Search

This paper examines the impact of Teach For America (TFA) on following-year student test and non-test outcomes in Miami-Dade County Public Schools. This paper measures the extent to which exposure to TFA is followed by improved student outcomes in the future. In particular, this paper measures days missed due to absences or suspensions, course grades in each core subject, and progression in math courses. We find that students taught by TFA math teachers go on to have higher grades in math courses in the following year and are less likely to miss school due to being absent or suspended. However, while students in TFA classrooms score higher on math and ELA assessments in a given year, these test score gains fade out by the following year.

We study the effect of exposure to immigrants on the educational outcomes of US-born students, using a unique dataset combining population-level birth and school records from Florida. This research question is complicated by substantial school selection of US-born students, especially among White and comparatively affluent students, in response to the presence of immigrant students in the school. We propose a new identification strategy to partial out the unobserved non-random selection into schools, and find that the presence of immigrant students has a positive effect on the academic achievement of US-born students, especially for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Moreover, the presence of immigrants does not affect negatively the performance of affluent US-born students, who typically show a higher academic achievement compared to immigrant students. We provide suggestive evidence on potential channels.

This study examines the effects of internal migration driven by severe natural disasters on host communities, and the mechanisms behind these effects, using the large influx of migrant students into Florida public schools in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. I find significant adverse effects of the influx in the first year on existing student test scores, disciplinary problems, and student mobility that vanish entirely in the second year. I also find evidence that compensatory resource allocation within schools is an important factor driving the adverse effects of large, unexpected migrant flows on some incumbent students in the short-run.

Private school choice options are being proposed and adopted in numerous states across the country. As of the spring of 2019, 62 private school choice programs were in operation in 29 states and the District of Columbia, serving more than 400,000 children. Although growth in private school choice programs and enrollment has been considerable over the past decade, the percentage of private schools participating in school choice options varies considerably by program. Understanding how program design impacts the supply of private schools participating in these programs will be critical for policymakers as they work to create and expand education choice options for families. This report considers whether certain regulations governing school choice programs reduce specialization and diversity in the supply of private schools that participate. Expanding on the prior analysis of the impact of regulations in three locations, the authors chart how schools self-identify prior to and after switching into private school choice program environments in each of the five locations. The authors found that private school leaders in all five locations are more likely to classify their schools as less specialized than they were prior to entering the programs. The authors also found evidence to suggest that more homogenization occurred in more highly regulated voucher programs. These findings suggest a potential homogenizing effect of regulations on school supply, limiting the diversity of the private school market. These findings also suggest policymakers should carefully weigh the costs of regulating private school choice programs, as overregulation could reduce specialization and diversity of school supply in a given school choice program, limiting the options that are available to families.

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that teachers working in above-average poverty charter schools have significantly higher value-added scores compared to traditional public school teachers working in similar settings, which is mainly driven by the right tail of the value-added score distribution, yet we find no such differences in below-average poverty settings. Second, we find that cross-sector differences in observed teacher characteristics such as experience and educational attainment fail to explain any of the observed gaps in teacher effectiveness in higher-poverty settings. Instead, we find that differences in returns to experience on teacher productivity, which is significantly higher in the charter sector, explains most of the observed cross-sector effectiveness gaps. Third, we find considerable differences in teacher support and teacher influence on instructional policies and practices between charter schools and traditional public schools, which might help explain the higher returns to experience on teacher effectiveness as well as the observed effectiveness gaps between charter schools and traditional public schools serving disadvantaged students.

Student peer effects are well documented. We know far less, however, about peer effects among teachers. We hypothesize that a relatively effective teacher may positively affect the performance of their peers, while a relatively ineffective teacher may negatively impact the performance of other teachers with whom they work closely. Utilizing a decade of data on teacher transfers between schools that result in changes of peers when transfer teachers enter grade-level team in the new school, we find evidence of strong positive spillover effects associated with the introduction of peers who are more effective than the incumbent teacher himself or herself. Interestingly, the incumbent teacher's students are not meaningfully disadvantaged by the entry of relatively ineffective peers. This finding implies that mixing teachers with diverse performance levels can be a strategy for increasing student achievement in the aggregate. These results are robust to several student sorting and teacher selection issues.

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data and teacher survey data from a large urban school district, we examine schools' responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers who produce greater student achievement gains in math and reading are more likely to be placed in a tested grade-subject combination in the following year and that the relationship between prior performance and assignment is stronger in schools where principals have more influence over assignments. This strategic response has the consequence of disadvantaging achievement in early grades, however, concentrating less effective teachers in K-2 classrooms, which in turn produces lower achievement for those students, as measured by low-stakes assessments, that may persist into tested grades as well.

