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.
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Publications
Displaying 1 - 20 of 208
Aug 2018
Full Abstract
Instructional time is a fundamental educational input, yet we have little causal evidence about the effect of longer school days on student achievement. This paper uses a sharp regression discontinuity design to estimate the effects of lengthening the school day for low-performing schools in Florida by exploiting an administrative cutoff for eligibility. Our results indicate significant positive effects of additional literacy instruction on student reading achievement. In particular, we find effects of 0.05 standard deviations of improvement in reading test scores for program assignment in the first year, though long-run effects are difficult to assess.
Citation: David Figlio, Kristian Holden, Umut Ozek (2018). Do Students Benefit from Longer School Days? Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida's Additional Hour of Literacy Instruction. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 110 818.
Jul 2018
Full Abstract
As states attempt to staff public school classrooms with qualified teachers, primary attention has focused on educator preparation and early career retention. Far less research has examined the staffing consequences of turnover induced by teacher pension plans. This paper makes use of a unique longitudinal data file with performance measures for all public school teachers in Tennessee. Descriptive analysis finds that higher quality teachers are less likely to retire for a given age and experience. To better understand the effects of pension plan incentives on workforce quality, we estimate a structural retirement model that explicitly allows for different work-retirement preferences for high and low quality teachers. We find that high quality teachers have a lower disutility for teaching as compared to retirement. Given that it costs less to keep high as compared to low quality teachers on the job, we use the structural estimates to simulate the effect of retention bonuses targeted to the former. One year retention bonuses produce an additional year of high quality teaching at a cost of roughly $40,000.
Citation: Shawn Ni, Michael Podgursky, Xiqian Wang (2018). Teacher Pension Plan Incentives, Retirement Decisions, and Workforce Quality. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 120 718.
Jul 2018
Full Abstract
We use longitudinal data on high school students in Washington State to assess the relationships between English Language Arts (ELA) teacher value added and other qualifications and the high school and postsecondary outcomes of their students. We also investigate whether these relationships differ for students with and without disabilities. We find that students assigned to 10th grade ELA teachers with higher value added have better test scores, are more likely to graduate on-time, and are more likely to attend and graduate from a four-year college than observably similar students assigned to 10th grade ELA teachers with lower value added. We also find that many of these relationships vary for students with and without disabilities, as 10th grade ELA teacher value added is more positively predictive of on-time graduation and four-year college attendance for students without disabilities, but more positively predictive of two-year college attendance and employment within two years of graduation for students with disabilities. In contrast to value added, other teacher characteristics like experience, degree level, endorsement area, and licensure test scores do not consistently predict better outcomes for students with or without disabilities.
Citation: Roddy Theobald, Dan Goldhaber, Trevor Gratz, Kristian Holden (2018). High School English Language Arts Teachers and Postsecondary Outcomes for Students With and Without Disabilities. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 110 718.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
We document patterns and trends in school segregation in North Carolina between 1998 and 2016, a period of rapid immigration in this racially diverse state. As in other states of the South, the period of court orders enforcing racial balance has given way not only to tacit acceptance of residentially based school segregation but also to policies that offer parents alternatives to traditional public schools. Most prominent among these alternatives in North Carolina are charter schools, which have expanded rapidly with the state’s blessing. Following the prevailing practice of social scientists, we measure segregation by the degree of imbalance across schools, using counties and metropolitan areas as basic geographical units. We differentiate students according to their racial/ethnic group and also to their family income. We take into account all students including those in private schools, charter schools and traditional public schools.
For the state as a whole, we find that white/nonwhite segregation increased over the period. Most of the increase was in urban areas. We also find that low-income students became more segregated from other students. Segregation measured either way increased sharply in Charlotte-Mecklenburg, which significantly changed its student assignment policy following a federal court order. Compared to metropolitan areas in other parts of the U.S., urban areas in the state have modest levels of segregation, because most districts are county-wide and thus large and diverse. We decompose metropolitan segregation, separating the portions due to private schools, charter schools, racial disparities between school districts, and racial disparities within districts. Charter schools and within-district disparities accounted for the increase in average segregation in metropolitan areas over the period. More generally, areas where school segregation increased the most tend to be large, growing, and marked by big increases in the share of students who are Hispanic.
