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Teacher churning likely harms student achievement. However, the phenomenon of within-school grade-level teacher reassignments is understudied. The current study provides descriptive evidence on the frequency and predictors of within-school teacher grade switching using both longitudinal administrative data from Michigan and nationally representative survey data. About 7% of self-contained classroom teachers change grades following any given school year. Inexperienced teachers are relatively more likely to switch grades, and grade-level reassignments are inequitably distributed across both schools and students. For example, urban schools experience significantly higher rates of grade switching. Charter schools experience significantly less grade switching than traditional public schools.

School districts across the United States increasingly use value-added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers. In practice, VAMs typically rely on lagged test scores from the previous academic year, which necessarily conflate summer with school-year learning and potentially bias estimates of teacher effectiveness. We investigate the practical implications of this problem by comparing estimates from "cross-year" VAMs with those from arguably more valid "within-year" VAMs using fall and spring test scores from the nationally representative Early Childhood Longitudinal Study--Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K). "Cross-year" and "within-year" VAMs frequently yield significant differences that remain even after conditioning on participation in summer activities.

The summer activities and summer learning of exceptional students--students who have an individualized education plan or who are English-language learners--are potentially important yet understudied. We analyze nationally representative survey data to fill this gap. Exceptional students are significantly less likely than their mainstream counterparts to participate in organized summer activities and summer day care but are more likely to attend summer school and to practice math with a parent. Exceptional learners make significantly greater reading gains during the summer vacation than their mainstream counterparts; however, this is true only for middle- and high-income exceptional learners. Moreover, the well-documented summer learning loss of low-income students in reading appears to be entirely driven by lower summer learning rates of low-income exceptional learners. There are no such differences in math achievement.

In March 2013, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie announced a state takeover of the Camden City School District. Under state control, state appointed superintendents assumed powers customarily held by the board of education and implemented substantial changes to the district, including closing eleven district schools, eliminating more than a thousand teaching and other positions, and shifting almost half of all district students to renaissance charter schools. We examine the changes in students’ standardized test scores before and after the state takeover and find mixed results. We also find evidence that test scores for some grades were improving several years before the state takeover and that positive gains in test scores in a few subjects/grades in the period following the state takeover were occurring across all low income schools in New Jersey, not just in Camden. We address why these findings are at odds with political leaders’ positive perceptions of the takeover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a global health and economic crisis that profoundly affected subnational governments. Among them, New Jersey stood out as one of the hardest-hit states, grappling with a significantly high COVID-19 death rate. This study delves into the fiscal implications of the pandemic for New Jersey municipalities and investigates potential disparities based on socioeconomic status (SES). An analysis of a panel dataset for 532 unique municipalities from the fiscal years 2014–15 to 2020–21 finds no reduction in total revenues, total expenditures, or government employment for the average municipality in New Jersey. However, when considering SES, differential effects emerge. Lower SES municipalities received a 3% increase in state aid but experienced a 16% reduction in part-time public safety employees compared to higher SES counterparts. A high reliance on the property tax for local funding in New Jersey is one possible reason why municipalities across all SES levels were able to navigate the fiscal crisis caused by the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous public management and organizational theory literature focuses primarily on the employee- and organizational-level characteristics that influence employee turnover. However, other potential determinants of employee turnover, such as factors external to the organization, are understudied. The current paper addresses this gap in the literature by examining the effect of the interaction between environmental shocks and budgetary constraints on employee turnover. Using a nationally representative teacher-level dataset, this paper tests the hypothesis that, after the passage of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), teachers in states with binding tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) on school districts become more likely to turnover than their counterparts in other states. This paper finds evidence to support this hypothesis. Following the passage of NCLB, a teacher in a state with a binding TEL is 8.7 percentage points more likely to leave the teaching profession relative to all other teachers. This result is primarily driven by those teachers in states without a prior school accountability policy. Overall, this study adds to prior research on public employee turnover, TELs, and school accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]