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CALDER working papers have not undergone final formal review and should be cited as working papers. They are intended to encourage discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in these papers are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our funders. In addition to CALDER working papers, CALDER has also produced non-technical discussions called CALDER Conversations and CALDER Explainers on various education topics including teacher shortages, tenure reform, and teacher pensions.

To see CALDER Research and Opinion Briefs, visit the Policymakers Council website.

 

Displaying 1 - 20 of 260
Special Education Teacher Preparation, Literacy Instructional Alignment, and Reading Achievement for Students with High-Incidence Disabilities
Author(s):
Roddy Theobald, Dan Goldhaber, Kristian Holden, Marcy Stein
Jun 2021

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We used survey and administrative data from Washington State to assess the degree to which special education teacher preparation, district literacy instructional practices, and the alignment between preparation and practice were associated with the reading test score gains of students with high-incidence disabilities taught by early-career special education teachers in grades 4-8. These students tended to have larger reading gains when their district emphasized evidence-based literacy decoding practices (e.g., phonological awareness, phonics, and reading fluency) and when their special education teacher graduated from a teacher education program that also emphasized these practices. Students with high-incidence disabilities in districts that emphasized balanced literacy practices tended to have lower reading gains. Finally, students with high-incidence disabilities taught by early-career special education teachers tended to have larger reading gains when their teacher’s student teaching placement was supervised by a more experienced cooperating teacher.

Citation: Roddy Theobald, Dan Goldhaber, Kristian Holden, Marcy Stein (2021). Special Education Teacher Preparation, Literacy Instructional Alignment, and Reading Achievement for Students with High-Incidence Disabilities. CALDER Working Paper No. 253-0621

Free and Reduced-Price Meal Eligibility Does Not Measure Student Poverty: Evidence and Policy Significance
Author(s):
Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons
May 2021

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Free and reduced-price meal eligibility (FRM) is commonly used in education research and policy applications as an indicator of student poverty. However, using multiple data sources external to the school system, we show that FRM status is a poor proxy for poverty, with eligibility rates far exceeding what would be expected based on stated income thresholds for program participation. This is true even without accounting for community eligibility for free meals, although community eligibility has exacerbated the problem in recent years. Over the course of showing the limitations of using FRM data to measure poverty, we provide promising validity evidence for a new, publicly-available measure of school poverty based on local-area family incomes.

This Working Paper was orginally posted under the title "Free and Reduced-Price Meal Eligibility Does Not Measure Student Poverty"

Citation: Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons (2021). Free and Reduced-Price Meal Eligibility Does Not Measure Student Poverty: Evidence and Policy Significance. CALDER Working Paper No. 252-0521

Lost to the System? A Descriptive Exploration of Where Teacher Candidates Find Employment and How Much They Earn
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald, Stephanie Liddle
Apr 2021

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We use data on over 14,000 teacher candidates in Washington state, merged with employment data from the state’s public schools and Unemployment Insurance system, to investigate the career paths and earnings of teacher candidates in the state. Around 75% of candidates are employed in some education position in each of the 5 years after student teaching, but we find considerable movement from education positions outside of public schools into public school teaching positions in the first few years after candidates complete student teaching. Candidates with STEM endorsements and candidates who graduated after the Great Recession are disproportionately likely to be employed in public K–12 teaching positions compared with other education positions. Finally, candidates employed in K–12 public schools earn considerably more on average than candidates employed outside of public schools, but due to the considerable compression of teacher salaries, many candidates who do not enter teaching—particularly candidates with STEM endorsements—earn more than they would have in K–12 public schools.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald, Stephanie Liddle (2021). Lost to the System? A Descriptive Exploration of Where Teacher Candidates Find Employment and How Much They Earn. CALDER Working Paper No. 251-0421

Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of U.S. Born Students
Author(s):
David Figlio, Paola Giuliano, Riccardo Marchingiglio, Umut Özek, Paola Sapienza
Mar 2021

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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.

