The federal Race to the Top initiative signified a shift in American education policy whereby accountability efforts moved from the school to the teacher level. Using administrative data from Tennessee, we explore whether evaluation reforms differentially influenced mobility patterns for teachers of varying effectiveness. We find that the rollout…

This study reports on four urban middle- and high school principals' emotionally shaped sense making of Race to the Top policies and their ability to balance the competing demands of teachers' emotional needs with the charge to implement mandated, accountability-driven, instructional, and evaluation changes in their schools. Despite the pressure…

Existing evidence suggests that high stakes exams result in little increased learning among students. Yet, given the federal mandates for greater accountability, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation and Race to the Top policies, and the "pervasive testing culture," the use of high-stakes tests is presently an accepted…

In this report, the authors describe the value-added models used as part of teacher evaluation systems in the District of Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) and in eligible DC charter schools participating in Race to the Top. They estimated (1) teacher effectiveness in DCPS and eligible DC charter schools during the 2011-2012 school year; and (2)…

State and local educators encountered both opportunities and obstacles in their first year of implementing the School Improvement Grants (SIGs) funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). In 2009, the ARRA, better known as the economic stimulus package, provided $3 billion for SIGs to help reform persistently low-achieving…