Citation: Charles Clotfelter, Steven Hemelt, Helen Ladd, Mavzuna Turaeva (2018). School Segregation in The Era of Immigration and School Choice: North Carolina, 1998-2016. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 150 618.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
We investigate sources of variation in teacher evaluation ratings across classrooms, schools, and districts. We show that assignment to high achieving classrooms increases teacher evaluation ratings. We also document significant variation in the sensitivity of performance ratings to value-added measures of teacher effectiveness across districts. Consequently, the probability that high or low performing teachers, as measured by value added, receive the highest or lowest evaluation ratings differs considerably across school districts. Our findings suggest that statewide policies that attach high stakes to performance evaluations are likely to have different consequences across schools and districts.
Citation: James Cowan , Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald (2018). An Exploration of Sources of Variation in Teacher Evaluation Ratings across Classrooms, Schools, and Districts. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 140 618.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
This paper examines what parents value as they make choices among available charter schools, with primary attention to the racial mix of a school’s students. We estimate conditional logit models of the charter school choices made by all parents in North Carolina who switched their child from a traditional public school to a charter school in 2014/15. Our findings that parents care about the school’s racial mix of students and that such preferences differ by the race and income of the choosers highlight the pressures that lead charter schools to be racially imbalanced. Our models also include other factors that parents may value such as the distance to the charter, the school’s academic performance, the services provided by the charter, such as subsidized lunch and transportation, and the school’s mission and approach.
Citation: Helen Ladd, Charles Clotfelter, Mavzuna Turaeva (2018). Choosing Charter Schools in North Carolina: What Do Parents Value?. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 130 618.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
We examine how pension rule changes affected teacher retirement by estimating an option-value retirement model on a large cohort of late career Missouri public school teachers from 1994 to 2008. In so doing we offer potential solutions to several statistical challenges that arise in estimating structural models of retirement on large panel data sets. The first concerns modelling the formation of teacher expectations of future pension rules. The second is bias induced by baseline sample selection: in baseline cohorts we only observe teachers who are still working. This bias also evolves with pension rule changes. A third challenge arises from maximum-likelihood estimation using large panels of micro-data on individual teachers. The teacher-level data can be difficult to obtain and the likelihood of teacher-data is costly to compute in large panels. We address these challenges by incorporating policy expecta- tions and sample selection directly into estimation of the likelihood. We also show that the likelihood can be efficiently estimated by using teacher data grouped by age and experience cells, which permits: a) estimating structural models of teacher retirement with data that are more widely available, and b) dramatic reductions in computation cost. Counterfactual simulations of the estimated structural model suggest that Missouri’s pension enhancements led to earlier retirement by about 0.4 years on average for the 1994 cohort and by more than one year in a steady state. Enhancements increased steady state pension liabilities by 16 percent for senior teachers.
Citation: Wei Kong, Shawn Ni, Michael Podgursky, Weiwei Wu (2018). Pension Enhancements and Teacher Retirement. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 120 618.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
We study a teacher incentive policy in Washington State that awards a financial bonus to National Board certified teachers in high poverty schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the bonus policy increased the proportion of certified teachers in bonus-eligible schools by improving hiring, increasing certification rates of incumbent teachers, and reducing turnover. Depending on the method, we estimate that the proportion of NBCTs in treated schools increased by about four to eight percentage points over the first five years of eligibility. However, the improvement in certification rates corresponds to a change of about 0.2 to 0.3 percent of a standard deviation in teacher quality per year and we do not find evidence that the bonus resulted in detectible effects on student test achievement.
