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The growth of homeschooling from a somewhat fringe movement during the 1970s and 1980s to a more widespread and socially accepted approach in recent decades has provided a strong foundation of flexible learning models. When Florida's school choice expansion, House Bill 1, was introduced in January 2023, one of its goals was to allow more homeschoolers to participate in the education savings account (ESA) program. But many homeschoolers and homeschool advocacy groups balked at the proposal. Having worked hard to achieve independence, they were loath to be linked to government funding. Even if the program were optional, they feared that associated regulations would eventually extend to traditional homeschoolers. In the end, the bill passed with new language that satisfied traditional homeschoolers by creating a new option for parents to educate their children at home. As states continue to enact and expand education savings accounts, Colleen Hroncich argues that it is crucial that policymakers craft bills in a way that maximizes freedom and minimizes roadblocks.

Anecdotal evidence points to the importance of school principals, but the limited existing research has neither provided consistent results nor indicated any set of essential characteristics of effective principals. This paper exploits extensive student-level panel data across six states to investigate both variations in principal performance and the relationship between effectiveness and key certification factors. While principal effectiveness varies widely across states, there is little indication that regulation of the background and training of principals yields consistently effective performance. Having prior teaching or management experience is not related to our estimates of principal value-added.

Existing research has found that home visiting programs for families with young children can improve children's development and strengthen caregivers' and families' well-being. However, the pandemic created numerous challenges for home visiting programs, forcing them to deliver services online or in a hybrid format and to adapt the content of their program models to respond to pandemic-related challenges. Questions remain about the impacts of these programs when delivered at scale during this uniquely challenging time. The current study reports 12-month impacts from a randomized controlled trial of Child First--an evidence-based home visiting program that provides a psychotherapeutic, parent-child intervention embedded in a coordinated system of care--implemented across two states. After randomly assigning a racially and ethnically diverse sample of families (N = 226) from predominantly low-income backgrounds to receive the Child First services or typical community services, the research team surveyed caregivers (N = 183) about a year after program enrollment. Results from regression models with site fixed effects revealed that Child First reduced caregivers' job losses, residential mobility, and self-reported substance abuse, and increased receipt of virtual services during the pandemic. Child First also reduced parenting dysfunction (the name of the subscale within the Parenting Stress Index) among caregivers who reported clinical depression at enrollment. There were null impacts on caregivers' psychological well-being, families' involvement with the child welfare system, children's behaviors, and other indicators of economic well-being. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.

The prevalence of school-based healthcare has increased markedly over the past decade. We study a modern mode of school-based healthcare, telemedicine, that offers the potential to reach places and populations with historically low access to such care. School-based telemedicine clinics (SBTCs) provide students with access to healthcare during the regular school day through private videoconferencing with a healthcare provider. We exploit variation over time in SBTC openings across schools in three rural districts in North Carolina. We find that school-level SBTC access reduces the likelihood that a student is chronically absent by 2.5 percentage points (29 percent) and reduces the number of days absent by about 0.8 days (10 percent). Relatedly, access to an SBTC increases the likelihood of math and reading test-taking by between 1.8-2.0 percentage points (about 2 percent). Heterogeneity analyses suggest that these effects are driven by male students. Finally, we see suggestive evidence that SBTC access reduces violent or weapons-related disciplinary infractions among students but has little influence on other forms of misbehavior.

This briefing paper explores Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) policies and practices that state early intervention (Part C) programs may consider implementing to meet the social-emotional and mental health needs of infants and toddlers in the context of relationships with their parents and other caregivers.

Though schools do not track in Brazil, I find that black/white classroom segregation in Brazil is greater than recent estimates from North Carolina high schools (Clotfelter et al., 2020). How does race-based classroom segregation occur without tracking, and in a supposed "racial paradise," no less? Using national, student-level data spanning from 2011 to 2017, I describe racial classroom segregation among Brazilian 5th and 9th graders and assess potential mechanisms identified in the literature. The findings are consistent with a segregation by chance regime in which (1) schools typically assign students to classrooms arbitrarily, producing initial assignments that are sometimes segregated by chance, and (2) schools choose to move forward with the racially segregated "draws" rather than make race-conscious adjustments.