Citation: David Figlio, Paola Giuliano, Riccardo Marchingiglio, Umut Özek, Paola Sapienza (2021). Diversity in Schools: Immigrants and the Educational Performance of U.S. Born Students. CALDER Working Paper No. 250-0321

State Ratings of Educator Preparation Programs: Connecting Program Review to Teacher Effectiveness
Author(s):
Meagan Comb, James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber, Zeyu Jin, Roddy Theobald
Mar 2021

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States are responsible for setting and evaluating the standards that teacher preparation programs (TPPs) must meet for accreditation. Despite the considerable investment that states make in this process, no prior research has linked the ratings of TPPs generated by program reviews to inservice teacher performance. In this paper, we describe analyses of program review ratings from Massachusetts and their relationship to formal inservice teacher evaluation ratings and the value-added effectiveness of teachers. When comparisons are made across all schools and districts in the state, we find that a TPP’s review scores are positively predictive of both inservice teacher evaluations and value added of TPP graduates, particularly when scores are aggregated within specific categories like partnerships and fieldbased practices. These relationships, however, become more modest for teacher evaluations and statistically insignificant for value added when the relationships are identified based on comparisons between TPP graduates who are teaching in the same schools and districts. It is not possible to separate whether these differences are due to the TPPs, the schools and districts themselves, or the connections between them, so future work is necessary to further validate TPP review scores in this setting and others.

Citation: Meagan Comb, James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber, Zeyu Jin, Roddy Theobald (2021). State Ratings of Educator Preparation Programs: Connecting Program Review to Teacher Effectiveness. CALDER Working Paper No. 249-0321

Estimating Test-Score Growth with a Gap Year in the Data
Author(s):
Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons, Cheng Qian
Jan 2021

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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

To What Extent Does In-Person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of COVID-19? Evidence from Michigan and Washington
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Scott A. Imberman, Katharine Strunk, Bryant Hopkins, Nate Brown, Erica Harbatkin, Tara Kilbride
Dec 2020

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The decision about how and when to open schools to in-person instruction has been a key question for policymakers throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The instructional modality of schools has implications not only for the health and safety of students and staff, but also student learning and the degree to which parents can engage in job activities. We consider the role of instructional modality (inperson, hybrid, or remote instruction) in disease spread among the wider community. Using a variety of regression modeling strategies to address unobserved heterogeneity, we find that simple correlations show in-person modalities are correlated with increased COVID cases, but accounting for both pre-existing cases and a richer set of covariates brings estimates close to zero on average. In Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) specifications, in-person modality options are not associated with increased spread of COVID at low levels of pre-existing COVID cases, but cases do increase at moderate to high pre-existing COVID rates. A bounding exercise suggests that the OLS findings for in-person modality are likely to represent an upper bound on the true relationship. These findings are robust to the inclusion of county and district fixed effects in terms of the insignificance of the findings, but the models with fixed effects are also somewhat imprecisely estimated.

Working Paper No. 247-1220 was originally released in December 2020 and has since been updated to Working Paper No. 247-1220-2, released in January 2021. 

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Scott A. Imberman, Katharine Strunk, Bryant Hopkins, Nate Brown, Erica Harbatkin, Tara Kilbride (2020). To What Extent Does In-Person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of COVID-19? Evidence from Michigan and Washington. CALDER Working Paper No. 247-1220-2

Front End to Back End: Teacher Preparation, Workforce Entry, and Attrition
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald, Marcelle Goggins
Dec 2020

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We use a novel database of over 15,000 teacher candidates from 15 teacher education programs in Washington state to investigate the connections between specific teacher preparation experiences (e.g., endorsements, licensure test scores, and student teaching placements) and the likelihood that these candidates enter and leave the state’s public teaching workforce within their first 2 years. As has been found in prior research, candidates with endorsements in hard-to-staff subjects like science, technology, engineering, and math and special education are significantly more likely to enter the public teaching workforce than candidates with elementary endorsements. We also find large differences in hiring rates over time, as candidates who graduated in the years prior to and during the Great Recession are far less likely to be hired than candidates in recent years. Finally, teacher candidates hired into the same school type (elementary, middle, or high school) or into schools and classrooms with similar student demographics as their student teaching placement are more likely to stay in the teaching workforce than other candidates who experience less alignment.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald, Marcelle Goggins (2020). Front End to Back End: Teacher Preparation, Workforce Entry, and Attrition. CALDER Working Paper No. 246-1220

