achievement, and finally, the extent to which North Carolina's relatively sophisticated school-based accountability program has exacerbated the challenges that low-performing schools face in retaining teachers. Together our findings clearly implicate the unequal distribution of teachers, as defined by their characteristics, as one of many factors that contribute to minority achievement gaps. Of particular importance is the uneven distribution of novice teachers across schools and classrooms. (Contains 6 tables, 3 figures, and 8 footnotes.)

Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, even though these proxies correlate only weakly with student performance. This paper examines the attrition and mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality using value-added measures of teacher performance. Unlike previous studies, this paper focuses on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. On average, more effective teachers tend to stay in their initial schools and in teaching. But the lowest performing teachers, who are generally the most likely to transfer between schools, appear to "churn" within the system, and teacher mobility appears significantly affected by student demographics and achievement levels. (Contains 5 tables and 41 footnotes.)

Do charter schools draw good teachers from traditional, mainstream public schools? Using a panel dataset of all North Carolina public school teachers from 1997-2007, this research paper finds nuanced patterns of teacher quality flowing into charter schools. High rates of inexperienced and uncertified teachers moved to charter schools, but among certified teachers changing schools, the on-paper qualifications of charter movers were better or no different than the qualifications of teachers moving to comparable mainstream schools. Estimated measures of classroom performance for a subset of grade 3-5 teachers show that charter movers were more effective in math and reading instruction, relative to other mobile teachers. Charter movers compared less favorably, however, to non-mobile teachers and colleagues within their sending schools. The distribution of classroom performance among future charter teachers, adjusted for sampling error, was significantly lower than the distribution for exclusively mainstream teachers. (Contains 7 tables, 4 figures and 43 footnotes.)

This paper examines the effects of policies that increase the number of students who take the first course in algebra in 8th grade, rather than waiting until 9th grade. Extending previous research that focused on the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system, we use data for the 10 largest districts in North Carolina. We identify the effects of accelerating the timetable for taking algebra by using data on multiple cohorts grouped by decile of prior achievement and exploiting the fact that policy-induced shifts in the timing of algebra occur at different times in different districts to different deciles of students. The expanded data make it possible to examine heterogeneity across students in the effect of taking algebra early. We find negative effects among students in the bottom 60% of the prior achievement distribution. In addition, we find other sources of heterogeneity in effects.

Using longitudinal data on spanning the 2002-03 through 2007-08 school years in Florida and North Carolina, this paper decomposes the workforce dynamics among teachers and principals in low-performing schools that significantly improved their performance. In general, I find strong, consistent evidence of human capital development (i.e., improvements in the productivity of the teachers and principals already in the school) accounting for the increased performance in turnaround schools. These findings are robust to the inclusion of school random effects, alternative categorizations of both teachers and turnaround schools, and are observed across elementary and middle school samples in both states. There is also general evidence of productive incoming teachers helping to improve these turnaround schools, but little evidence to support negative attrition specific to these schools played a role. These findings are important as they document large improvements in the joint productivity of teachers in low-performing schools, a finding which is out of step with current federal efforts to improve schools that implicitly assume teacher productivity is essentially fixed over time. [The research presented here was originally performed under contract with the Institute of Education Sciences. The study team was led by American Institutes for Research, with the Urban Institute, Decision Information Resources, and Policy Studies Associates.]

Education researchers and policymakers agree that teachers differ in terms of quality and that quality matters for student achievement. Despite prodigious amounts of research, however, debate still persists about the causal relationship between specific teacher credentials and student achievement. In this paper, we use a rich administrative data set from North Carolina to explore a range of questions related to the relationship between teacher characteristics and credentials on the one hand and student achievement on the other. Though the basic questions underlying this research are not new--and, indeed, have been explored in many papers over the years within the rubric of the "education production function"--the availability of data on all teachers and students in North Carolina over a ten-year period allows us to explore them in more detail and with far more confidence than has been possible in previous studies. We conclude that a teacher's experience, test scores and regular licensure all have positive effects on student achievement, with larger effects for math than for reading. Taken together the various teacher credentials exhibit quite large effects on math achievement, whether compared to the effects of changes in class size or to the socio-economics characteristics of students, as measured, for example, by the education level of their parents. (Contains 11 tables and 20 footnotes.)[This paper is a revised version of a paper initially prepared for a conference organized by the World Bank on "The Contribution of Economics to the Challenges Faced by Education," Dijon, France, June 2006. An earlier version of this paper was presented in March 2006 at the annual meetings of the American Education Finance Association, Denver, Colorado.]