Citation: James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber (2018). Do Bonuses Affect Teacher Staffing and Student Achievement in High Poverty Schools? Evidence from an Incentive for National Board Certified Teachers in Washington State. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 110 618.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
Accurate understanding of environmental moderation of genetic influences is vital to advancing the science of cognitive development as well as for designing interventions. One widely- reported idea is increasing genetic influence on cognition for children raised in higher socioeconomic status families, including recent proposals that the pattern is a particularly US phenomenon. We use matched birth and school records from Florida siblings and twins born in 1994-2002 to provide the largest, most population-diverse consideration of this hypothesis to date. We find no evidence of SES moderation of genetic influence on test scores, suggesting that articulating gene-environment interactions for cognition is more complex and elusive than previously supposed.
Citation: David Figlio, Jeremy Freese, Krzysztof Karbownik, Jeffrey Roth (2018). Socioeconomic Status and Genetic Influences on Cognitive Development. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 193.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
It is notoriously difficult to identify peer effects within the family because of the common shocks and reflection problems. We make use of a novel identification strategy and unique data in order to gain some purchase on this problem. We employ data from the universe of children born in Florida between 1994 and 2002 and in Denmark between 1990 and 2001, which we match to school and medical records. To address the identification problem, we examine the effects of having a sibling with a disability. Utilizing three-plus-child families, we employ a differences-in- differences research design which makes use of the fact that birth order influences the amount of time that a child spends in early childhood with their siblings, disabled or not. We observe consistent evidence in both locations that the second child in a family is differentially affected when the third child is disabled.
Citation: Sandra E. Black, Sanni Breining, David Figlio, Jonathan Guryan, Krzysztof Karbownik, Helena Skyt Nielsen, Jeffrey Roth, Marianne Simonsen (2018). Sibling Spillovers. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 192.
Jun 2018
Full Abstract
We present evidence of a positive relationship between school starting age and children’s cognitive development from age 6 to 18 using a fuzzy regression discontinuity design and large-scale population-level birth and school data from the state of Florida. We estimate effects of being old for grade (being born in September versus August) that are remarkably stable – always around 0.2 SD difference in test scores – across a wide range of heterogeneous groups, based on maternal education, poverty at birth, race/ethnicity, birth weight, gestational age, and school quality. While the September-August difference in kindergarten readiness is dramatically different by subgroup, by the time students take their first exams, the heterogeneity in estimated effects on test scores effectively disappears. We do, however, find significant heterogeneity in other outcome measures such as disability status and middle and high school course selections. We also document substantial variation in compensatory behaviors targeted towards young for grade children. While the more affluent families tend to redshirt their children, young for grade children from less affluent families are more likely to be retained in grades prior to testing. School district practices regarding retention and redshirting are correlated with improved out- comes for the groups less likely to use those remediation approaches (i.e., retention in the case of more-affluent families and redshirting in the case of less-affluent families.) Finally, we find that very few school policies or practices mitigate the test score advantage of September born children.
Citation: Elizabeth Dhuey, David Figlio, Krzysztof Karbownik, Jeffrey Roth (2018). School Starting Age and Cognitive Development. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 191.
Apr 2018
Full Abstract
Nearly two dozen states now administer online exams. These tests have real consequences: their results feed into accountability systems, which have been used for more than a decade to hold schools and districts accountable for their students’ learning. We examine the rollout of computer-based testing in Massachusetts over 2 years to investigate test mode effects. Crucial to the study design is the fact that the state administers the same exam (PARCC) in online and offline formats each year during the transitional period. We find mode effects of about 0.10 standard deviations in math and 0.25 standard deviations in English language arts (ELA). Our preferred estimates of the effects of online testing in the second year of administration suggest that mode effects for second-time test takers were about one third as large as the first year in math and about half as large in ELA. There is little evidence of systematic variation in mode effects by student demographic groups, although on ELA tests they are larger for students scoring at the bottom of the achievement distribution.
Citation: Benjamin Backes, James Cowan (2018). Is the Pen Mightier Than the Keyboard? The Effect of Online Testing on Measured Student Achievement. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 190.
