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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 290
The Effects of Middle School Remediation on Postsecondary Success: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida
Author(s):
Umut Özek
Sep 2021

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High school graduation rates in the United States are at an all-time high, yet many of these graduates are deemed not ready for postsecondary coursework when they enter college. This study examines the short-, medium-, and long-term effects of remedial courses in middle school using a regression discontinuity design. While the short-term test score benefits of taking a remedial course in English language arts in middle school fade quickly, I find significant positive effects on the likelihood of taking college credit-bearing courses in high school, college enrollment, enrolling in more selective colleges, persistence in college, and degree attainment.

 

Citation: Umut Özek (2021). The Effects of Middle School Remediation on Postsecondary Success: Regression Discontinuity Evidence from Florida. CALDER Working Paper No. 258-0921

The Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity: What States and Districts Can Do Now to Learn From American Rescue Plan ESSER Interventions
Author(s):
Heather Boughton, Jessica de Barros, Dan Goldhaber, Sydney Payne, Nathaniel Schwartz
Sep 2021

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CALDER Policy Brief No. 27-0921

 

Citation: Heather Boughton, Jessica de Barros, Dan Goldhaber, Sydney Payne, Nathaniel Schwartz (2021). The Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity: What States and Districts Can Do Now to Learn From American Rescue Plan ESSER Interventions. CALDER Working Paper No.

Career Readiness in Public High Schools: An Exploratory Analysis of Industry Recognized Credentials
Author(s):
Joshua Eagan, Cory Koedel
Sep 2021

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We use statewide administrative data from Missouri to document the prevalence of Industry Recognized Credential (IRC) programs in public high schools and understand the characteristics of students who complete IRCs. We show that 9 percent of Missouri students complete an IRC during their senior year of high school. IRC completers have lower achievement and are more likely to be disadvantaged along several measurable dimensions relative to their peers who complete analog college-ready programs, on average. Noting these average relationships, there is substantial heterogeneity among individual IRCs in terms of the types of students served: some IRCs attract students with high test scores who mostly go on to attend college, whereas others serve low-scoring students who mostly forego college. There is strong gender segregation across individual IRCs that aligns with gender segregation across occupations in the labor market.

Citation: Joshua Eagan, Cory Koedel (2021). Career Readiness in Public High Schools: An Exploratory Analysis of Industry Recognized Credentials. CALDER Working Paper No. 257-0921

What Makes for a "Gifted" Education? Exploring How Participation in Gifted Programs Affects Students' Learning Environments
Author(s):
Benjamin Backes, James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber
Aug 2021

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What does it mean for students to be in a gifted program? While about 7% of students nationally participate in gifted programs, relatively little is known about the experiences of students in these programs or how they vary across districts. Combining administrative and survey data, we describe the structure of gifted programs across nearly 300 school districts in Washington State. Using covariate adjustments and student fixed effects, we find that participation in gifted programs increases access to advanced courses, high-achieving peers, smaller classrooms, and more qualified teachers. These effects are largely concentrated in larger urban and suburban school districts that frequently run large, self-contained gifted programs. Effects of participation are much smaller for small school districts, rural or town school districts, and districts with small gifted programs. While gifted participation changes the educational environment for the average student in the state, the median school district program effect is near zero across the measures of educational environments we consider. This divergence is driven by a pattern of large school districts, high-income school districts, and urban and suburban school districts having programs with significantly larger effects on learning environments. Finally, we find that gifted program effects are larger for some student subgroups, but this is entirely due to district treatment effect heterogeneity, not differential effects on subgroups within districts.

Citation: Benjamin Backes, James Cowan, Dan Goldhaber (2021). What Makes for a "Gifted" Education? Exploring How Participation in Gifted Programs Affects Students' Learning Environments. CALDER Working Paper No. 256-0821

Academic Mobility in U.S. Public Schools: Evidence from Nearly 3 Million Students
Author(s):
Wes Austin, David Figlio, Dan Goldhaber, Eric Hanushek, Tara Kilbride, Cory Koedel, Jaeseok Sean Lee, Jin Lou, Umut Özek, Eric Parsons, Steven Rivkin, Tim Sass, Katharine Strunk
Aug 2021

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There is empirical evidence of substantial heterogeneity in economic mobility across geographic areas and the efficacy of schools has been suggested as an explanatory factor. Using administrative microdata from seven states covering nearly 3 million students, we explore the potential role of schools in promoting economic mobility by estimating cross-district variation in “academic mobility”—a term we use to describe the extent to which students’ ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their schooling careers. We show that there exists considerable heterogeneity in academic mobility across school districts. However, after aggregating our district-level measures of academic mobility to the commuting-zone level and merging them with geographically matched external estimates of economic mobility, we find little scope for geographic differences in academic mobility to meaningfully account for differences in economic mobility.

This is an updated version of the paper originally titled "Where are Initially Low-performing Students the Most Likely to Succeed? A Multi-state Analysis of Academic Mobility (Preliminary Draft)", released in February 2020.