In this paper we report on work estimating the stability of value-added estimates of teacher effects, an important area of investigation given public interest in workforce policies that implicitly assume effectiveness is a stable attribute within teachers. The results strongly reject the hypothesis that teacher performance is completely stable within teachers over long periods of time, but estimates suggest that a component of performance appears to persist within teachers, even over a ten-year panel. We also find that little of the changes in teacher effectiveness estimates within teachers can be explained by observable characteristics. The Influence of Bias is appended. (Contains 6 tables, 4 figures and 41 footnotes.)

ICF International's white paper explores how implementation of social and emotional learning (SEL) has the potential to prepare students for workforce success and positively influence student engagement and academic performance while reducing dropout rates. Self-improvement and leadership development sections of bookstores are replete with texts advocating for the integral relationship that emotional intelligence plays in the development of an effective workforce. Is there an advantage to developing emotional intelligence prior to entering the workforce? (Contains 1 figure and 2 tables.)

Building on recent research, ICF sought to explore how socioeconomic status and attachment to place influence rural youths' educational and residential preferences across a wider geographic region. Our research questions included: What are rural high school students' educational and residential plans? And what factors influence rural youths' plans for adulthood? This white paper summarizes ICF's findings using the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data. First we identified districts with locale codes of 41 (rural fringe), 42 (rural distant), and 43 (rural remote) in eight states: Delaware, Iowa, Kentucky, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, South Carolina, and Virginia. Because we also examined the experiences of rural English Language Learners (ELL), we then selected and identified rural districts with ELL growth rates of 100 percent or higher between 2000-2001 and 2007-2008. Finally, we identified high schools within selected districts, for a total of 612 high schools. (Contains 2 figures, 2 tables, and 12 footnotes.)

Teacher effort, a critical component of education production, has been largely ignored in the literature due to measurement difficulties. Using a principal-agent model, North Carolina public school data, and the state's unique accountability system that rewards teachers for school-level academic growth, we show that we can distill effort from teacher absence data and capture its effect on student achievement in a structural framework. We find that: (1) Incentives lead teachers to try harder. The bonus program reduced the number of sick days taken by about 0.6 days for an average teacher; (2) When teachers try harder, students do better. Increased effort of teachers translates into improved student performance. Estimates show that standardized reading scores increased by about 1.3% of a standard deviation and standardized math scores by about 0.9% of a standard deviation; and (3) Group-level incentives can actually be more powerful than individual-level incentives. Policy simulations from the model estimates show that an individual bonus program would actually produce weaker incentive effects. While free-rider effects are eliminated, individual incentives push a majority of teachers into one of two categories: those who would qualify for the bonus even without trying and others would not qualify no matter how hard they worked. A bibliography is included. (Contains 3 figures and 10 footnotes.)

Although the Federal No Child Left Behind program judges the effectiveness of schools based on their students' achievement status, many policy analysts argue that schools should be measured, instead, by their students' achievement growth. Using a ten-year student-level panel data set from North Carolina, the authors examine how school-specific pressure associated with the two approaches to school accountability affects student achievement at different points in the prior-year achievement distribution. Achievement gains for students below the proficiency cut point emerge in response to both types of accountability systems, but more clearly in math than in reading. In contrast to prior research highlighting the possibility of educational triage, the authors find little or no evidence that schools in North Carolina ignore the students far below proficiency under either approach. Importantly, they find that the status, but not the growth, approach reduces the reading achievement of higher performing students. The analysis suggests that the distributional effects of accountability pressure depend not only on the type of pressure for which schools are held accountable (status or growth), but also the tested subject. Descriptive Statistics is appended. (Contains 5 figures, 4 tables and 21 footnotes.) [This paper was presented at the "NCLB: Emerging Findings Research Conference" at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. on August 12, 2009.]

This paper describes the school mobility rates for elementary and middle school students in North Carolina and attempts to estimate the effect of school mobility on the performance of different groups of students using student fixed effects models. School mobility is defined as changing schools at times that are non-promotional (e.g., moving from middle to high school). We used detailed administrative data on North Carolina students and schools from 1997 to 2005 and followed four cohorts of 3rd graders for six years each. School mobility rates were highest for minority and disadvantaged students. School mobility rates for Hispanic students declined across successive cohorts, but increased for Black students. Findings on effects were most pronounced in math. School mobility hurt the math performance of Black and Hispanic students, but not the math performance of white students. School mobility improved the reading performance of white and more advantaged students, but had no effect on the reading performance of minority students. "Strategic" school moves (cross-district) benefitted or had no effect on student performance, but "reactive" moves (within district) hurt all groups of students. White and Hispanic students were more likely to move to a higher quality school while Blacks were more likely to move to a lower quality school. The negative effects of school mobility increased with the number of school moves. Tables are appended. (Contains 1 exhibit, 9 footnotes, 5 figures, and 15 tables.)