Teacher and student sorting within and between schools has historically garnered national attention and controversy. Scholars have recently examined how school leaders make data-driven decisions to create more equitable schools, particularly through teacher and student assignment practices. School leaders use student test scores to strategically sort students into classes to create "balance." Student achievement data is also linked to teacher reassignment, in which ineffective teachers are strategically reassigned to non-tested grades or subjects, while effective teachers may be promoted to leadership positions. Scholars have found that a combination of data-driven strategic staffing, accountability pressures, and micro-politics are prime drivers of assignment strategies within schools. Within the literature on assignment practices, one strand examines the impact of assignment practices on students but does not engage with principals' decision-making strategies despite the central role principals play in school decisions. The second strand of research delves deeply into leadership decision making but seldom provides data on the actual assignment practices. This includes observed data regarding the two types of assignment strategies dominant within the literature: privilege- and learning-centric. A learning-centric assignment is the placement of highly knowledgeable teachers with students who need effective teachers more than do other peers (Donaldson, 2011, In contrast, privilege-centric assignments place experienced teachers in classrooms with higher achieving students. School leaders may also use privilege-centric staffing to appease affluent parents and increase retention of their more experienced teachers. Although privilege-centric assignments may be counterproductive to the student experience, many schools employ this strategy despite principals' reports of using data to increase school equitability. The assignment of teachers to students and classes is presumed to be an entirely local (school-level) decision, with school leaders having substantial authority over this process. The findings of the preceding research underscore the importance of principals in this process, and yet we know little about the ability of leadership to interrupt systems of privilege and institute more equitable staffing arrangements. Because of this potential inconsistency between principals reporting that they make data-driven decisions and their actual assignment practices, we see the need for continued research in this area. The purpose of this study is to fill this gap within the literature by first examining the relationship between principals' reported data-driven decisions and teacher and student assignment strategies within schools, and then looking at the relationship between assignment practices and student learning. This study couples survey data from 213 Florida elementary and middle schools with 8 years of longitudinal, statewide data to address the following questions: (1) To what extent are privilege- and learning-centric assignment practices used within schools? Are these practices changing over time?; (2) How do privilege- and learning-centric assignments impact student-learning gains?; (3) What drives student-assignment practices--is this phenomenon embedded in the culture of a school or do principals dictate assignment practices?; and (4) How are principals' reported uses of data related to observed privilege- and learning-centric sorting?

Governments are increasingly publishing information about the performance of the services they provide, in part to help citizens hold their elected representatives accountable for government service outcomes. Yet there is little evidence concerning the influence of information about government service performance on voter behavior. This paper examines the degree to which school performance information affects incumbent support in school board elections. A regression discontinuity analysis indicates that voters reward incumbents when local schools achieve the highest available measure of school performance. Voters do not respond to information differentiating between schools in the middle of the performance distribution, however, or to information from a source that lacks credibility. The following are appended: (1) Regression Discontinuity Specification; (2) Cross-Validation Procedure to Select Bandwidths; (3) Tables and Figures. [This research has been supported by a Harvard University grant from the Multidisciplinary Program in Inequality and Social Policy.]

In this paper we examine a range of postsecondary education and labor market outcomes, with a particular focus on minorities and/or disadvantaged workers. We use administrative data from the state of Florida, where postsecondary student records have been linked to UI earnings data and also to secondary education records. Our main findings can be summarized as follows: 1) Gaps in secondary school achievement can account for a large portion of the variation in postsecondary attainment and labor market outcomes between the disadvantaged and other students, but meaningful gaps also "exist" within achievement groups, and 2) Earnings of the disadvantaged are hurt by low completion rates in postsecondary programs, poor performance during college, and not choosing high-earning fields. In particular, significant labor market premia can be earned in a variety of more technical certificate and Associate (AA) programs, even for those with weak earlier academic performance, but instead many disadvantaged (and other) students choose general humanities programs at the AA (and even the Bachelor's or BA) level with low completion rates and low compensation afterwards. A range of policies and practices might be used to improve student choices as well as their completion rates and earnings.

