Purpose: Recent attempts to measure schools' influence on students' social-emotional learning (SEL) show differences across schools, but whether these estimated differences measure the true effects of schools remain unclear. To better understand these measures, we examine the stability of estimated school-by-grade effects across 2 years using…

School Improvement Grants (SIGs) exemplify a capacity-building investment to spur sustainable changes in America's persistently lowest-performing schools and stimulate the economy. This study examines both short- and longer-term effects of the first two cohorts of SIG schools from four locations across the country. Dynamic…

As educational policy makers seek strategies to improve the teacher workforce, the early career period represents a unique opportunity to identify struggling teachers, examine the likelihood of future improvement, and make strategic pretenure investments in development or dismissals. It is also a useful time to identify particularly promising…

Evidence that teachers' short-term instructional effects persist over time and predict substantial long-run impacts on students' lives provides much of the impetus for a wide range of educational reforms focused on identifying and responding to differences in teachers' value-added to student learning. However, relatively little research has…

Test-based accountability as well as value-added asessments and much experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet, we know little regarding fundamental properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of measurement error and its implications for…

Over the past 2 years, educational policy makers have focused much of their attention on issues related to teacher effectiveness. The Obama Administration has made teacher evaluation and teacher quality a central feature of many of its educational policies, including Race to the Top (RTTT), Investing in Innovation (i3), and the Teacher Incentive…

Researchers and policymakers often assume that teacher turnover harms student achievement, though recent studies suggest this may not be the case. Using a unique identification strategy that employs school-by-grade level turnover and two classes of fixed-effects models, this study estimates the effects of teacher turnover on over 850,000 New York…

We are in the midst of what amounts to a national experiment in how best to attract, prepare, and retain teachers, particularly for high-poverty urban schools. Using data on students and teachers in grades 3-8, this study assesses the effects of pathways into teaching in New York City on the teacher workforce and on student achievement. We ask…