eric.ed.gov har udgivet: There are fierce debates over the best way to prepare teachers. Some argue that easing entry into teaching is necessary to attract strong candidates, while others argue that investing in high quality teacher preparation is the most promising approach. Most agree, however, that we lack a strong research basis for understanding how to prepare teachers. This paper is one of the first to estimate the effects of features of teachers’ preparation on teachers’ value-added to student test score performance in Math and English Language Arts. Our results indicate variation across preparation programs in the average effectiveness of the teachers they are supplying to New York City schools. In particular, preparation directly linked to practice appears to benefit teachers in their first year. Sample Results for Math with… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Traditionally, states have required individuals complete a program of study in a university-based teacher preparation program in order to be licensed to teach. In recent years, however, various “alternative certification” programs have been developed and the number of teachers obtaining teaching certificates through routes other than completing a traditional teacher preparation program has skyrocketed. In this paper I use a rich longitudinal data base from Florida to compare the characteristics of alternatively certified teachers with their traditionally prepared colleagues. I then analyze the relative effectiveness of teachers who enter the profession through different pathways by estimating “value-added” models of student achievement. In general, alternatively certified teachers have stronger pre-service qualifications than do traditionally prepared teachers, with the least restrictive alternative attracting the most qualified perspective teachers. These… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: The Great Recession was the most severe economic downturn in the United States since the Great Depression. Using newly available population-level achievement data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), we estimate the impact of the Great Recession on the math and English language arts (ELA) achievement of all grade 3-8 students in the United States. Employing a difference-in-differences strategy that leverages both cross-district variation in the economic shock of the recession and within-district, cross-cohort variation in school-age years of exposure to the recession, we find that the onset of the Great Recession significantly reduced student math and ELA achievement. Moreover, the recessionary effect on student achievement was concentrated among school districts serving more economically disadvantaged and minority students, indicating that the adverse effects of the recession… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement. It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement, which provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers which comes from their impact on economic outcomes. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This paper examines the effect of school turnaround in North Carolina elementary and middle schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that turnaround led to a drop in average school-level math and reading passing rates and an increased concentration of low-income students in treated schools. We use teacher survey data to examine how teacher activities changed. Treated schools brought in new principals and increased the time teachers devoted to professional development. The program also increased administrative burdens and distracted teachers, potentially reducing time available for instruction. Teacher turnover increased after the first full year of implementation. Overall, we find little success for North Carolina’s efforts to turn around low performing schools under its federally funded Race to the Top grant. Link til kilde
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: Nationally, 15% of first-time community college students were high school students taking college coursework through dual enrollment (DE) in the fall of 2010, and the percentage has risen since then. The growing numbers of DE students at community colleges raises concerns about how high school peers might influence traditionally aged college enrollees. Using administrative data from a large state community college system, we examine whether being exposed to a higher percentage of DE peers influences non-DE enrollees’ performance in college courses. Focusing on entry-level (or gateway) math and English courses and employing a two-way fixed effects model, we find that non-DE college enrollees exposed to a higher proportion of DE peers had lower pass rates and grades in gateway courses, and higher course repetition and lower subject… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: 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.… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: With teacher quality repeatedly cited as the most important “schooling” factor influencing student achievement, there has been increased interest in examining the efficacy of teacher training programs. This paper presents research examining the variation between and impact that individual teacher training institutions in Washington state have on the effectiveness of teachers they train. Using administrative data linking teachers’ initial endorsements to student achievement on state reading and math tests, we find the majority of teacher training programs produce teachers who are no more or less effective than teachers who trained out-of-state. However, we do find a number of cases where there are statistically significant differences between estimates of training program effects for teachers who were credentialed at various in-state programs. These findings are robust to a variety… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: This short paper is designed to serve as a kind of primer for professors interested in thinking through ways to build a rural dimension into mathematics education courses in the interest of squarely addressing the vision and mission of ACCLAIM. Few words, therefore, will be deployed in the interest of establishing an intellectual warrant for the assumptions and assertions embedded in these pages. In fact, all that will be said in this regard is that 1) the ascendancy of what is loosely referred to as “constructivist learning theory” over the past decade clearly elevates the role of context in the development of human understanding. In other words, if professors want students (pre-school through doctoral level) to achieve at high levels, the insertion of context is currently seen… Continue Reading →
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eric.ed.gov har udgivet: More than half of community college courses are taught by part-time faculty, and the reliance on part-time faculty to teach developmental education courses and gateway math and English courses is even more prevalent. Drawing on data from six community colleges, this study estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students’ current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses, using course fixed effects and propensity score matching to minimize bias arising from student self-sorting across and within courses. While students with part-time instructors have better outcomes in their current course and similar pass rates in the next course in the sequence, they are 3 to 5 percentage points less likely to enroll in that subsequent course. The negative effects on subsequent enrollment are… Continue Reading →
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