There is growing concern among policy makers over the quality of the teacher workforce in general, and the distribution of effective teachers across schools. The impact of teacher attrition on overall teacher quality will depend on the effectiveness of teachers who leave the profession. Likewise, teacher turnover may alleviate or worsen inequities in the distribution of teachers, depending on whi
Teacher effectiveness varies substantially, yet principals’ evaluations of teachers often fail to differentiate performance among teachers. This study offers new evidence on principals’ subjective evaluations of their teachers’ effectiveness using two sources of data from a large, urban district: principals’ high-stakes personnel evaluations of teachers, and their low-stakes assessments of a subs
This study analyzes the effect of age-based retention on school achievement at different stages of education. Using international data from multiple waves of the PISA international assessment test, the author finds that grade retention in primary school harms student achievement across the distribution, while delayed school entry can produce positive results for those at the lower end. The identi
Nearly a dozen states have incorporated the ACT or SAT into their eleventh grade statewide assessment, requiring that all public school students take a college entrance exam. This paper exploits the implementation of this policy to show that for every ten poor students who take a college entrance exam pre-policy and score college-ready, there were an additional five poor students who did not take
The U.S. banned PCBs nearly four decades ago, but they persist in the environment and have been found in animals and humans since then. Now researchers report in ACS' journal Environmental Science & Technology that concentrations of airborne PCBs inside schools could result in some students inhaling the compounds at higher levels than they would consume through their diets. Exposure through both
Researchers have more evidence that males and females are different, this time in the fluid that helps protect the cartilage in their knee joints. They have found in the synovial fluid of this joint, clear differences in the messages cells are sending and receiving via tiny pieces of RNA, called microRNA, in males and females with the common and debilitating condition osteoarthritis. The differen
A new report from the Research Alliance for New York City Schools provides an in-depth look at high school students' pathways into and through college, revealing large improvements in college access, but also highlighting persistent differences in outcomes for historically underrepresented groups of students. New York City has made dramatic progress reducing high school dropouts and boosting on-t
As one of the largest voucher programs in the U.S., the Indiana Choice Scholarship Program has over 34,000 students participating to date. This paper examines the impact of the voucher program for students in upper elementary and middle school who use a voucher to transfer from a public to a private school during the 2011-12 through 2014-15 school years—the first four years of the program. The au
The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) recently reviewed the research on TNTP Teaching Fellows teachers and their impact on academic achievement. A new intervention report , released today (June 27) by the Institute of Education Sciences, concludes that TNTP Teaching Fellows teachers were found to have no discernible effects on the mathematics achievement of middle and high school students. TNTP Teac
At the 10-year mark for the Huntington Backpack Index, the cost of supplies and extracurricular activities has increased from 2007-2016 by 88 percent for elementary school students, 81 percent for middle school students and 68 percent for high school students. For the 2016-2017 school year, according to the Backpack Index parents can expect to pay per child: $659 for elementary school children, a
Policymakers have increasingly worked to combat teacher turnover by implementing induction programs for early-career teachers. Yet the existing evidence for the effects of induction on turnover is mixed. Drawing on data from the three most recent administrations of the Schools and Staffing and Teacher Follow-Up Surveys, as well as the Beginning Teacher Longitudinal Study, this study investigates
Over the past five years, the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) has produced an annual report called Virtual Schools in the U.S.: Politics, Performance, Policy, and Research Evidence. These reports provide an impartial