The purpose of this Technical Assistance Paper (TAP) is to provide school districts with updates and changes relative to third-grade student progression policies, including information on alternative assessments, promotion criteria and resources. This paper provides: (1) General Information; (2) Student Portfolios for Third-Grade Students; (3) Assessment; (4) Students Retained Twice in Third Grade and Intensive Accelerated Classrooms; (5) Summer Reading Camps for Third-Grade Students; (6) Mid-Year Promotion for Third Grade; (7) Exceptional Student Education (ESE); and (8) Options for Parents of Struggling Readers.

Previous research suggests that there are academic benefits when students and teachers share the same race/ethnicity because such teachers can serve as role models, mentors, advocates, or cultural translators. In this paper, we obtain estimates of achievement changes as students are assigned to teachers of different races/ethnicities from grades 3 through 10 utilizing a large administrative dataset provided by the Florida Department of Education that follows the universe of test-taking students in Florida public schools from 2001-02 through 2008-09. We find small but significant positive effects when black and white students are assigned to race-congruent teachers in reading (0.004 to 0.005 standard deviations) and for black, white and Asian/Pacific Island students in math (0.007 to 0.041 standard deviations). We also examine the effects of race matching by students' prior performance level, finding that lower-performing black and white students appear to particularly benefit from being assigned to a race-congruent teacher. An appendix provides a test of the authors' hypothesis and supplemental tables.

As more states begin to adopt teacher evaluation systems based on value-added measures, legal challenges have been filed both seeking to limit the use of value-added measures ("Cook v. Stewart") and others seeking to require more robust evaluation systems ("Vergara v. California"). This study reviews existing teacher evaluation systems and examines validity evidence supporting the use of value-added scores as part of the teacher evaluation. We discuss key aspects of ongoing teacher evaluation lawsuits in California and Florida and assess issues for evaluating the legality of teacher evaluation systems.

Gaps in average college success among students of differing backgrounds have persisted in the United States for decades. One of the primary ways governments have attempted to ameliorate such gaps is by providing need-based grants, but little evidence exists on the impacts of such aid on longer term outcomes such as college persistence and degree completion. We examine the effects of the Florida Student Access Grant (FSAG) using a regression-discontinuity strategy and exploiting the cutoff used to determine eligibility. Grant eligibility had a positive effect on college attendance at public four-year institutions. Eligibility for the FSAG also increased early persistence and the cumulative number of college-level credits students earned in their first four years. Most importantly, FSAG receipt increased the likelihood of bachelor's degree receipt within six years at a public college or university by 4.6 percentage points--a 22 percent increase among students near the eligibility cutoff. The results are robust to sensitivity analyses. An appendix contains 1 figure and 3 tables.

When Congress reauthorizes the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), much of the debate will undoubtedly focus on the accountability requirements added to Title I by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB). Title I authorizes federal aid to school districts to educate low-achieving children in low-income areas. Among the most controversial of these NCLB requirements are the provisions for determining whether schools and districts have made adequate yearly progress (AYP) in raising student achievement in reading and mathematics. This background paper from the Center on Education Policy (CEP) explores some of the factors that have influenced recent trends in the national percentage of public schools that have not made AYP, out of the total number of schools that reported AYP results. This paper is intended to serve as a companion to the report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?" (CEP, 2011). As discussed in more detail in that five-year trend report, the national percentage of public schools failing to make AYP rose from 29% in 2006 to an estimated 38% in 2010 and actually decreased in two of the interim years. Although 38% is a record high percentage of schools not making AYP, it is still lower than what many observers had predicted by this point in NCLB implementation. CEP's analysis focused on 10 large or medium-sized states that had the greatest increases or decreases in the number of schools not making AYP or had other noteworthy AYP trends: California, Florida, Illinois, Missouri, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, and Washington. Its analysis revealed several factors, in addition to changes in student learning, that appear to account for some of the fluctuations in the national percentage of schools not making AYP and may help explain why these percentages have not escalated as quickly as some analysts have predicted. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) National trends in the percentage of schools not making AYP have been affected disproportionately by trends in a limited subset of states; (2) Changes in state testing policies have slowed, or even reversed, increases in the number of schools failing to make AYP in several states; (3) The NCLB "safe harbor" provision has also helped somewhat in keeping down the share of schools failing to make AYP in certain states; (4) The use of growth models appears to have had a limited impact on AYP trends in most of the growth model states analyzed; (5) In most of the states analyzed, the number of schools failing to make AYP increased substantially in the years when the state's achievement targets went up; (6) States that introduced new tests saw substantial short-term increases or decreases in the number of schools failing to make AYP; (7) In some states, changes in the number of schools not making AYP are largely attributable to changes in the cut scores defining "proficient" performance on state tests; (8) North Carolina's experience suggests that counting proficient scores from retests can reduce the number of schools failing to make AYP--especially in the short term; and (9) Even if most or all states adopt common standards and common assessments, variations in state accountability policies could continue to make it impossible to arrive at meaningful comparisons about the performance of different states. (Contains 6 footnotes.) [For the companion report, "Update with 2009-10 Data and Five-Year Trends: How Many Schools Have Not Made Adequate Yearly Progress?," see ED518993.]