Teacher Licensure Tests: Barrier or Predictive Tool?
Author(s):
James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber, Zeyu Jin, Roddy Theobald
Oct 2020

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We use teacher candidate test scores on the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure (MTEL), linked to student and teacher outcomes in the state, to investigate the predictive validity of these teacher licensure tests. We find that MTEL scores are positive and statistically significant predictors of teachers’ in-service performance ratings and contributions to student test scores (i.e., value added) once they enter the workforce. We then explore whether these relationships vary for candidates and teachers of color. We find that teacher candidates of color have lower first-time pass rates and are also less likely to retake licensure tests if they fail than are White teacher candidates, but we do not find consistent evidence that MTEL scores are less predictive of value added for teachers of color. Finally, we find that MTEL scores are more predictive of teacher performance ratings for teachers of color than for White teachers.

Citation: James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber, Zeyu Jin, Roddy Theobald (2020). Teacher Licensure Tests: Barrier or Predictive Tool?. CALDER Working Paper No. 245-1020

The Potential for Community College Students to Expand and Diversify University Degree Production in STEM Fields
Author(s):
Cheng Qian , Cory Koedel
Oct 2020

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We use rich administrative microdata from Missouri to examine the potential to expand and diversify the production of STEM degrees at universities by tapping into the population of community college students. We find that the scope for expansion is modest, even at an upper bound, because most community college students have academic qualifications that make them unlikely to succeed in a STEM field at a university. We also find there is almost no scope for community college students to improve the racial/ethnic diversity of four-year STEM degree recipients. We conclude that it will be challenging to expand and diversify STEM degree production at universities with interventions targeted toward community college students.

Citation: Cheng Qian , Cory Koedel (2020). The Potential for Community College Students to Expand and Diversify University Degree Production in STEM Fields . CALDER Working Paper No. 244-1020

How Do Teachers from Alternative Pathways Contribute to the Teaching Workforce in Urban Areas? Evidence from Kansas City
Author(s):
Yang An, Cory Koedel
Sep 2020

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We examine how teachers from two alternative preparation programs—Teach for America (TFA) and Kansas City Teacher Residency (KCTR)—contribute to the teacher labor market in and around Kansas City, Missouri. We show that TFA and KCTR teachers are more likely than other teachers to work in charter schools, and more broadly, in schools with high concentrations of low-income, low-performing, and underrepresented minority (Black and Hispanic) students. TFA and KCTR teachers are themselves more racially/ethnically diverse than the larger local-area teaching workforce, but only KCTR teachers are more diverse than teachers in the same districts in which they work. In math in grades 4-8 we find sizeable, positive impacts of TFA and KCTR teachers on test-score growth relative to non-program teachers. We also estimate positive impacts on test-score growth in English Language Arts (ELA) for teachers from both programs, but our ELA estimates are smaller in magnitude.

Citation: Yang An, Cory Koedel (2020). How Do Teachers from Alternative Pathways Contribute to the Teaching Workforce in Urban Areas? Evidence from Kansas City. CALDER Working Paper No. 243-0920

How Much do Teachers Value Compensation Deferred for Retirement? Evidence from Defined Contribution Rate Choices
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Kristian Holden
Sep 2020

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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

Is Online a Better Baseline? Comparing the Predictive Validity of Computer- and Paper-Based Tests
Author(s):
Benjamin Backes, James Cowan
Aug 2020

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Prior work has documented a substantial penalty associated with taking the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) online relative to on paper (Backes & Cowan, 2019). However, this penalty does not necessarily make online tests less useful. For example, it could be the case that computer literacy skills are correlated with students’ future ability to navigate high school coursework, and thus more predictive of later outcomes. Using a statewide implementation of PARCC in Massachusetts, we test the relative predictive validity of online and paper tests. We are unable to detect a difference between the two and in most cases can rule out even modest differences. Finally, we estimate mode effects for the new Massachusetts statewide assessment. In contrast to the first years of PARCC implementation, we find very small mode effects, showing that it is possible to implement online assessments at scale without large online penalties.