Policy makers periodically consider using student assignment policies to improve educational outcomes by altering the socio-economic and academic skill composition of schools. We exploit the quasi-random reassignment of students across schools in the Wake County Public School System to estimate the academic and behavioral effects of being reassigned to a different school and, separately, of shifts in peer characteristics. We rule out all but substantively small effects of transitioning to a different school as a result of reassignment on test scores, course grades and chronic absenteeism. In contrast, increasing the achievement levels of students' peers improves students' math and ELA test scores but harms their ELA course grades. Test score benefits accrue primarily to students from higher-income families, though students with lower family income or lower prior performance still benefit. Our results suggest that student assignment policies that relocate students to avoid the over-concentration of lower-achieving students or those from lower-income families can accomplish equity goals (despite important caveats), although these reassignments may reduce achievement for students from higher-income backgrounds.

Using detailed admissions data made public in the SFFA v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC cases, we examine how racial preferences for under-represented minorities (URMs) affect their admissions to Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill. At Harvard, the admit rates for typical African American applicants are on average over four times larger than if they had been treated as white. For typical Hispanic applicants the increase is 2.4 times. At UNC, preferences vary substantially by whether the applicant is in-state or out-of-state. For in-state applicants, racial preferences result in an over 70% increase in the African American admit rate. For out-of-state applicants, the increase is more than tenfold. Both universities provide larger racial preferences to URMs from higher socioeconomic backgrounds.

This paper explores the relationship between teacher testing and teacher effectiveness using a unique dataset that links teachers to their individual students. My findings show a positive relationship between some teacher licensure tests and student achievement. But they also suggest that states face significant tradeoffs when they require particular performance levels as a precondition to becoming a teacher: some teachers whom we might wish were not in the teacher workforce based on their contribution toward student achievement are eligible to teach based on their performance on these tests, while other individuals who would be effective teachers are ineligible. (Contains 4 tables, 1 figure and 25 footnotes.)

At open-access two-year public colleges, the goal of the traditional assessment and placement process is to match incoming students to the developmental or college-level courses for which they have adequate preparation; the process presumably increases underprepared students' chances of short- and long-term success in college while maintaining the academic quality and rigor of college-level courses. However, the traditional process may be limited in its ability to achieve these aims due to poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards of college readiness. To understand current approaches that seek to improve the process, we conducted a scan of assessment and placement policies and practices at open-access two-year colleges in Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oregon, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin. We describe the variety of approaches that systems and colleges employed to ameliorate poor course placement accuracy and inconsistent standards associated with the traditional process. Taking a broad view of the extent of these approaches, we find that most colleges we studied adopted a "measured" approach that addressed a single limitation without attending to other limitations that contribute to the same overall problem of poor course placement accuracy or inconsistent standards. Much less common were "comprehensive" approaches that attended to multiple limitations of the process; these approaches were likely to result from changes to developmental education as a whole. Drawing from the study's findings, we also discuss how colleges can overcome barriers to reform in order to implement approaches that hold promise for improved course placement accuracy, more consistent standards of college readiness, and, potentially, greater long-term academic success of community college students. Data Collection Process is appended. (Contains 3 tables and 3 footnotes.)

Previous research on attrition has focused on the economic consequences of low graduation rates in terms of costs to students and families (from tuition and fees that do not culminate in a credential), lost time, and income and tax losses from low educational attainment in the workforce. However, no systematic attention has been given to another critical aspect of the cost of attrition, which is the cost to institutions (and to their financial supporters) from the "lost" credits that do not lead to degrees or certificates. Attrition clearly adds to the expense of producing college degrees, thus reducing it is crucial to enhancing productivity and increasing educational attainment. How big is this lost investment, and what do these "unfinished degrees" from student attrition look like? Just as completed degrees come in different shapes and sizes, unfinished degrees vary widely from student to student, although there has not been a common language to talk about them nor a method to analyze their costs. The development of a simple definition of attrition, as well as a methodology that can be used with existing data to assign costs to it, is the focus of this effort. Guided by advice from a group of postsecondary education policy and data experts, this work sets forth the following: (1) A clear definition of attrition that can be used by institutions and policymakers to develop benchmarks and measure performance; (2) A methodology for assigning institutional production costs to attrition, both for national data sets and for states that wish to pursue a similar analysis; (3) Identification of benchmarks that can serve as the basis for setting goals and measuring performance in reducing attrition; (4) Suggestions of ways to use data on attrition and its costs to inform state-and system-level policy choices and budgets, including performance funding; and (5) Dissemination of the project's findings to leaders and decision makers around the country. "Beginning Postsecondary/Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System Analysis: Definitions and Methodology" is appended. (Contains 7 tables, 2 figures, and 4 footnotes. A static illustration (a spreadsheet) accompanies this report.)