The relatively poor academic achievement of black and Hispanic students has been a national concern since the passage of the "Elementary Secondary and Education Act" in 1963. Frustrated with relatively slow progress in closing these educational gaps, the most recent reauthorization of the ESEA, the "No Children Left Behind Act of 2001" (NCLB) attempts to employ rigorous accountability standards to speed progress. At about the same time, Florida implemented a change in its A+ Plan for Education that focused on the educational gains of "low-performing" students. These two systems provide incentives for schools to concentrate differently on students even though they both ostensibly focus attention on similar sets of students--those most likely to be marginalized in public education. In this paper the authors study whether either of these accountability systems improved the academic outcomes of black, Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students in Florida. The authors find evidence that schools that are labeled as failing or near-failing in Florida's system tend to boost performance of students in these subgroups, while schools presented with incentives under NCLB to improve subgroup performance appear to be much less likely to do so. However, Hispanics appear to benefit from the NCLB sub-grouping requirements if they attend schools with low accountability pressure under Florida's grading system. (Contains 8 tables, 3 figures and 25 footnotes.) [This paper was presented at the "NCLB: Emerging Findings Research Conference" at the Urban Institute, Washington, D.C. on August 12, 2009. Funding for this research was provided by the Atlantic Philanthropies.]

Learning communities are a popular strategy that community colleges nationwide have embraced in support of developmental students. In a learning community, a cohort of students takes two or more courses linked by integrated themes and assignments that are developed through ongoing faculty collaboration. While the number of learning community programs continues to grow, rigorous studies measuring their effectiveness are limited. To address this need for evidence, the Learning Communities demonstration, launched in 2007, uses random assignment to test models of learning communities at six community colleges: Kingsborough Community College, Queensborough Community College, Hillsborough Community College, Merced College, Houston Community College System, and Community College of Baltimore County. The study is designed to determine: (1) how learning communities can be designed to address the needs of academically underprepared students; (2) the effects of learning communities on student achievement, as measured by test scores, credits earned, and grades; (3) the effects of learning communities on students' persistence in higher education; and (4) what learning communities cost and how these costs compare with the costs of standard college programs for students with low basic skills. Preliminary findings will be available in 2009. This working paper describes the study's design, including a summary of the theoretical and empirical research relevant to learning communities, descriptions of the sites and their learning community models, the random assignment procedures, and plans for data analysis. (Contains 7 tables, 1 figure, and 67 notes.) [This paper was produced by the National Center for Postsecondary Research. It was written with the assistance of Oscar Cerna, Christine Sansone, and Michelle Ware.]

This paper contributes importantly to the growing literature on the training of special education teachers and how it translates into classroom practice and student achievement. The authors examine the impact of pre-service preparation and in-service formal and informal training on the ability of teachers to promote academic achievement among students with disabilities. Using student-level longitudinal data from Florida over a five-year span the authors estimate "value-added" models of student achievement. There is little support for the efficacy of in-service professional development courses focusing on special education. However, teachers with advanced degrees are more effective in boosting the math achievement of students with disabilities than are those with only a baccalaureate degree. Also pre-service preparation in special education has statistically significant and quantitatively substantial effects on the ability of teachers of special education courses to promote gains in achievement for students with disabilities, especially in reading. Certification in special education, an undergraduate major in special education, and the amount of special education coursework in college are all positively correlated with the performance of teachers in special education reading courses. (Contains 4 tables and 12 footnotes.)

A growing number of American states and school districts require students to meet basic performance standards in core academic subjects at key transition points in order to be promoted to the next grade. We exploit a discontinuity in the probability of third grade retention under a Florida test-based promotion policy to study the causal effect of retention on student outcomes over time. Regression discontinuity estimates indicate large short-term gains in achievement among retained students and a sharp reduction in the probability of retention in subsequent years. The achievement gains from retention fade out gradually over time, however, and are statistically insignificant after six years. Despite this fade out, our results suggest that previous evidence that early retention leads to adverse academic outcomes is misleading due to unobserved differences between retained and promoted students. They also imply that the educational and opportunity costs associated with retaining a student in the early grades are substantially less than a full year of per pupil spending and foregone earnings. (Contains 10 figures, 11 tables, and 19 footnotes.)