Citation: Benjamin Backes, James Cowan (2020). Is Online a Better Baseline? Comparing the Predictive Validity of Computer- and Paper-Based Tests. CALDER Working Paper No. 241-0820

Teacher Pension Enhancements and Staffing in an Urban School District
Author(s):
Shawn Ni, Michael Podgursky, Xiqian Wang
Jun 2020

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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

Room for Improvement? Mentor Teachers and the Evolution of Teacher Preservice Clinical Evaluations
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Matt Ronfeldt, James Cowan, Trevor Gratz, Emanuele Bardelli, Matt Truwit, Hannah Mullman
Jun 2020

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The clinical teaching experience is one of the most important components of teacher preparation. Prior observational research has found that more effective mentors and schools with better professional climates are associated with better preparation for teacher candidates. We test these findings using an experimental assignment of teacher candidates to placement sites in two states. Candidates who were randomly assigned to higher quality placement sites experienced larger improvements in performance over the course of the clinical experience, as evaluated by university instructors. The findings suggest that improving clinical placement procedures can improve the teaching quality of candidates.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Matt Ronfeldt, James Cowan, Trevor Gratz, Emanuele Bardelli, Matt Truwit, Hannah Mullman (2020). Room for Improvement? Mentor Teachers and the Evolution of Teacher Preservice Clinical Evaluations. CALDER Working Paper No. 239-0620

Identifying Teacher Salary Spiking and Assessing the Impact of Pensionable Compensation Reforms in Illinois
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Kristian Holden
Jun 2020

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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

Evidence on the Dimensionality and Reliability of Professional References’ Ratings of Teacher Applicants
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Malcolm Wolff, Patricia Martinkova
Jun 2020

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There is growing interest in using measures of teacher applicant quality to improve hiring decisions, but the statistical properties of such measures are poorly understood. We present evidence on structured ratings solicited from teacher applicants’ references. We find that the reference ratings capture only one underlying dimension of applicant quality, which may indicate a need to broaden the range of questions posed to professional references. Point estimates of inter-rater reliability range between 0.23 and 0.31 and are significantly lower for novice applicants. It is difficult to judge whether these levels of reliability are high or low in the current context given so little evidence on comparable applicant assessment tools.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Cyrus Grout, Malcolm Wolff, Patricia Martinkova (2020). Evidence on the Dimensionality and Reliability of Professional References’ Ratings of Teacher Applicants. CALDER Working Paper No. 237-0620

Disconnected Development? The Importance of Specific Human Capital in the Transition from Student Teaching to the Classroom
Author(s):
John Krieg, Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald
May 2020

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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

Assessing the Accuracy of Elementary School Test Scores as Predictors of Students’ High School Outcomes
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Malcolm Wolff, Timothy Daly
May 2020

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Testing students and using test information to hold schools and, in some cases, teachers accountable for student achievement has arguably been the primary national strategy for school improvement over the past decade and a half. Tests are also intended to be used as a diagnostic tool to identify individual student needs, so that students can be set on a trajectory for long-term academic success. We use panel data from three states – North Carolina, Massachusetts and Washington State – to investigate how accurate early measures of achievement are in predicting later high school outcomes. We contribute to the literature in three distinct ways. First, the long panels we employ allow us to quantify the accuracy of models predicting how early (3rd and 4th grade) measures of student background and achievement predict several later schooling outcomes: 8th grade test achievement, high school course-taking, and high school graduation. Second, we test the extent to which predictions based on distinct segments of student data (e.g. grades 3 to 8, then 8 to 12) sacrifice forecast accuracy; this is of particular policy relevance for states or localities that do not yet have long administrative data panels. Finally, we test the degree to which the use of parameter estimates from models predicting schooling outcomes derived from one state diminish the accuracy of predicting outcomes in other states.

 

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Malcolm Wolff, Timothy Daly (2020). Assessing the Accuracy of Elementary School Test Scores as Predictors of Students’ High School Outcomes. CALDER Working Paper No. 235-0520

The Effect of the Community Eligibility Provision on the Ability of Free and Reduced-Price Meal Data to Identify Disadvantaged Students
Author(s):
Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons
Mar 2020

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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

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