We use North Carolina data to explore the extent to which teachers in the lower grades (K-2) of elementary school are lower quality than in the upper grades (3-5) and to examine the hypothesis that accountability contributes to a shortfall in teacher quality in the lower grades. Our concern with early elementary grades arises from recent studies that have highlighted that children's experiences in the early school years have long lasting effects on their outcomes, including college going and earnings. Using licensure test scores as the primary measure of teacher quality, we find that concern about teacher quality in the lower elementary grades is warranted. Teachers in those grades are of lower quality than teachers in the upper grades. Moreover, we find that accountability, especially the form required by the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, increases the relative shortfalls of teacher quality in the lower grades and increases the tendency of schools to move teachers of higher quality from lower to upper grades and teachers of lower quality from upper to lower grades. These findings support the conclusion that accountability pressure induces schools to pursue actions that work to the disadvantage of the children in the lower grades. Appended are: (1) Quintile Descriptive Statistics; (2) Value-Added Calculations; and (3) Data Description. (Contains 2 figures, 9 tables and 5 footnotes.)

Community colleges are complex organizations and assessing their performance, though important, is difficult. Compared to four-year colleges and universities, community colleges serve a more diverse population and provide a wider variety of educational programs that include continuing education and technical training for adults, and diplomas, associates degrees, and transfer credits for recent high school graduates. Focusing solely on the latter programs of North Carolina's community colleges, we measure the success of each college along two dimensions: attainment of an applied diploma, or degree; or completion of the coursework required to transfer to a four-year college or university. We address three questions. First, how much variation is there across the institutions in these measures of student success? Second, how do these measures of success differ across institutions after we adjust for the characteristics of the enrolled students? Third, how do our measures compare to the measures of success used by the North Carolina Community College System? We find that most of the system's colleges cannot be statistically distinguished from one another along either dimension. Appended are: (1) Variable Definitions for Student-Level Table; and (2) Variable Definitions for Institutional-Level Tables. (Contains 3 figures, 4 tables and 12 footnotes.)

A growing number of states are using annual school-level test scores as part of their school accountability systems. This paper highlights an under-appreciated weakness of that approach, the imprecision of school-level test score means, and proposes a method for discerning signal from noise in annual school report cards. Using methods developed in M. McClellan and D. Staiger (1999) for the analysis of hospital performance measures, the researchers decomposed the variation across schools and over time in test score measures into three components. For an elementary school of average size in North Carolina, it is estimated that 28% of the variance in fifth-grade reading scores results from sampling variation and about 10% results from other nonpersistent sources. A more troubling finding is the estimate that less than half of the variance in the mean gain in reading performance between fourth and fifth grade is due to persistent differences between schools. These estimates of the variance components are used in an empirical Bayes framework to generate "filtered" predictions of school performance, which have much greater predictive value than the mean for a single year. The paper also identifies evidence of within-school heterogeneity in classroom level gains, a finding that suggests the importance of teacher effects. (Contains 11 tables, 5 figures, and 10 references.) (SLD)

Over the past three decades policymakers have been seeking new ways to secure improved performance from higher education institutions. One popular approach has been performance funding, which involves use of a formula to tie funding to institutional performance on specified indicators. This report reviews findings from studies on performance funding programs in a multitude of states. The studies suggest that tying funding to outputs has immediate impacts on colleges in the form of changes in funding, greater awareness by institutions of state priorities and of their own institutional performance, and increased status competition among institutions. Because of these immediate impacts, performance funding produces intermediate institutional changes in the form of greater use of data in institutional planning and policymaking and in changes in academic and student service policies and practices that promise to improve student outcomes. However, claims that performance funding does indeed increase ultimate outcomes--in the form of improved rates of retention, completion of developmental education, and graduation--are not validated by solid data. In the face of this finding, this report identifies obstacles to the effective functioning of performance funding, as well as unintended impacts. The report closes by providing recommendations for overcoming the many obstacles to the effective functioning of performance funding and addressing the unintended impacts documented by the studies reviewed. (Contains 40 footnotes.)