Mounting pressure in the policy arena to improve teacher productivity either by improving signals that predict teacher performance or through creating incentive contracts based on performance--has spurred two related questions: Are there important determinants of teacher productivity that are not captured by teacher credentials but that can be measured by subjective assessments? And would evaluating teachers based on a combination of subjective assessments and student outcomes more accurately gauge teacher performance than student test scores alone? Using data from a midsize Florida school district, this paper explores both questions by calculating teachers' "value added" and comparing those outcomes with subjective ratings of teachers by school principals. Teacher value-added and principals' subjective ratings are positively correlated and principals' evaluations are better predictors of a teacher's value added than traditional approaches to teacher compensation focused on experience and formal education. In settings where schools are judged on student test scores, teachers' ability to raise those scores is important to principals, as reflected in their subjective teacher ratings. Also, teachers' subject knowledge, teaching skill, and intelligence are most closely associated with both the overall subjective teacher ratings and the teacher value added. Finally, while past teacher value added predicts future teacher value added the principals' subjective ratings can provide additional information and substantially increase predictive power. (Contains 9 tables and 15 footnotes.)

We use statewide administrative data from Florida to estimate the impact of attending public schools with different grade configurations on student achievement through grade 10. To identify the causal effect of structural school transitions, we use student fixed effects and instrument for middle and high school attendance based on the terminal grade of the school attended in grades 3 and 6, respectively. Consistent with recent evidence from other settings, we find that students moving from elementary to middle school in grade 6 or 7 suffer a sharp drop in student achievement in the transition year. We confirm that these achievement drops occur in nonurban areas and persist through grade 10, by which time most students have transitioned into high school. We also find that middle school entry increases student absences and is associated with higher grade 10 dropout rates. Transitions to high school in grade nine cause a smaller one-time drop in achievement but do not alter students' performance trajectories. (Contains 13 tables, 6 figures and 13 footnotes.)

Principals tend to prefer working in schools with higher-achieving students from more advantaged socioeconomic backgrounds. Principals often use schools with many poor or low-achieving students as stepping stones to what they view as more desirable assignments. District leadership can also exacerbate principal turnover by implementing policies aimed at improving low-performing schools such as rotating school leaders. Using longitudinal data from one large urban school district we find principal turnover is detrimental to school performance. Frequent turnover results in lower teacher retention and lower student achievement gains, which are particularly detrimental to students in high-poverty and failing schools. (Contains 10 tables and 3 footnotes.)

In this paper we analyze the impact of classroom peers on individual student performance with a unique longitudinal data set covering all Florida public school students in grades 3-10 over a five-year period. Unlike many previous data sets used to study peer effects in education, our data set allow us to identify each member of a given student's classroom peer group in elementary, middle, and high school as well as the classroom teacher responsible for instruction. As a result, we can control for individual student fixed effects simultaneously with individual teacher fixed effects, thereby alleviating biases due to endogenous assignment of both peers and teachers, including some dynamic aspects of such assignments. Our estimation strategy, which focuses on the influence of peers' fixed characteristics--both observed and unobserved--on individual test score gains, also alleviates potential biases due to error in measuring peer quality, simultaneity of peer outcomes, and mean reversion. Under linear-in-means specifications, estimated peer effects are small to non-existent, but we find some sizable and significant peer effects within non-linear models. For example, we find that peer effects depend on an individual student's own ability and on the ability level of the peers under consideration, results that suggest Pareto-improving redistributions of students across classrooms and/or schools. Estimated peer effects tend to be smaller when teacher fixed effects are included than when they are omitted, a result that suggests co-movement of peer and teacher quality effects within a student over time. We also find that peer effects tend to be stronger at the classroom level than at the grade level. (Appended to this document is "Comparison of Estimation Methods Using Simulated Data." Contains 28 footnotes and 10 tables.)

