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I investigate longitudinal preferences for schools revealed by families’ applications to middle and high schools within a large urban school district’s universal enrollment system. I find that preferences for schools’ racial/ethnic composition are more stable than preferences for quality and proximity to home, even after concurrently controlling for all characteristics. White and Hispanic families’ preferences for composition are more durable than those of Black families, though stability overall attenuates when focusing on subgroups. Because preferences are not rigid over time, research and policy might continue exploring whether families can be guided toward options that improve academic outcomes and/or address segregation.

English learners’ (ELs) day-to-day experiences in school change when reclassified as fully English proficient. Prior research, however, is mixed on how reclassification influences outcomes. Many st...

Theory suggests that teachers’ implicit racial attitudes affect their students, but large-scale evidence on U.S. teachers’ implicit biases and their correlates is lacking. Using nationwide data from Project Implicit, we found that teachers’ implicit White/Black biases (as measured by the implicit association test) vary by teacher gender and race. Teachers’ adjusted bias levels are lower in counties with larger shares of Black students. In the aggregate, counties in which teachers hold higher levels of implicit and explicit racial bias have larger adjusted White/Black test score inequalities and White/Black suspension disparities.

During the last three decades, scholars have proposed several conceptual structures to represent teacher knowledge. A common denominator in this work is the assumption that disciplinary knowledge and the knowledge needed for teaching are distinct. However, empirical findings on the distinguishability of these two knowledge components, and their relationship with student outcomes, are mixed. In this replication and extension study, we explore these issues, drawing on evidence from a multi-year study of over 200 fourth- and fifth-grade US teachers. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses of these data suggested a single dimension for teacher knowledge. Value-added models predicting student test outcomes on both state tests and a test with cognitively challenging tasks revealed that teacher knowledge positively predicts student achievement gains. We consider the implications of these findings for teacher selection and education.

Both scholars and professional standards identify teachers’ knowledge of students as important to promoting effective instruction and student learning. Prior research investigates two such types of knowledge: knowledge of student thinking and teacher accuracy in predicting student performance on cognitive assessments. However, the field presents weak evidence regarding whether these constructs are amenable to accurate measurement and whether such knowledge relates to instruction and student outcomes. Without this evidence, it is difficult to assess the relevance of this form of teacher knowledge. In this article, evidence from 284 teachers suggests that accuracy can be adequately measured and relates to instruction and student outcomes. Knowledge of student misconceptions proved more difficult to measure, yet still predicted student outcomes in one model.

Evolutionary psychology has emerged as a controversial discipline, particularly with regard to its claims concerning the biological basis of sex differences in human mate preferences. Drawing on theories of motivated inference, we hypothesized that those who are most likely to be privileged by specific aspects of the theory would be most likely to support the theory. In particular, we predicted that physical attractiveness would be positively associated with endorsement of predictions of evolutionary psychology concerning mating strategies. Two studies confirmed this hypothesis. In Study 1, participants rated as higher in physical attractiveness were more likely to support specific principles of evolutionary psychology. In Study 2, a manipulation designed to boost self-perceived physical attractiveness increased endorsement of those same principles. Observer-rated physical attractiveness generally predicted individuals’ support of the theoretical principles better than did gender, political orientation, or self-esteem. Results suggest that those most likely to benefit according to certain predictions of evolutionary psychology are also those most likely to be sympathetic toward its relevant principles.

Much debate surrounding teacher quality has focused on students’ standardized test scores, but recent federal and state initiatives have emphasized the use of multiple measures to evaluate teacher quality, including classroom observations. In this study, we explore differences across school districts in the relationship between student achievement outcomes and the observed quality of teachers’ instruction. Using data from 298 elementary mathematics teachers in five urban US districts, we examine relationships between teachers’ performance on the Mathematical Quality of Instruction observation instrument and their students’ scores on both state standardized and researcher-developed tests. We find that these relationships differ across school districts. We explore the extent to which differences in skills and expectations for students across tests may explain this variability. An improved understanding of the relationship between classroom observations and student tests may help districts to better ...

In the 2011–12 school year, the Newark Public School district (NPS) launched a set of educational reforms supported by a gift from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan. Using data from 2...

There are three primary measures of teaching performance: student test-based measures (i.e., value added), classroom observations, and student surveys. Although all three types of measures could be biased by unmeasured traits of the students in teachers’ classrooms, prior research has largely focused on the validity of value-added measures. We conduct an experiment involving 66 mathematics teachers in four school districts and test the validity of all three types of measures. Specifically, we test whether a teacher’s performance on each measure under naturally occurring (i.e., non-experimental) settings predicts performance following random assignment of that teacher to a class of students. Combining our results with those from two previous experiments, we provide further evidence that value-added measures are unbiased predictors of teacher performance. In addition, we provide the first evidence that classroom observation scores are unbiased predictors of teacher performance on a rubric measuring the quality of mathematics instruction. Unfortunately, we lack the statistical power to reach any similar conclusions regarding the predictive validity of a teacher’s student survey responses.

Nearly every state evaluates teacher performance using multiple measures, but evidence has largely shown that only one such measure—teachers’ effects on student achievement (i.e., value-added)—captures teachers’ causal effects. We conducted a random assignment experiment in 66 fourth- and fifth-grade mathematics classrooms to evaluate the predictive validity of three measures of teacher performance: value-added, classroom observations, and student surveys. Combining our results with those from two previous random assignment experiments, we provide additional experimental evidence that value-added measures are unbiased predictors of teacher performance. Though results for the other two measures are less precise, we find that classroom observation scores are predictive of teachers’ performance after random assignment while student surveys are not. These results thus lend support to teacher evaluation systems that use value-added and classroom observations, but suggest practitioners should proceed with caution when considering student survey measures for teacher evaluation.

People routinely remember events that have passed and imagine those that are yet to come. The past and the future are sometimes psychologically close (“just around the corner”) and other times psychologically distant (“ages away”). Four studies demonstrate a systematic asymmetry whereby future events are psychologically closer than past events of equivalent objective distance. When considering specific times (e.g., 1 year) or events (e.g., Valentine’s Day), people consistently reported that the future was closer than the past. We suggest that this asymmetry arises because the subjective experience of movement through time (whereby future events approach and past events recede) is analogous to the physical experience of movement through space. Consistent with this hypothesis, experimentally reversing the metaphorical arrow of time (by having participants move backward through virtual space) completely eliminated the past-future asymmetry. We discuss how reducing psychological distance to the future may function to prepare people for upcoming action.