Apr 2018
Full Abstract
We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to examine the role of high schools in explaining student sorting to colleges and majors at 4-year public universities. We develop a “preparation and persistence index” (PPI) for each university-by-major cell in the Missouri system that captures dimensions of selectivity and rigor and allows for a detailed investigation of sorting. Our analysis shows that students’ high schools predict the quality of the initial university, as measured by PPI, conditional on their own academic preparation, and that students from lower-SES high schools systematically enroll at lower-PPI universities. However, high schools offer little explanatory power over major placements within universities and correspondingly, there are not meaningful differences in the index-based quality of these placements by high-school SES.
WP 165 was revised in April 2018. It was originally released August 2016.
Citation: Rajeev Darolia, Cory Koedel (2018). High Schools and Students’ Initial Colleges and Majors. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 165.
Apr 2018
Full Abstract
Improving the skill set of new teachers is a potentially important policy lever to increase student achievement. There are, however, doubts about the extent to which teacher education programs contribute to the development of teachers’ skills. In this paper, we describe findings from an experiment designed to test whether one aspect of teacher education – the assignment of teacher candidates to student teaching internships – has a causal impact on the type of coaching they receive and their feelings of preparedness to teach. Specifically, we use administrative data on potential student teaching placements to predict those placements more likely to be promising, and then we randomly assign teacher candidates from one large program from Tennessee into either more promising (high index) or less promising (low index) internships. Based on data from a post-student teaching survey, we find consistently strong evidence of large effects of being assigned to high versus low index placements, particularly in terms of teacher candidates’ perceptions of the quality of instruction of their cooperating teachers and the quantity and quality of the coaching that they received. And while not as large or consistently significant, we also found that teacher candidates in high versus low placements are more likely to report better working conditions in their placement schools, higher quality collaboration among teachers, more opportunities to learn to teach, and feeling better prepared to teach. Our findings provide evidence that teacher education can have a causal effect on the development of teacher candidates and it offers practical implications for programs and districts about how to use administrative data to inform internship placement decisions.
Citation: Matthew Ronfeldt, Dan Goldhaber, James Cowan, Emanuele Bardelli, Joy Johnson, Christopher Daniel Tien (2018). Identifying Promising Clinical Placements Using Administrative Data: Preliminary Results From ISTI Placement Initiative Pilot . CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 189.
Mar 2018
Full Abstract
Few studies examine employee responses to layoff-induced unemployment risk; none that we know of quantify the impact of job insecurity on individual employee productivity. Using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District and Washington State during the Great Recession, we provide the first evidence about the impact of the layoff process on teacher productivity. In both sites we find that teachers impacted by the layoff process are less productive than those who do not face layoff-induced job threat. LAUSD teachers who are laid off and then rehired to return to the district are less productive in the two years following the layoff. Washington teachers who are given a reduction-in-force (RIF) notice and are then not laid off have reduced effectiveness in the year of the RIF. We argue that these results are likely driven by impacts of the layoff process on teachers’ job commitment and present evidence to rule out alternate explanations.
WP 140 was revised in March 2018. It was originally released in November 2015.
Citation: Katharine O. Strunk, Dan Goldhaber, David S. Knight, Nate Brown (2018). Are There Hidden Costs Associated With Conducting Layoffs? The Impact of RIFs and Layoffs on Teacher Effectiveness. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 140.
Mar 2018
Full Abstract
In the summer of 2013, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) issued public, highly-visible ratings of teacher education programs as part of their ambitious and controversial Teacher Prep Review. We provide the first empirical examination of NCTQ ratings, beginning with a descriptive overview of the ratings and documentation of how they evolved from 2013-2016, both in aggregate and for programs with different characteristics. We also report on results from an information experiment built around the initial ratings release. In the experiment we provided targeted information about specific programmatic changes that would improve the rating for a randomly selected sample of elementary teacher education programs. Average program ratings improved between 2013 and 2016, but we find no evidence that the information intervention increased program responsiveness to NCTQ’s rating effort. In fact, treated programs had lower ratings than the control group in 2016.
Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Cory Koedel (2018). Public Accountability and Nudges: The Effect of an Information Intervention on the Responsiveness of Teacher Education Programs to External Ratings. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 188.