The outlook for high school graduates who have no postsecondary or industry-recognized credentials can appear bleak. Today, it is critical that young people obtain at least some training beyond high school to succeed in the job market. States bear a cost, too, when this is not achieved: They have a less skilled workforce to attract business investment and must allocate limited federal and state resources to more social services for their unemployed and underemployed youth. That is why governors are considering youth apprenticeship to connect more young people to career paths at an earlier age, while at the same time filling businesses' unmet workforce needs. Youth apprenticeship offers paid, hands-on work experience and related classroom instruction that result in postsecondary or industry-recognized credentials. Youth apprenticeship programs often remain underused, especially in high-growth, white-collar industries, but governors are exploring ways to guide development and expansion of these programs. This white paper explores three strategies that governors can use to expand youth apprenticeship: (1) Act as a public champion by setting a statewide vision and convening stakeholders to collaboratively implement that vision; (2) Allocate and use dedicated funding to start and expand programs that support youth apprentices and guide them through their career pathways; and (3) Implement policies that provide long-term support for high-quality youth apprenticeship programs. The governors of Colorado, Kentucky, Maryland and North Carolina have used these strategies to successfully develop and expand youth apprenticeship in their states. These states are highlighted in the case studies presented in this paper, which offer insights to inform other governors' efforts to expand youth apprenticeship and further connect high school education to workforce preparation and high-quality employment opportunities.

Although many programs remotely disseminate information to students about the college application process, there is little evidence as to how students experience these programs. This paper examines a large-scale remote counseling program in which college counselors initiated interactions with 15,000 high school seniors via text message to support them through the college application process. Given the passive nature of text messaging, not all of the counselors' prompts elicited similar responses from students. I use text-as-data methods (combining qualitative coding and supervised machine learning) to measure which interactions lead to productive engagement between counselors and students, and which do not. I show that interactions about financial aid offers and financial aid applications are much more likely to generate productive engagement than interactions about college lists. This finding may help to explain why recent remote counseling interventions that have sought to influence students' college lists have been ineffective.

Testing students and using test information to hold schools and, in some cases, teachers accountable for student achievement has arguably been the primary national strategy for school improvement over the past decade and a half. Tests are also intended to be used as a diagnostic tool to identify individual student needs, so that students can be set on a trajectory for long-term academic success. We use panel data from three states -- North Carolina, Massachusetts and Washington State -- to investigate how accurate early measures of achievement are in predicting later high school outcomes. We contribute to the literature in three distinct ways. First, the long panels we employ allow us to quantify the accuracy of models predicting how early (3rd and 4th grade) measures of student background and achievement predict several later schooling outcomes: 8th grade test achievement, high school course-taking, and high school graduation. Second, we test the extent to which predictions based on distinct segments of student data (e.g. grades 3 to 8, then 8 to 12) sacrifice forecast accuracy; this is of particular policy relevance for states or localities that do not yet have long administrative data panels. Finally, we test the degree to which the use of parameter estimates from models predicting schooling outcomes derived from one state diminish the accuracy of predicting outcomes in other states.

Using detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment. We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-school components. We find that the within-school component accounted for a sizable share of total segregation in middle schools and high schools. Recognizing its importance could temper the praise for school assignment policies that reduce racial disparities between schools but allow large disparities within them. More generally, we observe between the two components a complementary relationship, with one component tending to be large when the other one is small. Comparing the degree of segregation for the state's two largest racial/ethnic minority groups, we find that White/Hispanic segregation was more severe than White/Black segregation, particularly within schools. Analyzed as separate administrative units, schools with large shares of Black students tended to have more White/Black segregation across classrooms than schools with smaller shares. Finally, we examine enrollment patterns by course and show that school segregation brings with it differences by race and ethnicity in the courses that students take, with White students more likely to be enrolled in advanced classes.

This white paper provides a snapshot of available policies and guidance related to online learning and students with disabilities from a small group of states that require online experience as part of high school graduation or report a higher number of online course enrollments. The Appendix allows for a quick scan of the following 12 elements that would be of interest to stakeholders and policymakers: terms, definitions, online learning options, enrollment estimates, approved providers of online learning, eligibility for participation/enrollment, high school graduation requirement, data collection or reporting requirements, eligibility to participate, online learning as high school graduation requirement, provision of special education and related services/implementation of IEP or 504 plan, and data collection or reporting requirements specific to students with disabilities. The following is appended: Selected State Policy on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities.

This paper examines what parents value as they make choices among available charter schools, with primary attention to the racial mix of a school's students. We estimate conditional logit models of the charter school choices made by all parents in North Carolina who switched their child from a traditional public school to a charter school in 2014/15. Our findings that parents care about the school's racial mix of students and that such preferences differ by the race and income of the choosers highlight the pressures that lead charter schools to be racially imbalanced. Our models also include other factors that parents may value such as the distance to the charter, the school's academic performance, the services provided by the charter, such as subsidized lunch and transportation, and the school's mission and approach.