Struggling schools that come under increased accountability pressure face a number of challenges, changing instructional policies and practices to facilitate student improvement. But what effect does school accountability have on teachers' mobility decisions? This study is the first to exploit policy variation within the same state to examine the effects of school accountability on teacher job changes. Using student-level data from Florida State the authors measure the degree to which schools and teachers were "surprised" by the change in the school grading system that took hold in the summer of 2002--what they refer to as an "accountability shock"--by observing the mobility decisions of teachers in the years before and after the school grading change. Several key findings emerge: (1) over half of all schools in the state experience an accountability "shock" due to this grading change; (2) teachers are more likely to leave schools facing increased accountability pressure--and even more likely to leave schools that face the highest accountability pressure (schools shocked downward to a grade of "F")--and they are less likely to leave schools facing decreased accountability pressure; (3) While the quality differential between stayers and leavers does not change as a result of increased accountability pressure, schools facing increased pressure experience an increase in the quality of teachers who leave or stay and schools with no accountability shock experience no significant change to the quality of teachers that leave or stay. The results suggest if these schools were able to retain more of their high-quality teachers, perhaps through increased incentives to remain in the school, the performance gains associated with school accountability pressure could be greater than those already observed. (Contains 9 tables, 1 figure and 16 footnotes.)

Conventional models of democratic accountability hinge on citizens' ability to evaluate government performance accurately, yet there is little evidence on the degree to which citizen perceptions of the quality of government services correspond to actual service quality. Using nationally representative survey data, we find that citizens' perceptions of the quality of specific public schools reflect publicly available information about the level of student achievement in those schools. The relationship between actual and perceived school quality is two to three times stronger for parents of school-age children, who have the most contact with schools and arguably the strongest incentive to be informed. However, this relationship does not differ by homeowner status or by respondents' race, ethnicity, income, or education. A regression discontinuity analysis of an oversample of Florida residents confirms that public accountability systems can have a causal effect on citizen perceptions of service quality. The appendix section includes the following tables: (1) Relationship Between School Characteristics and Respondents' School Ratings, Marginal Effects from Ordered Probit Models; (2) Descriptive Statistics, By Whether Respondent Identified Local Elementary and Middle Schools; and (3) Relationship Between Schools' Demographic Characteristics and Respondents' Ratings, by Respondent Characteristics. (Contains 11 tables, 1 figure, and 17 footnotes.)

In fall 2009, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation launched the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project to test new approaches to measuring effective teaching. The goal of the MET project is to improve the quality of information about teaching effectiveness available to education professionals within states and districts--information that will help them build fair and reliable systems for measuring teacher effectiveness that can be used for a variety of purposes, including feedback, development, and continuous improvement. The project includes nearly 3000 teachers who volunteered to help researchers identify a better approach to teacher development and evaluation, located in six predominantly urban school districts across the country: Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, Dallas Independent School District, Denver Public Schools, Hillsborough County Public Schools (including Tampa, Florida), Memphis City Schools, and the New York City Department of Education. As part of the project, multiple data sources are being collected and analyzed over two school years, including student achievement gains on state assessments and supplemental assessments designed to assess higher-order conceptual understanding; classroom observations and teacher reflections on their practice; assessments of teachers' pedagogical content knowledge; student perceptions of the classroom instructional environment; and teachers' perceptions of working conditions and instructional support at their schools. The current findings include: (1) In every grade and subject, a teacher's past track record of value-added is among the strongest predictors of their students' achievement gains in other classes and academic years. A teacher's value-added fluctuates from year-to-year and from class-to-class, as succeeding cohorts of students move through their classrooms. However, that volatility is not so large as to undercut the usefulness of value-added as an indicator (imperfect, but still informative) of future performance; (2) Teachers with high value-added on state tests tend to promote deeper conceptual understanding as well; (3) Teachers have larger effects on math achievement than on achievement in reading or English Language Arts, at least as measured on state assessments; and (4) Student perceptions of a given teacher's strengths and weaknesses are consistent across the different groups of students they teach. Moreover, students seem to know effective teaching when they experience it: student perceptions in one class are related to the achievement gains in other classes taught by the same teacher. Most important are students' perception of a teacher's ability to control a classroom and to challenge students with rigorous work. Appended are: (1) Sample 8th Grade BAM Item; and (2) Example from Stanford 9 Open-Ended Reading Assessment. (Contains 1 figure, 11 tables and 14 footnotes.) [For "Learning about Teaching: Initial Findings from the Measures of Effective Teaching Project. Policy Brief. MET Project," see ED528388.]

