Education Level

We evaluate the feasibility of estimating test-score growth with a gap year in testing data, informing the scenario when state testing resumes after the 2020 COVID-19 induced test stoppage. Our research design is to simulate a gap year in testing using pre-COVID-19 data—when a true test gap did not occur—which facilitates comparisons of district- and school-level growth measures that are estimated with and without a gap year. We find that growth estimates based on the full data and gap-year data are generally similar, and our results highlight an advantage of using comprehensive growth models with rich controls for student and schooling circumstances. With the caveat that there is looming uncertainty about which students will be tested in public schools when testing resumes, and how they will be tested, our findings establish the potential for estimating useful growth measures with a gap year in testing.

Citation: Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons, Cheng Qian (2021). Estimating Test-Score Growth with a Gap Year in the Data. CALDER Working Paper No. 248-0121

How much do teachers value compensation deferred for retirement (CDR)? This question is important because the vast majority of public school teachers are covered by defined benefit (DB) pension plans that “backload” a large share of compensation to retirement relative to the compensation structure in the private sector, and there is scant evidence about whether pension structures are consistent with teacher preferences for current compensation versus CDR. This study examines a unique setting in Washington State, where teachers are enrolled in a hybrid pension system that has both DB and defined contribution (DC) components. We exploit the fact that teachers have choices over their DC contribution rate to infer their revealed preferences for current versus CDR. We find that teachers on average contribute 7.23 percent of salary income toward retirement; 62 percent in fact elect to contribute more than the minimally required contribution of 5 percent. This suggests that teachers value CDR far more than suggested by prior evidence.

Working paper 242-0920 was originally released in September 2020 under the title "How Much do Teachers Value Deferred Compensation? Evidence from Defined Contribution Rate Choices". This is an updated version, released April 2021. 

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Kristian Holden (2020). How Much do Teachers Value Compensation Deferred for Retirement? Evidence from Defined Contribution Rate Choices. CALDER Working Paper No. 242-0920-2

Many states enhanced benefits in teacher retirement plans during the 1990s. This paper examines the school staffing effects of one such enhancement in a major urban school district with mostly high poverty schools. Pension rule changes in 1999 for St. Louis public school teachers resulted in very large increases in pension wealth for active teachers, as well as a powerful increase in “push” incentives for earlier retirement. Simple descriptive statistics on retirement patterns before and after the enhancements suggest much earlier retirement resulted. Shorter teaching spells imply a steady state with more teaching vacancies and a larger share of novice teachers in classrooms. To better understand the long run effects of these changes and alternatives policies, the authors estimate a structural model of teacher retirement. Simulations of retirement behavior for a representative senior teacher point to shorter completed teaching spells and earlier retirement age as a result of the enhancements. By contrast, moving from the post-1999 to a DC- type plan would extend the teaching career of a representative senior teacher by roughly three years. Simulations of voluntary DC conversation plans suggest that many senior teachers would enroll, thereby reducing workforce turnover, and overall pension costs.

Citation: Shawn Ni, Michael Podgursky, Xiqian Wang (2020). Teacher Pension Enhancements and Staffing in an Urban School District. CALDER Working Paper No. 240-0620

Defined benefit (DB) pension plans incentivize “salary spiking,” where sharp increases in pay are leveraged into significantly higher levels of retirement compensation. While egregious instances of salary spiking occasionally make headlines, the prevalence of salary spiking is poorly understood. Moreover, there is little guidance on the definition of salary spiking behavior and how to identify it. This paper develops an empirical method to quantify the prevalence of salary spiking by identifying cases where end-of-career compensation deviates from the expected level of compensation. We apply this method to teacher pension systems in Illinois to assess the prevalence of salary spiking before and after the implementation of a reform designed to dissuade salary spiking.

Working paper 238-0620 was originally released in June 2020 under the title "A Method for Identifying Salary Spiking: An Assessment of Pensionable Compensation and Reform in Illinois". This is an updated version, released April 2021.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Kristian Holden (2020). Identifying Teacher Salary Spiking and Assessing the Impact of Pensionable Compensation Reforms in Illinois. CALDER Working Paper No. 238-0620-2

We use a novel database of student teaching placements in Washington State to investigate teachers’ transitions from student teaching classrooms to first job classrooms and the implications for student achievement. We find that first-year teachers are more effective when they are teaching in the same grade, in the same school level, or in a classroom with student demographics similar to their student teaching classroom. We also document that only 27% of first-year teachers are teaching the same grade they student taught, and that first-year teachers tend to begin their careers in higher-poverty classrooms than their student teaching placements. This suggests that better aligning student teacher placements with first-year teacher hiring could be a policy lever for improving early-career teacher effectiveness.