Performance evaluation may change employee effort and decisions in unintended ways, for example, in multitask jobs where the evaluation measure captures only a subset of (differentially weights) the job tasks. We show evidence of this multitask distortion in schools, with teachers allocating effort across students (tasks). Teachers are evaluated based on student test scores; students who fail the test are retested 2-3 weeks later; and only the higher of the two scores is used in the teachers' evaluations. This retesting feature creates a sharp difference in the returns to teacher effort directed at failing versus passing students, even though both barely failing and barely passing students have arguably equal educational claim on (returns to) teacher effort. Using RD methods, we show that students who barely fail the end of school-year "t" math test, and are then retested, score higher one year later ("t"+1) compared to those who barely pass. This difference in scores occurs during the four years of the retest policy, but not in the years before or after. We find no evidence that the results arise from retesting "per se," or from changes in students' own behavior alone. The results suggest teachers give more effort to some students (tasks) simply because of the evaluation system incentives.

Sixty-seven school finance reforms (SFRs) in 26 states have taken place since 1990; however, there is little empirical evidence on the heterogeneity of SFR effects. We provide a comprehensive description of how individual reforms affected resource allocation to low- and high-income districts within states, including both financial and non-financial outcomes. After summarizing the heterogeneity of individual SFR impacts, we then examine its correlates, identifying both policy and legislative/political factors. Taken together, this research aims to provide a rich description of variation in states' responses to SFRs, as well as explanation of this heterogeneity as it relates to contextual factors.

We use longitudinal data from North Carolina and Washington to study the extent to which four processes--teacher attrition from each state workforce, teacher mobility within districts, teacher mobility across districts, and teacher hiring--contribute to "teacher quality gaps" (TQGs) between advantaged and disadvantaged schools. We first replicate prior findings documenting inequities in each of these processes using different measures of student disadvantage (race and poverty) and teacher quality (experience, licensure test scores, and value added) and then develop and implement a simulation to assess the extent to which each process contributes to observed TQGs in each state. We find that all four processes contribute to TQGs but also document considerable heterogeneity in the extent to which each process contributes to the different TQG measures. For example, patterns in teacher attrition and mobility contribute more to TQGs measured by teacher experience, while patterns in teacher hiring explain the majority of TQGs measured by teacher licensure test scores and value added.

High teacher turnover imposes numerous costs on the schools and districts from which teachers depart. This study asks how schools respond to spells of high teacher turnover, and assesses organizational and human capital losses in terms of the changing composition of the teacher pool. Our analysis uses more than two decades of linked administrative data on math and ELA [English language arts] teachers at middle schools in North Carolina to determine the impacts of turnover across different policy environments and macroeconomic climates. We find that, even after accounting for school contexts and trends, turnover has marked, and lasting, negative consequences for teacher quality. Our results highlight the need for heightened policy attention to issues of teacher retention and working conditions.

We document patterns and trends in school segregation in North Carolina between 1998 and 2016, a period of rapid immigration in this racially diverse state. As in other states of the South, the period of court orders enforcing racial balance has given way not only to tacit acceptance of residentially based school segregation but also to policies that offer parents alternatives to traditional public schools. Most prominent among these alternatives in North Carolina are charter schools, which have expanded rapidly with the state's blessing. Following the prevailing practice of social scientists, we measure segregation by the degree of imbalance across schools, using counties and metropolitan areas as basic geographical units. We differentiate students according to their racial/ethnic group and also to their family income. We take into account all students including those in private schools, charter schools and traditional public schools. For the state as a whole, we find that white/nonwhite segregation increased over the period. Most of the increase was in urban areas. We also find that low-income students became more segregated from other students. Segregation measured either way increased sharply in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which significantly changed its student assignment policy following a federal court order. Compared to metropolitan areas in other parts of the U.S., urban areas in the state have modest levels of segregation, because most districts are county-wide and thus large and diverse. We decompose metropolitan segregation, separating the portions due to private schools, charter schools, racial disparities between school districts, and racial disparities within districts. Charter schools and within-district disparities accounted for the increase in average segregation in metropolitan areas over the period. More generally, areas where school segregation increased the most tend to be large, growing, and marked by big increases in the share of students who are Hispanic.