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school "gaming" of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school accountability. The lack of research is primarily due to the unavailability of appropriate data to carry out such an analysis. This paper brings to bear new evidence from a remarkable five-year survey conducted of a census of public schools in Florida, coupled with detailed administrative data on student performance. We show that schools facing accountability pressure changed their instructional practices in meaningful ways. In addition, we present medium-run evidence of the effects of school accountability on student test scores, and find that a significant portion of these test score gains can likely be attributed to the changes in school policies and practices that we uncover in our surveys. (Contains 45 footnotes, 10 tables, and 2 figures.)

Does public information about school quality lead parents to sort their children out of schools with relatively poor performance? Use of this exit option in response to information about school quality has the potential to indirectly foster school responsiveness to quality concerns. To determine whether this information affects student exit, I use a regression discontinuity design to examine the effect of school grades on exit. Results indicate that parents do not seem to respond to information about school quality generally and, thus, cast doubt on the effectiveness of indirect accountability to promote educational improvement. However, there is limited evidence that particularly poor school performance accompanied by institutional mechanisms for school choice promote student sorting away from low-quality schools. (Contains 11 footnotes, 12 figures, and 9 tables.)

Remedial or developmental courses are the most common policy instruments used to assist underprepared postsecondary students who are not ready for college-level coursework. However, despite its important role in higher education and its substantial costs, there is little rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of college remediation on the outcomes of students. This study uses a detailed dataset to identify the causal effect of remediation on the educational outcomes of nearly 100,000 college students in Florida, an important state that reflects broader national trends in remediation policy and student diversity. Moreover, using a Regression Discontinuity design, we discuss concerns about endogenous sorting around the policy cutoff, which poses a threat to the assumptions of the model in multiple research contexts. To address this concern, we implement methods proposed by McCrary (2008) and discuss the strengths of this approach. The results suggest math and reading remedial courses have mixed benefits. Being assigned to remediation appears to increase persistence to the second year and the total number of credits completed for students on the margin of passing out of the requirement, but it does not increase the completion of college-level credits or eventual degree completion. Taken together, the results suggest that remediation might promote early persistence in college, but it does not necessarily help students on the margin of passing the placement cutoff make long-term progress toward earning a degree. (Contains 5 tables and 4 figures.) [This publication was produced by the National Center for Postsecondary Research.]

We study the effects of various types of education and training on the ability of teachers to promote student achievement. Previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequate measures of teacher training and difficulties addressing the non-random selection of teachers to students and of teachers to training. We address these issues by estimating models that include detailed measures of pre-service and in-service training, a rich set of time-varying covariates, and student, teacher, and school fixed effects. Our results suggest that only two of the forms of teacher training we study influence productivity. First, content-focused teacher professional development is positively associated with productivity in middle and high school math. Second, more experienced teachers appear more effective in teaching elementary math and reading and middle school math. There is no evidence that either pre-service (undergraduate) training or the scholastic aptitude of teachers influences their ability to increase student achievement. (Contains 19 tables and 23 footnotes.)

This study evaluates the effect that the size of a state's school districts has on public high school graduation rates. The authors calculate the graduation rate over the last decade and examine the relationship between these graduation rates and changes in each state's average school district size. The study finds that decreasing the size of school districts has a substantial and statistically significant positive effect on graduation rates. Conversely, consolidation of school districts into larger units leads to more students dropping out of high school. The results of the analysis indicate that decreasing the average size of a state's school districts by 200 square miles leads to an increase of about 1.7 percentage points in its graduation rate. This finding is particularly important for states with very large school districts. For example, if Florida decreased the size of its school districts to the national median, it would increase its graduation rate from 59% to 64%. Decreasing the size of school districts could improve educational outputs, including graduation rates, because it would increase the choice that parents have in the school system that educates their child. By making it easier to relocate from one school system's jurisdiction to the next, smaller school districts make it possible for a larger number of families to exercise choice among different school districts. The more families are able to move from district to district, the less students can be taken for granted by schools, which, for a variety of reasons, don't want to lose enrollment. This study provides empirical evidence that increasing the choice parents have in their child's school district contributes to higher public high school graduation rates. (Contains 4 tables and 23 endnotes.)

