In many school districts, the policies that regulate teaching personnel are governed by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). While there is significant policy attention that has affected the scope of these agreements, there is relatively little research on how CBAs vary over time, or whether they change in response to states' legislative…

The clinical teaching experience is one of the most important components of teacher preparation. Prior observational research has found that more effective mentors and schools with better professional climates are associated with better preparation for teacher candidates. We test these findings using an experimental assignment of teacher…

This policy brief summarizes the responses by early-career science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers in Washington State to the Washington STEM Teacher Survey. These early-career STEM teachers were asked about their perspectives of their teacher education program (TEP) and STEM subject preparation, with a focus on their student…

We investigate patterns of teacher mobility in districts with different collective bargaining agreement (CBA) transfer provisions. We use detailed teacher-level longitudinal data from Washington State to estimate the probability that teachers of varying experience and effectiveness levels transfer out of their schools to another school in the…

Barriers to the cross-state mobility of the teacher workforce can have undesirable effects on the teacher workforce and student outcomes. While a large literature addresses issues related to within-state mobility, very little is known about patterns of cross-state mobility. This paper addresses that research gap. We describe features of Oregon's…

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…

Some scholars and policymakers who are concerned about the inequitable distribution of quality teachers suggest offering financial incentives for working in hard-to-staff schools. Previous studies have estimated compensating differentials using hedonic modeling, an approach potentially undermined by district-wide salary schedules and the lack of…

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…

Reform advocates and policymakers concerned about the quality and distribution of teachers support proposals of alternative compensation for teachers in hard-to-hire subject areas, hard-to-staff schools, and with special knowledge and skills. The successful implementation of such proposals depends in large part on teacher attitudes. The current…

This article presents a principal-agent model in the context of public schools to help explain the use of merit pay for teachers. The model considers how both the nature of teaching and the political costs of union resistance affect school district merit pay decisions. Our results support the idea that merit pay is more likely in environments…

Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of high-quality teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, which recent research finds to be only weakly correlated with value-added measures of teachers' performance. We examine attrition and mobility of teachers using teacher value-added measures for…