This paper documents the perceptions and experiences of faculty members in the midst of statewide reform efforts in Virginia and North Carolina to integrate developmental reading and writing courses. Using interview and focus group data from 161 faculty and administrators in both states (combined) as well as three detailed case studies of faculty teaching newly integrated courses, we describe how departments and faculty approached the task of course integration. Findings suggest that while instructors had a generally positive impression of integrating the two disciplines, implementing these new courses was not without challenges. A common approach to course design, which we term "additive," involved combining assignments and activities from the old standalone courses. We identify a range of factors associated with using the additive approach, including conceptions of literacy learning focused on the mastery of discrete skills, professional development aimed at exchanging activities and materials between reading and writing instructors, and lack of a clear framework for an integrated course design. Instructors using the additive approach reported that they could not cover all of the content/activities from the previous courses under the accelerated course structure, and worried they that they were not able to provide students the literacy skills they needed to be successful in college. Yet some faculty used or began to adopt what we call an "integrative" approach to course design in which few standalone components of the previously offered courses remained. Integrative course design tended to emphasize metacognition, extensive text-based writing, and embedded skills and strategy instruction, often offered in a "just-in-time" fashion. Faculty perceived that these more "integrative" course elements were associated with improved literacy learning. The findings presented have implications for creating support resources and professional development for departments and faculty who are new to teaching integrated reading and writing courses. The paper includes several curricular examples which can be adapted and used by faculty teaching integrated developmental courses.

A significant criticism of the charter school movement is that funding for charter schools diverts money away from traditional public schools. As shown in prior work by Bifulco and Reback (2014) for two urban districts in New York, the magnitude of such adverse fiscal externalities depends in part on the nature of state and local funding policies. In this paper, we build on their approach to examine the fiscal effects of charter schools on both urban and non-urban school districts in North Carolina. We base our analysis on detailed balance sheet information for a sample of school districts that experienced significant charter entry since the statewide cap on charters was raised in 2011. This detailed budgetary information permits us to estimate a range of fiscal impacts using a variety of different assumptions. We find a large and negative fiscal impact from $500-$700 per pupil in our one urban school district and somewhat smaller, but still significant, fiscal externalities on the non-urban districts in our sample.

Public Impact's "Opportunity Culture" (OC) initiative provides a suite of models aimed at extending the reach of highly effective teachers and has partnered with school districts to implement these interventions in schools. Using administrative data from three partner school districts that collectively include 44 OC schools, we estimate the relationship between OC staffing models and student achievement in math and reading. We find that the bulk of exposed students received treatment under OC's multiclassroom leadership model, in which a master teacher with demonstrated effectiveness intensively leads and coaches a team of teachers, and that these students scored higher in math in all specifications. In reading, while most specifications find positive and significant learning gains for students taught by team teachers, the specification that performs best in our placebo tests--one that includes school-by-year fixed effects to account for overall improvement in treatment schools--does not find any impact. Results for other specifications are more mixed and are imprecisely estimated.

Stackable credentials--sequential postsecondary awards that allow individuals to progress on a career path--have been suggested as a way to enhance the labor market prospects of middle-skill workers. Yet, thus far, little evidence has been provided on the economic value of these credentials. Here, we report a series of estimates on the association between stackable credentials and earnings. We use national, survey, and college-system-level datasets. A significant body of evidence indicates that the labor market returns to certificates--along with those to college degrees--are positive. But our estimates of stackable credentials show only weakly positive and inconsistent gains from these award combinations. Generally, these estimates are indistinguishable from the returns to only one postsecondary credential. There is no clear evidence of how earnings vary across types of stack--progressive, supplemental, or independent--or student characteristics. However, estimated earnings gains from stackable credentials may be imprecise. Few college students stack awards, the motives for stacking are unknown, and notably, the number of stacked awards depends on whether general vocational awards are included. Future research should examine why students stack awards and how they can choose combinations of awards that maximize their earnings gains from stacking.

In an effort to enhance the quality of early childhood education (ECE) at scale, nearly all U.S. states have recently adopted Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS). These accountability systems give providers and parents information on program quality and create both reputational and financial incentives for program improvement. However, we know little about whether these accountability reforms operate as theorized. This study provides the first empirical evidence on this question using data from North Carolina, a state with a mature QRIS. Using a regression discontinuity design, we examine how quasi-random assignment to a lower quality rating influenced subsequent outcomes of ECE programs. We find that programs responded to a lower quality rating with comparative performance gains, including improvement on a multi-faceted measure of classroom quality. Programs quasi-randomly assigned to a lower star rating also experienced enrollment declines, which is consistent with the hypothesis that parents responded to information about program quality by selectively enrolling away from programs with lower ratings. These effects were concentrated among programs that faced higher levels of competition from nearby providers.