The Chapter 1 Successful Schools project is the product of collaborative development efforts by the Florida Department of Education, the state's Chapter 1 Evaluation Advisory Panel, and Technical Assistance Centers contracted through the Educational Testing Service. This report covers the initial pilot phase of the Successful Schools project. It is a companion document to the summary report released in October 1994. It contains a number of technical papers on which research summaries, findings, and conclusions were based. It is organized to be generally consistent with the summary report, and contains the following sections: (1) introduction; (2) impact of school poverty on Florida's elementary schools; (3) conditions related to student achievement and learning environment; (4) successful high poverty schools; (5) data base profiles of participating schools; (6) school staff and parent perceptions of effective school components; (7) successful schools staff survey, technical report; (8) what parents did and did not say about pilot project schools; (9) parent survey responses; (10) interview analysis from the successful high poverty schools study; and (11) procedural analysis of on-site visits in the Successful Schools study. Twenty-five tables illustrate the discussions. (Contains 22 references.) (SLD)

Social promotion has long been the normal practice in American schools. Critics of this practice, whereby students are promoted to the next grade regardless of academic preparation, have suggested that students would benefit academically if they were made to repeat a grade. Supporters of social promotion claim that retaining students (i.e, holding them back) disrupts them socially, producing greater academic harm than promotion would. A number of states and school districts, including Florida, Texas, Chicago, and New York City, have attempted to curtail social promotion, by requiring students to demonstrate academic preparation on a standardized test before they can be promoted to the next grade. This study analyzes the effects of Florida's test-based promotion policy on student achievement two years after initial retention. It builds upon our previous evaluation of the policy in two ways. First, we examine whether the initial benefits of retention observed in the previous study continue, expand, or contract in the second year after students are retained. Second, we determine whether discrepancies between our evaluation and the evaluation of a test-based promotion policy in Chicago are caused by differences in how researchers examined the issue, or by differences in the nature of the programs. Our analysis shows that, after two years of the policy, retained Florida students made significant reading gains relative to the control group of socially promoted students. These academic benefits grew substantially from the first to the second year after retention. That is, students lacking in basic skills who are socially promoted appear to fall further and further behind over time, whereas retained students appear to be able to catch up on the skills they are lacking. Further, we find these positive results in Florida, both when we use the same research design that we used in our previous study, and when we use a design similar to that employed by the evaluation of the program in Chicago. The differences between the Chicago and Florida evaluations appear to be caused by differences in the details of the programs, and not by differences in how the programs were evaluated. (Contains 5 tables and 10 footnotes.)

Research examining the impact of arts education on workforce preparation has confirmed that programs incorporating the arts can be educational, developmentally rich, and cost-effective ways of providing students with the skills needed for productive participation in today's economy. Arts education has been shown to help students develop basic, higher-order thinking, and affective skills needed for workplace success. Studies have shown that young people who study the arts show heightened academic standing, a strong capacity for self-assessment, and a secure sense of their own ability to plan and work for a positive future. Studies of arts-based education programs for general, at-risk, and incarcerated youth populations in 10 states have documented their effectiveness and illustrated how schools can make strategic use of states' cultural resources. Governors seeking to take advantage of the arts as a workforce development strategy can take the following policy actions: (1) include arts education as an element of comprehensive education reform legislation; (2) encourage artists to participate in community development programs; (3) leverage the private sector's willingness to contribute to the arts by providing seed funding and starter grants to innovative arts-based education programs; and (4) facilitate collaboration between arts educators and juvenile detention centers to promote programs for detained youth. (Contains 27 endnotes.) (MN)

This paper reviews nationwide education reforms under No Child Left Behind and state reforms in Florida--comparing federal and state results. The paper examines the danger that federal regulations and incentives pose to testing and accountability systems in Florida and every other state. The limits of No Child Left Behind and the promise of Florida's success suggest that federal policies that give states greater authority to direct education reform hold promise for improving education when states and citizens commit to effective reforms. The paper states that as policymakers review No Child Left Behind, Congress and the Obama Administration should recognize three important lessons: (1) No Child Left Behind has failed to deliver meaningful improvement in student learning; (2) Florida's experience demonstrates the opportunity for state-directed education reform; and (3) NCLB's accountability regulations threaten to undermine state accountability reforms. Given these lessons, Members of Congress and state policymakers should re-evaluate federal and state governments' current approach to improving public education. At the federal level, Congress and the incoming Administration should limit federal policymaking authority and transfer greater power back to the state and local levels--and they should end perverse incentives for states to weaken state standards. State policymakers should learn from Florida's success and implement systemic education reform to hold schools and students accountable for results, expand parental choice, and improve school and teacher effectiveness. Appended to this document is: "Safe Harbor Schools in Florida," showing Florida School Districts Making Safe Harbor, by Year, Based Upon Overall Math and Reading Results Alone, 2003-2008. (Contains an executive summary and 27 notes.)