Improving the reading ability of young students could hardly be a more urgent priority for our elementary schools. Two thirds of American fourth and eighth graders are not able to read proficiently--and the outcomes are far worse for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. The National Assessment of Educational Progress in 2019 showed that only…

We apply "value-added" models to estimate the effects of teachers on an outcome they cannot plausibly affect: student height. When fitting the relatively simple models that are widely used in educational practice to New York City data, we find the standard deviation of teacher effects on height is nearly as large as that for math and…

"Investigations in Number, Data, and Space"[R], published by Pearson Scott Foresman, is an activity-based K-5 mathematics curriculum designed to help students understand number and operations, geometry, data, measurement, and early algebra. Each instructional unit focuses on a particular content area and lasts from two to five-and-a-half…

The growing availability of data linking students to classroom teachers has made it possible to estimate the contribution teachers make to student achievement. While there is a growing consensus that teacher quality is important and current evaluation systems are inadequate, many have expressed concerns over the use of value-added measures (VAMs)…