Asthma is the leading chronic health condition among children in the United States and a major cause of childhood disability. It also disproportionately affects low-income and racial and ethnic minorities. Although a wide range of interventions have been implemented to improve asthma-related outcomes among socioeconomically disadvantaged and minority children, disparities persist. This paper, which was commissioned by the JPB Foundation and conducted by MDRC in partnership with the National Academy for State Health Policy, standardizes and compares effects from rigorous evaluations across three main types of interventions: those that focus on improving education and self-management, those that focus on addressing remediation of the conditions that trigger asthma in the home environment, and those that focus on improving health care provider practice. While prior reviews have summarized findings for each intervention type, this review systematically compares findings across a range of outcomes and a spectrum of different approaches to addressing childhood asthma, drawing from about 30 independent studies and earlier published reviews. In addition, the paper includes case studies of various local programs and state-level policy initiatives to illuminate current efforts to address childhood asthma in low-income communities and barriers faced in sustaining asthma programs. Key findings include: (1) Providing education on how to manage asthma is fundamental to improving outcomes, but it may not be enough to alleviate disparities in asthma management; (2) Some local programs are clearly bridging informational gaps among low-income families and are helping them maintain a safe home environment for their children with asthma; (3) The health care benefits of interventions that go beyond education are unclear; (4) Barriers to medication management are complex and medication adherence is difficult to influence; and (5) The role of the state, and the Medicaid program in particular, is relevant for the financing and sustainability of asthma programs for low-income children. Although the long-run sustainability of some of the programs highlighted in this report is uncertain, what is clear is that combating the disparities in the prevalence of asthma among different populations will require more than an agreement on standard asthma management practices within the medical community. The following are appended: (1) Methodology for Literature Review; (2) Summaries of Asthma Studies; (3) Detailed Case Studies of Local Asthma Programs; and (4) Detailed State-Based Case Studies. [This working paper was written with Felicia Heider, Carrie Hanlon, and Taylor Kniffin.]

Recently, studies have adopted fixed effects modeling to identify the returns to college. This method has the advantage over ordinary least squares estimates in that unobservable, individual-level characteristics that may bias the estimated returns are differenced out. But the method requires extensive longitudinal data and involves complex specifications, raising the possibility that results are sensitive either to sample restrictions or to alternative specifications. Also, the extra requirements might not be justified if results from fixed effects models are broadly similar to those from conventional ordinary least squares models. In this paper we review results from fixed effects models of the earnings gains from completing an associate degree relative to non-completion for community college students. We examine both sampling restrictions and specification issues. We find results to be sensitive to assumptions about missing earnings data and to how time trend specifications are modeled. However, we find no substantively meaningful differences between estimates using fixed effects models and ordinary least squares methods. A main benefit of fixed effects models--controlling for unobservable student characteristics--should be weighed against the difficulty in interpreting coefficients and more intensive data requirements. On the other hand, a distinct advantage of fixed effects models is that they allow for analysis of earning profiles over the period from before to after college. Given the large fluctuations in earnings over this period, this advantage may be significant in yielding evidence on the full returns to college. The following two tables are appended: (1) Robustness Checks on Returns to Associate Degrees; and (2) Percentage Decline in Earnings From Two Quarters Prior to College Entry to Quarter of College Entry (Kentucky, Ohio).

Higher levels of civic and community engagement in higher education are positively associated with students' academic performance and they also build upon citizenship skills such as informed voting. Yet, while these are worthy and important outcomes of higher education, students from disadvantaged backgrounds can have more difficulty navigating civic engagement. Focusing on students at thirteen major public universities in the United States, and utilizing survey data generated by the Student Experience in the Research University (SERU) Consortium, this study suggest social perspective-taking has a significant positive effect on all students' probability of voting and participating in community service. Students who were asked to identify challenge/solutions to social problems and reflect/act on community issues in the classroom were also more likely to participate in community service. Additionally, Hispanic students and students from lower-income households are significantly less likely to vote and perform community service--findings corroborated by previous research. Females are more likely to vote and participate in community service--findings also corroborated by prior research. Hispanic students and students from low-income backgrounds were more likely to participate in voting and community service if they had increased rates of social perspective-taking. These results suggest that increased opportunities to connect with classmates in the classroom and develop perspective-taking skills (e.g. appreciating the world from someone else's perspective, acknowledging personal differences, interacting with someone with views that are different from your own, and discussing and navigating controversial issues) are potentially quite powerful ways to foster civic engagement among students who traditionally have the lowest civic engagement rates compared to their peers.

This paper reviews recent evidence on the labor market returns to credit accumulation, certificates, and associate degrees from community colleges. Evidence is collated from estimates of earnings gaps across college students using large-scale, statewide administrative datasets from eight states. Six of these states were partners of the Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment (CAPSEE), a research center funded by the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. CAPSEE researchers conducted extensive analyses of education and earnings in these states. Findings from these studies affirm a "CAPSEE consensus" with three main results and two key features. For associate degrees, this review affirms that completing an associate degree yields strongly positive, persistent, and consistent earnings gains: studies show that completing an associate degree yields on average approximately $4,640-$7,160 per annum in extra earnings compared to entering college but not completing an award. For certificates, the evidence shows positive but modest returns and that these returns may fade out within a few years post-college. For non-completers, there is evidence that earning more credits is associated with higher earnings. Generally, the results establish two main features. First, increments of college lead to higher earnings, but with returns that are heterogeneous by field of study. Second, the evidence is strongly suggestive that returns to college are robust to macroeconomic trends. Additional Figures and Tables are appended. [For the related Research Brief, "Does It Pay to Complete Community College--and How Much? Research Brief," see ED574807.]