Citation: Wes Austin, David Figlio, Dan Goldhaber, Eric Hanushek, Tara Kilbride, Cory Koedel, Jaeseok Sean Lee, Jin Lou, Umut Özek, Eric Parsons, Steven Rivkin, Tim Sass, Katharine Strunk (2021). Academic Mobility in U.S. Public Schools: Evidence from Nearly 3 Million Students. CALDER Working Paper No. 227-0821-2

Transition Intervention in High School and Pathway Through College
Author(s):
Zeyu Xu, Benjamin Backes, Dan Goldhaber
Aug 2021

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A number of school districts and states have implemented transition intervention programs designed to help high school students graduate ready for college. This study estimates the effectiveness of a transition program implemented statewide in Kentucky for high school seniors called Targeted Interventions (TI). Using 11 years of linked panel data, this study tracks the college progression of seven cohorts of students as they move from high school into college. Using a difference-in-regression discontinuity design, we estimate the program’s impact on college credit attainment and transfer as well as the extent to which the program has helped reshape pathways through college. We find that the TI program significantly increased the likelihood that students would take at least 15 credits during the first term in college, a key measure that has been shown to be predictive of college completion. These early effects, however, do not translate into statistically significant impacts on the likelihood of transfers from a 2-year to a 4-year college, or the likelihood of earning enough credits to graduate from college. We discuss some possible explanations for why the TI program did not lead to observable improvements in college transfer or credit accumulation.

Citation: Zeyu Xu, Benjamin Backes, Dan Goldhaber (2021). Transition Intervention in High School and Pathway Through College. CALDER Working Paper No. 255-0821

Assessing the Accuracy of Elementary School Test Scores as Predictors of Students’ High School Outcomes
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Malcolm Wolff, Timothy Daly
Aug 2021

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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 used for diagnostic purposes, such as to predict students at-risk of dropping out of high school. But there is policy debate about the efficacy of this usage, in part because of disagreements about whether tests are an important schooling outcome. We use panel data from three states – North Carolina, Massachusetts and Washington State – to investigate how accurate early test scores are in predicting later high school outcomes: 10th grade test achievement, the probability of taking advanced math courses in high school, and graduation. We find 3rd grade tests predict all of these outcomes with a high degree of accuracy and relatively little diminishment from using 8th grade tests. We also find evidence that using a two-stage model estimated on separate cohorts (one predicting 8th grade information using 3rd grade information, and another predicting high school outcomes with 8th grade information) only slightly diminishes forecast accuracy. Finally, the use of machine learning techniques increases accuracy of predictions over widely used linear models, but only marginally.

Working Paper 235-0520 was originally released in May 2020. This is an updated version, released August 2021.

 

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Malcolm Wolff, Timothy Daly (2021). Assessing the Accuracy of Elementary School Test Scores as Predictors of Students’ High School Outcomes. CALDER Working Paper No. 235-0821-2

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
Jul 2021

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In this paper we use data from two states—Michigan and Washington—on COVID case rates at the county level linked to information on the type of instructional modality offered by local public school districts to assess the relationship between modality and COVID outcomes. We focus primarily on COVID case rates, but also provide estimates for hospitalizations (in Washington only) and deaths. Our preferred district and month fixed effects models exploit within district (over time) variation in instructional modality and account for time-invariant district factors. In both states, we find evidence that instructional modality does lead to increases in COVID spread in communities with moderate to high levels of pre-existing COVID cases, although the causal effect is small in magnitude.

Working Paper No. 247-1220 was originally released in December 2020 and has since been updated to Working Paper No. 247-1220-3, released in July 2021. 

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Scott A. Imberman, Katharine Strunk, Bryant Hopkins, Nate Brown, Erica Harbatkin, Tara Kilbride (2021). To What Extent Does In-Person Schooling Contribute to the Spread of COVID-19? Evidence from Michigan and Washington. CALDER Working Paper No. 247-0721-3

The Front End of the STEM Teacher Pipeline: Early Career STEM Teachers' Field Experiences and Perceptions of Preparation
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald, Kathryn Choate, Nate Brown
Jul 2021

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A growing quantitative literature finds evidence that student teaching placements predict later outcomes of teacher candidates and their students, but there is little large-scale quantitative evidence about the mechanisms for these estimated relationships. We use data from a survey of STEM teachers in Washington State to better understand how their perceptions of preparation are related to student teaching placements and current classroom environment. We find evidence that the composition of students in student teaching classrooms are predictive of STEM teachers’ perceptions of their preparation. For example, STEM teachers who student taught in classrooms with more English Language Learners and economically disadvantaged students reported feeling prepared to teach these specific student populations. Likewise, STEM teachers who student taught in high-poverty classrooms tended to report feeling better prepared to manage their current classroom, particularly if they were currently teaching in a high-poverty classroom.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald, Kathryn Choate, Nate Brown (2021). The Front End of the STEM Teacher Pipeline: Early Career STEM Teachers' Field Experiences and Perceptions of Preparation. CALDER Working Paper No. 254-0721