Citation: John Krieg, Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald (2020). Disconnected Development? The Importance of Specific Human Capital in the Transition from Student Teaching to the Classroom. CALDER Working Paper No. 236-0520

The Community Eligibility Provision (CEP) is a policy change to the federally-administered National School Lunch Program that allows schools serving low-income populations to classify all students as eligible for free meals, regardless of individual circumstances. This has implications for the use of free and reduced-price meal (FRM) data to proxy for student disadvantage in education research and policy applications, which is a common practice. We document empirically how the CEP has affected the value of FRM eligibility as a proxy for student disadvantage. At the individual student level, we show that there is essentially no effect of the CEP. However, the CEP does meaningfully change the information conveyed by the share of FRM-eligible students in a school. It is this latter measure that is most relevant for policy uses of FRM data.

Note: Portions of this paper were previously circulated under the title “Using Free Meal and Direct Certification Data to Proxy for Student Disadvantage in the Era of the Community Eligibility Provision.” We have since split the original paper into two parts. This is the first part.

WP 234-0320 was originally released in March 2020. This is the third update, WP 234-0320-3, which was released in September 2020.

Citation: Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons (2020). The Effect of the Community Eligibility Provision on the Ability of Free and Reduced-Price Meal Data to Identify Disadvantaged Students. CALDER Working Paper No. 234-0320-3

This study adds to the currently limited evidence base on the efficacy of interventions targeting non-college-ready high school students by examining the impact of Kentucky’s Targeted Interventions (TI) program. We focus on interventions that students received under TI in the senior year of high school based on their 11th grade ACT test scores. Using difference-in-regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference designs with seven cohorts of 11th grade students, we find that, for an average per-student cost of about $600, TI significantly reduces the likelihood that students enroll in remedial course in both 2- and 4-year postsecondary institutions by 5–10 percentage points in math and 3–4 percentage points in English. These effects are similar among students who are eligible for free-or reduced-price lunch, Black and Hispanic students, students with remediation needs in multiple subjects, and students in lower-performing schools. Evidence also shows that TI increases the likelihood that students enroll in and pass college math before the end of the first year by four percentage points in 4-year universities. However, little evidence exists for TI affecting credit accumulation or persistence.

Citation: Zeyu Xu, Benjamin Backes, Amanda Oliveira, Dan Goldhaber (2020). Targeted Interventions in High School: Preparing Students for College. CALDER Working Paper No. 232-0220

Using detailed administrative data for public schools, we document racial and ethnic segregation at the classroom level in North Carolina, a state that has experienced a sharp increase in Hispanic enrollment.  We decompose classroom-level segregation in counties into within-school and between-school components. We find that the within-school component accounted for a sizable share of total segregation in middle schools and high schools. Recognizing its importance could temper the praise for school assignment policies that reduce racial disparities between schools but allow large disparities within them. More generally, we observe between the two components a complementary relationship, with one component tending to be large when the other one is small. Comparing the degree of segregation for the state’s two largest racial/ethnic minority groups, we find that White/Hispanic segregation was more severe than White/Black segregation, particularly within schools. Finally, we examine enrollment patterns by course and show that school segregation brings with it differences by race and ethnicity in the courses that students take, with White students more likely to be enrolled in advanced classes.

WP 230-0220 was originally released in February 2020. This is the third update, WP 230-0220-3, released in January 2021.

Citation: Charles Clotfelter, Helen Ladd, Calen R. Clifton, Mavzuna R. Turaeva (2020). School Segregation at the Classroom Level in a Southern ‘New Destination’ State. CALDER Working Paper No. 230-0220-3

While the majority of students with disabilities (SWDs) receive instruction from general education teachers, little empirical work has investigated the ways in which these students have equitable access to high-quality teachers. We explore the differences in teacher quality experienced by SWDs and general education (GEN) students and how that access varies with school-level disadvantage by estimating SWD teacher quality gaps in the Los Angeles Unified School District. We examine several different indicators of teacher effectiveness (hiring scores, teacher experience, teachers’ ratings on their observation-based performance evaluations, and value-added measures) for general education teachers who instruct both SWDs and general education (GEN) students. We find that SWDs are significantly more likely to have lower math VAM teachers than their GEN peers, and these gaps do not vary by school-level disadvantage. We find no differences on the other indicators of teacher effectiveness.

Citation: Ijun Lai, W. Jesse Wood, Scott A. Imberman, Nathan Jones, Katharine Strunk (2020). Teacher Quality Gaps by Disability and Socioeconomic Status: Evidence from Los Angeles. CALDER Working Paper No. 228-0220