Modern career academies aim to prepare students for college and the labor market. This paper examines the profile of students entering such academies in one school district and estimates causal effects of participation in one of the district's well-regarded academies on a range of high school and college outcomes. Using rich administrative data from the Wake County Public School System, we find that students who enter contemporary career academies are generally higher performing than their non-academy peers. Further, we document that Hispanic students and those with limited English proficiency are somewhat less likely to enroll than other students, even after we control for differences in prior academic achievement and high school choice sets. Exploiting the lottery-based admissions process of one technology-focused academy, we then estimate causal effects of participation in a career academy on high school attendance, achievement, and graduation, as well as college-going. We find that enrollment in this academy increases the likelihood of high school graduation and college enrollment each by about 8 percentage points, with the attainment gains concentrated among male students. We also find that academy participation reduces 9th grade absences but has little influence on academic performance, AP course-taking, or AP exam success during high school. Analysis of candidate mechanisms suggests that roughly one fifth of the overall high school graduation effect can be attributed to improved student engagement in high school. Tables are appended.

This paper examines the role of teaching assistants and other personnel on student outcomes in elementary schools during a period of recession-induced cutbacks in teachers and teaching assistants. Using panel data from North Carolina, we exploit the state's unique system of financing its local public schools to identify the causal effects of teaching assistants and other staff on student test scores in math and reading and other outcomes. We find remarkably strong and consistent evidence of positive contributions of teaching assistants, an understudied staffing category, with larger effects on outcomes for minority students than for white students. A supplemental table is appended.

In April 2000 the state of North Carolina announced an increase in the minimum number of math courses students would need to take to be considered for admission as undergraduates to any of the University of North Carolina's 15 four-year branch campuses. Previously, students had been required to take at least three math courses in high school to be eligible for admission. The new standard required at least four math courses and applied to all students graduating from high school in the 2005-06 school year or after. The state justified this increase in required math preparation by arguing that it would improve college completion rates. The purpose of this paper is to assess the effects of this increase in the mandated minimum number of math courses. This assessment entails two separate questions: (1) Did the policy affect actual course-taking among high school students; and (2) Did any such changes in high school course-taking, together with the threat of being denied admission, affect college enrollment patterns or students' choices or performance once enrolled. The study extends the existing literature in three ways. First, it sheds light on how a policy change at the university level affects the behavior of students in high school. Second, it extends the literature on the effects of math taking in high school to college enrollment and college success. Third it makes a methodological contribution by its close attention to the estimation of causal relationships that leverage the plausibly exogenous variation that arises as a result of the policy change.

The purpose of this work was to examine the effect of classroom teachers who earn certification as a National Board Certified Teacher (NBCT) by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards on mathematics and reading achievement and behavioral outcomes (attendance and discipline referrals) for students in Grades 4 and 5. Two studies were conducted separately to examine the effect of NBCTs in North Carolina and Kentucky, which are two states with relatively high concentrations of NBCTs. In each study, propensity score matching was used to match students of NBCTs to similar students of non-NBCTs. Within each grade and within each study, propensity score matching yielded similar student groups (those taught by NBCTs and those not taught by NBCTs) on observed characteristics such as prior-year outcomes and demographics. For each grade level, the academic and behavioral outcomes of students of NBCTs were compared with the outcomes of the matched students taught by non-NBCTs. In North Carolina, there were no statistically significant student achievement differences at either grade between students of NBCTs and students of non-NBCTs. However, Grade 5 students of NBCTs had higher attendance rates than students of non-NBCTs by 0.02 standard deviations. There were no statistically significant effects on the likelihood of a student receiving an in-school or out-of-school suspension in North Carolina. In Kentucky, Grade 5 students taught by NBCTs scored higher than students of non-NBCTs on state student achievement in mathematics and reading by 0.06 standard deviations. There were no statistically significant differences in the behavioral outcomes between the student groups at either grade level in Kentucky.

We rely on natural experiments in North Carolina and Washington State, which previously extended time to tenure by one year, to estimate models that assess the relationship between the extended probationary period and absence and attrition outcomes for teachers affected by the new tenure laws. Across both states we find evidence of decreases in teacher absences for probationary teachers who are subject to the new extended tenure laws, and in Washington, we find a significant reduction in absences in the specific year in which tenure was extended. We find mixed evidence for teacher attrition and mobility.