Reflections on What Pandemic-Related State Test Waiver Requests Suggest About the Priorities for the Use of Tests
Author(s):
Paul Bruno, Dan Goldhaber
Jul 2021

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CALDER Policy Brief No. 26-0721

Students’ performance on standardized tests is clearly predictive of their later outcomes (Goldhaber & Özek, 2019) but whether the costs of administering tests are justified by the value of the tests for improving students’ outcomes is controversial. This controversy fuels heated debates over federal testing requirements, such as those instituted under No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and continued under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). All ESSA-required tests were canceled in the 2019-20 school year due to COVID-19, and there was significant political debate about whether they ought to be required in 2020-21. Ultimately the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) allowed for some testing flexibility in the form of ESSA waivers.
In this policy brief, we outline some of the common ways states might use tests to improve student outcomes and the implications of requested and approved waivers on these uses. In particular, we highlight features of waiver requests that are especially important if tests are to be used by specific actors (e.g., families) to benefit students in specific ways. We conclude with a discussion of how testing policy needs to be designed if statewide tests are going to both be useful and maintain political support.

Citation: Paul Bruno, Dan Goldhaber (2021). Reflections on What Pandemic-Related State Test Waiver Requests Suggest About the Priorities for the Use of Tests. CALDER Working Paper No.

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

Using Longitudinal Student Mobility Across Schools and Districts to Identify At-Risk Students
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Cory Koedel, Umut Özek, Eric Parsons
Apr 2021

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CALDER Policy Brief No. 25-0421

We use comprehensive administrative data from three states to document the relationships between geographic mobility and student outcomes during K-12 schooling. We focus specifically on nonstructural mobility events—which we define as school or district changes that do not occur naturally as the result of planned transitions between schools—and on longitudinal measures that capture these events cumulatively for students. We show that the number of nonstructural moves experienced by a student is a powerful indicator of low academic performance and graduation rates. Longitudinal information on student mobility is unlikely to be readily available to local practitioners—i.e., individual districts, schools, or teachers. However, due to recent investments in longitudinal data systems in most states, this information can be made available at low cost by state education agencies.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Cory Koedel, Umut Özek, Eric Parsons (2021). Using Longitudinal Student Mobility Across Schools and Districts to Identify At-Risk Students. CALDER Working Paper No.

Examining the Dimensions of Teacher Turnover
Author(s):
Chad Aldeman, Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald
Apr 2021

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CALDER Policy Brief No. 24-0421

"Sometimes a Simple Analysis Tells the Story"

Citation: Chad Aldeman, Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald (2021). Examining the Dimensions of Teacher Turnover. CALDER Working Paper No.

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

Teacher Attrition and Mobility Over Time
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald
Apr 2021

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CALDER Policy Brief No. 23-0421

"Sometimes a Simple Analysis Tells the Story"

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald (2021). Teacher Attrition and Mobility Over Time. CALDER Working Paper No.

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

Re-Thinking the Geography of Student Teaching Placements in a Post-COVID World
Author(s):
Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald
Feb 2021

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CALDER Policy Brief No. 22-0221

The overwhelming majority of public school teachers enter the teaching profession only after completing an apprenticeship as a student teacher. A growing body of research demonstrates how important the student teaching experience, also known as clinical practice, is for developing teaching capacities and shaping teacher career paths. But recent evidence also points to the broader ramifications of student teacher placements for teacher hiring and staffing challenges, particularly in rural and disadvantaged schools. In this piece, we summarize the connections between student teaching and the problems that some districts and schools face in staffing teaching positions. We argue that pandemic-induced changes to student teaching can be leveraged to address these longstanding issues in the teacher pipeline.

Citation: Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, Roddy Theobald (2021). Re-Thinking the Geography of Student Teaching Placements in a Post-COVID World. CALDER Working Paper No.

Estimating Test-Score Growth for Schools and Districts 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 for schools and districts with a gap year in test data. Our research design uses a simulated gap year in testing when a true test gap did not occur, which facilitates comparisons of district- and school-level growth estimates with and without a gap year. We find that growth estimates based on the full data and gap year data are generally similar, establishing that useful growth measures can be constructed with a gap year in test data. Our findings apply most directly to testing disruptions that occur in the absence of other disruptions to the school system. They also provide insights about the test stoppage induced by COVID-19, although our work is just a first step toward producing informative school- and district-level growth measures from the pandemic period.

This is an updated version of the paper originally titled "Estimating Test-Score Growth with a Gap Year in the Data", released in January 2021.

This paper has been published in AERA Open and can be viewed here, August 2021.

Citation: Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, Eric Parsons, Cheng Qian (2021). Estimating Test-Score Growth for Schools and Districts with a Gap Year in the Data. CALDER Working Paper No. 248-0121-2

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