Does differential access to computer technology at home compound the educational disparities between rich and poor? Would a program of government provision of computers to early secondary school students reduce these disparities? The authors use administrative data on North Carolina public school students to corroborate earlier surveys that document broad racial and socioeconomic gaps in home computer access and use. Using within-student variation in home computer access, and across-ZIP code variation in the timing of the introduction of high-speed internet service, the authors demonstrate that the introduction of home computer technology is associated with modest but statistically significant and persistent negative impacts on student math and reading test scores. Further evidence suggests that providing universal access to home computers and high-speed internet access would broaden, rather than narrow, math and reading achievement gaps. Coefficients on Time-Invariant Student Covariates, Across-Student Specifications is appended. (Contains 8 tables, 3 figures, and 34 footnotes.)

Research has consistently shown that teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among schools to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families. Using information on teaching spells in North Carolina, the authors examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. They conclude that salary differentials are a far less effective tool for retaining teachers with strong pre-service qualifications than for retaining other teachers in schools with high proportions of minority students. Consequently, large salary differences would be needed to level the playing field when schools are segregated. This conclusion reflects the finding that teachers with stronger qualifications are both more responsive to the racial and socioeconomic mix of a school's students and less responsive to salary than are their less well qualified counterparts when making decisions about remaining in their current school, moving to another school or district, or leaving the teaching profession. Data Definitions is appended. (Contains 10 tables, 2 figures and 30 footnotes.)

Reforming teacher tenure is an idea that appears to be gaining traction with the underlying assumption being that one can infer to a reasonable degree how well a teacher will perform over her career based on estimates of her early-career effectiveness. Here we explore the potential for using value-added models to estimate performance and inform tenure decisions. We find little evidence that the variation of teacher effects change over teacher careers, but strong evidence that prior year estimates of job performance predict student achievement, even when there is a multi-year lag between the two. (Contains 46 footnotes, 5 tables and 7 figures.)

In fall 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project to test new approaches to measuring effective teaching. The goal of the MET project is to improve the quality of information about teaching effectiveness available to education professionals within states and districts--information that will help them build fair and reliable systems for measuring teacher effectiveness that can be used for a variety of purposes, including feedback, development, and continuous improvement. The project includes nearly 3000 teachers who volunteered to help researchers identify a better approach to teacher development and evaluation, located in six predominantly urban school districts across the country: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools (including Tampa, Florida), Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. As part of the project, multiple data sources are being collected and analyzed over two school years, including student achievement gains on state assessments and supplemental assessments designed to assess higher-order conceptual understanding; classroom observations and teacher reflections on their practice; assessments of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge; student perceptions of the classroom instructional environment; and teachers' perceptions of working conditions and instructional support at their schools. The current findings include: (1) In every grade and subject, a teacher's past track record of value-added is among the strongest predictors of their students' achievement gains in other classes and academic years. A teacher's value-added fluctuates from year-to-year and from class-to-class, as succeeding cohorts of students move through their classrooms. However, that volatility is not so large as to undercut the usefulness of value-added as an indicator (imperfect, but still informative) of future performance; (2) Teachers with high value-added on state tests tend to promote deeper conceptual understanding as well; (3) Teachers have larger effects on math achievement than on achievement in reading or English Language Arts, at least as measured on state assessments; and (4) Student perceptions of a given teacher's strengths and weaknesses are consistent across the different groups of students they teach. Moreover, students seem to know effective teaching when they experience it: student perceptions in one class are related to the achievement gains in other classes taught by the same teacher. Most important are students' perception of a teacher's ability to control a classroom and to challenge students with rigorous work. Appended are: (1) Sample 8th Grade BAM Item; and (2) Example from Stanford 9 Open-Ended Reading Assessment. (Contains 1 figure, 11 tables and 14 footnotes.) [For "Learning about Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Policy Brief. MET Project," see ED528388.]

This study presents a generalization to the standard career concerns model and applies it to the public teacher labor market. The model predicts optimal teacher effort levels decline with both tenure at a school and experience, all things being equal. Using administrative data from North Carolina spanning 14 school years through 2008, the author finds significant changes in teacher sick leave consistent with the generalized career concerns model. By exploiting exogenous variation in career concerns in the form of principal turnover, the author shows the observed behaviors cannot be due to the endogeneity of teacher mobility decisions alone. Also examined are the effects of career concerns incentives breaking down. The author finds evidence suggestive of teacher shirking, and presents evidence on an unobservable measure of effort taken from the Schools and Staffing Survey that corroborates findings from observable teacher absence behavior. In sum, these findings show teachers exert considerable discretion over their own effort levels in response to these incentives, with important policy implications. Predictors of Teacher Absence Independent of Career Concerns is appended. (Contains 12 tables, 2 figures, and 29 footnotes.)