There is mounting evidence of substantial "teacher quality gaps" (TQGs) between advantaged and disadvantaged students, but practically no empirical evidence about their history. We use longitudinal data on public school students, teachers, and schools from two states--North Carolina and Washington--to provide a descriptive history of the evolution of TQGs in these states. We find that TQGs exist in every year in each state and for all measures we consider of student disadvantage and teacher quality. But there is variation in the magnitudes and sources of TQGs over time, between the two states, and depending on the measure of student disadvantage and teacher quality.

Most public school teachers in the United States are enrolled in defined benefit (DB) pension plans. Using administrative micro data from four states, combined with national pension funding data, we show these plans have accumulated substantial unfunded liabilities -- effectively debt -- owing to previous plan operations. On average across 49 state plans, an amount that exceeds 10 percent of current teachers' earnings is being set aside to pay for previously-accrued pension liabilities. To the extent that the costs of the unfunded liabilities drag on teacher compensation, they may exacerbate problems of teacher recruitment and retention. We briefly discuss three policy changes that could end or reduce the accumulation of unfunded liabilities in educator pension plans: (1) transition teachers to defined-contribution retirement plans; (2) transition teachers to cash-balance retirement plans; and (3) tighten the link between funding and benefit formulas within the current defined-benefit structure.

We use rich longitudinally matched administrative data on students and teachers in North Carolina to examine the patterns of differential effectiveness by teachers' years of experience. The paper contributes to the literature by focusing on middle school teachers and by extending the analysis to student outcomes beyond test scores. Once we control statistically for the quality of individual teachers by the use of teacher fixed effects, we find large returns to experience for middle school teachers in the form both of higher test scores and improvements in student behavior, with the clearest behavioral effects emerging for reductions in student absenteeism. Moreover these returns extend well beyond the first few years of teaching. The paper contributes to policy debates by documenting that teachers can and do continue to learn on the job.

We use rich longitudinally matched administrative data on students and teachers in North Carolina to examine the patterns of differential effectiveness by teachers' years of experience. The paper contributes to the literature by focusing on middle school teachers and by extending the analysis to student outcomes beyond test scores. Once we control statistically for the quality of individual teachers by the use of teacher fixed effects, we find large returns to experience for middle school teachers in the form both of higher test scores and improvements in student behavior, with the clearest behavioral effects emerging for reductions in student absenteeism. Moreover these returns extend well beyond the first few years of teaching. The paper contributes to policy debates by documenting that teachers can and do learn on the job.

This paper examines the effect of school turnaround in North Carolina elementary and middle schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that turnaround led to a drop in average school-level math and reading passing rates and an increased concentration of low-income students in treated schools. We use teacher survey data to examine how teacher activities changed. Treated schools brought in new principals and increased the time teachers devoted to professional development. The program also increased administrative burdens and distracted teachers, potentially reducing time available for instruction. Teacher turnover increased after the first full year of implementation. Overall, we find little success for North Carolina's efforts to turn around low performing schools under its federally funded Race to the Top grant.

A defining characteristic of charter schools is that they introduce a strong market element into public education. In this paper, we examine the evolution of the charter school sector in North Carolina between 1999 and 2012 through the lens of a market model. We examine trends in the mix of students enrolled in charter schools, the racial imbalance of charter schools, the quality of the match between parental preferences in charter schools relative to the quality of match in traditional public schools, and the distribution of test score performance across charter schools relative those in traditional public schools serving similar students over time. Taken together, our findings imply that the charter schools in North Carolina are increasingly serving the interests of relatively able white students in racially imbalanced schools.

Given diminished governmental support, competition from private counterparts, and public demands for access to services, public universities need to respond in an effective manner to take advantage of opportunities and meet the challenges of today's highly competitive environment. A critical factor in meeting these challenges is the manner in which these institutions are governed. Today's governance structures must enhance institutions' ability to generate resources from multiple sources--tuition and fees, gifts from donors, governmental support, and partnerships with the private sector. To achieve this, authority must be vested at a level where institutions can respond to challenges and opportunities in a timely and nimble fashion. The history of governance of public higher education is characterized by a wide range of models--a single governing board responsible for a single institution, a board overseeing a university with branch campuses, university systems with a single governing board for multiple universities. Changes in governance have occurred in response to difficult economic times, like the Great Depression, or the need to meet increased student demand including the surge in enrollment in the 1960s. The challenges facing today's public universities involve not only finances but also the need to use technology to respond to student demand for instructional services and to partner with both government and the private sector. This paper proposes a governance structure for public higher education systems that reinforces the strengths of traditional models while creating opportunities to streamline governance responsibilities in order to strengthen decision making. Contains a bibliography.