Mar 2018
Full Abstract
We use comprehensive data on student teaching placements from 14 teacher education programs (TEPs) in Washington State to explore the sorting of teacher candidates to the teachers who supervise their student teaching (“cooperating teachers” or CTs) and the schools in which student teaching occurs. All else equal, teachers with more experience and higher degree levels are more likely to host student teachers, as are schools with lower levels of historical teacher turnover but with more open positions the following year. Teacher candidates are also more likely to work with CTs of the same gender and race, and are more likely to be placed with CTs and in schools with administrators who graduated from the candidate’s TEP. We then assess the impact of these placements on student achievement in the classrooms in which student teaching occurs, and find that a teacher’s students perform only slightly worse in math and not significantly better or worse in English Language Arts, all else equal, in years in which the teacher hosts a student teacher than in other years. The negative effect in math is driven by CTs in the lowest quartile of value added, suggesting that more effective CTs can mitigate the impact of hosting a student teacher on student performance.
Citation: Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald (2018). The Costs of Mentorship? Exploring Student Teaching Placements and Their Impact on Student Achievement. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 187.
Feb 2018
Full Abstract
UTeach is a well-known, university-based program designed to increase the number of high-quality STEM teachers in the workforce. Despite substantial investment and rapid program diffusion, there is little evidence about the effectiveness of UTeach graduates. Using administrative data from the state of Texas, we measure the impact of having a UTeach teacher on student test scores in math and science in middle schools and high schools. We find that students taught by UTeach teachers perform significantly better on end-of-grade tests in math and end-of-course tests in math and science by 8% to 14% of a standard deviation on the test, depending on grade and subject.
WP 173 was revised in February 2018. It was originally released in December 2016.
Citation: Benjamin Backes, Dan Goldhaber, Whitney Cade, Kate Sullivan , Melissa Dodson (2018). Can UTeach? Assessing the Relative Effectiveness of STEM Teachers. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 173.
Feb 2018
Full Abstract
We study the effects of access to high school math and science courses on postsecondary STEM enrollment and degree attainment using administrative microdata from Missouri. Our data panel includes over 140,000 students from 14 cohorts entering the 4-year public university system. The effects of high school course access are identified by exploiting plausibly exogenous variation in course offerings within high schools over time. We find that differential access to high school courses does not affect postsecondary STEM enrollment or degree attainment. Our null results are estimated precisely enough to rule out moderate impacts.
Citation: Rajeev Darolia, Cory Koedel, Joyce B. Main, Felix Ndashimye, Junpeng Yan (2018). High School Course Access and Postsecondary STEM Enrollment and Attainment. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 186.
Jan 2018
Full Abstract
We use panel data in Washington State to study the extent to which teacher assignments between fourth and eighth grade explain gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students—as defined by underrepresented minority status (URM) and eligibility for free or reduced price lunch (FRL)—in their eighth grade math test scores and high school course taking. We find some significant gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students in the value added of the teachers to which they are assigned in these grades, although gaps in middle school grades are sensitive to the specification of value added. We then show that teacher assignments are highly predictive of both eighth-grade test scores and advanced course taking in high school, and that differences between advantaged and disadvantaged students in teacher assignments explain significant portions of student outcome gaps. In the case of eighth-grade test scores, the URM/non-URM gap drops by more than 15% and the FRL/non-FRL gap drops by more than 20% when we control directly for teacher assignments. That said, the reduction in the achievement gap is more modest when we control for measures of teacher value added that do not control for classroom characteristics (8% and 9%, respectively), while gaps actually increase slightly when we control for measures of value added that control for classroom characteristics. These patterns are qualitatively similar and even larger in magnitude when we consider the number of advanced math courses taken in high school as the outcome.
Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald, Danielle Fumia (2018). Teacher Quality Gaps and Student Outcomes: Assessing the Association Between Teacher Assignments and Student Math Test Scores and High School Course Taking. CALDER Working Paper No. Working Paper 185.