In 2012, five foundations launched the Credit When Its Due (CWID) initiative that was "designed to encourage partnerships of community colleges and universities to significantly expand programs that award associate degrees to transfer students when the student completes the requirements for the associate degree while pursuing a bachelor's degree" (Lumina Foundation, 2012, n.p.), also known as "reverse transfer." Initially, 12 states (Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, and Oregon) were funded to develop and implement these reverse transfer programs and policies, and the Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign was chosen as the research partner. In late 2013, three states (Georgia, Tennessee, and Texas) were added to bring the total number of states to 15. At least six additional states have legislation, pending legislation, or statewide initiatives related to reverse transfer. This thought paper describes changes that are occurring at the state, system, and institution levels with implementation of reverse transfer in the 12 original states. Using qualitative and quantitative data collected from the CWID Implementation Study, the authors describe efforts related to the optimization of reverse transfer in these 12 states. The authors define optimization as policy and program change at any level--state, system, or institution--that yields the largest number of students who are eligible for and able to benefit from reverse transfer. The initial results suggest that some states are piloting reverse transfer with a limited set of public community college and university partnerships, and others are striving for system-level reforms that eventually may impact all forms of transfer. Understanding what optimization means and how it works is possible because of this variation in implementation approaches among states, and this thought paper explores how states are implementing and optimizing reverse transfer.

The annual number of certificates (non-degree awards that typically require less time to complete than degrees) awarded by community colleges has increased dramatically since 2000, but relatively little research has been conducted on the economic benefits of certificates in the labor market. Based on detailed student-level information from matched college transcript and employment data in two states [Virginia and North Carolina], this paper estimates the relationship between earning a certificate and student earnings and employment status after exiting college. While prior research in this area has explored how returns to certificates vary across broad fields of study, there may still exist substantial variation across programs within broad fields of study. Our paper extends prior research by examining the returns to specific programs that are most popular in each state. Our results indicate that certificates have positive impacts on earnings in both states overall, and in cases where there is no impact on earnings, certificates may nonetheless lead to increased probability of employment. In addition, we find substantial variation in the returns across fields of study and, more importantly, across specific programs within a particular field. These results suggest that important evidence is lost when information about the benefits of certificate programs are simply averaged together. An appendix provides two supplemental data tables.

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

In this report, the authors present findings from their analysis of social studies state standards. The following questions guided their work: (1) To what extent do middle and high school (grades 8-12) history and civics state standards support teaching about political parties? For the states that do include language about political parties, what does an analysis of the standards tell us about what they expect students to learn? and (2) To what extent to do state middle and high school (grades 8-12) history and civics state standards support teaching about political ideology? For the states that do include language about political ideology, what does an analysis of the standards tell us about what they expect students to learn? The report focuses on four criteria: (1) The role that political parties play in the political system; (2) How controversial political issues map onto the political spectrum and party interests; (3) The ideological underpinnings of the two major political parties; and (4) How one's own beliefs fit within the ideological-partisan landscape. Findings indicate that, in general, state standards recognize that young people need to learn about electoral politics, and this includes learning about political parties and issues. At the same time, the standards give teachers little guidance about how deeply to wade into these waters. No state met the four criteria that the authors identified as necessary for informed engagement in electoral politics. North Carolina, Virginia and Vermont are noteworthy, because they include three of the four criteria: role of political parties, platforms, and ideological foundations. [This research was funded in part by the Gibb Democracy Education Fund.]

Relationships between community colleges and the public workforce system might have an important role in promoting students' success in the labor market and in college. In particular, the co-location of American Job Centers (AJC) on community college campuses is a particularly strong form of relationship that might benefit students. Yet little is known about the impact of co-located AJCs on students. This study examines student outcomes at six community colleges in North Carolina that had co-located AJCs on their campuses. Exploiting the variation in the timing of the co-location, the study uses a difference-in-differences approach to estimate the impact of AJC co-location on students' credential completion, employment, and earnings. After three years, AJC co-location had a negative relationship with completion and employment and no relationship with earnings for the overall sample. Where five-year outcomes were available for a subset of students, there was no relationship between AJC co-location and completion, employment, or earnings. For students who completed a credential, the presence of a co-located AJC had no relationship to employment or earnings outcomes. This analysis does not support the notion that AJC co-location improves student outcomes; however, additional analyses are needed where more data are available to fully assess the effect of co-location. Table A.1: Timing of One-Stop Opening and Closure on Community College Campuses is appended.

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.