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.
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 Policy Brief No. 22
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
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.
This paper was published in the Journal of Teacher Education in July 2021 and can be found here.
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
CALDER Policy Brief No. 21-1120
Understanding the early teacher pipeline, how many and what types of individuals are pursuing a teaching credential, is critically important. Unfortunately, the two national data collections that can be used to explore this provide incomplete and contrasting pictures. We find that Title II and Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS) information about the early teacher pipeline diverge in the number of individuals completing their training as teachers. Title II is explicitly intended to describe the early teacher pipeline, but undercounts teacher candidates. IPEDS also provides an incomplete picture as, for instance, it likely suffers from “double counting”. In the concluding section we describe changes to data collection that could lead to more accurate and detailed information about the early teacher pipeline.
This policy brief was originally posted Novermber 2020 and was updated April 2021.
This policy brief has been published in Phi Delta Kappan, Novemeber 2021, and can be viewed here.
Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Kristian Holden (2020). Understanding the Early Teacher Pipeline: What We Can (and, Importantly, Can't) Learn from National Data. CALDER Policy Brief No. 21
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
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.
This paper was published in AERA Open in June 2021 and can be found here.
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 (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
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
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
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.
This paper has been published in American Educational Research Journal and can be found here (February 2022).
Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Matthew 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
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
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.
This paper was published in Economics of Education Review in August 2021 and can be found here.
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
CALDER Policy Brief No. 20-0620
One of the unfortunate consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is that the sharp downturn in tax revenues, in the absence of a federal bailout, likely foretells unprecedented cuts in state and local budgets. This will in turn mean large cuts in teaching positions across the country; indeed, some projections suggest that the number of teacher layoffs in public schools could be in the hundreds of thousands.
There is little doubt that this will have significant impacts on students. But we’ve also learned some lessons from the Great Recession, the last time that layoffs (and the threat of layoffs) were a prominent feature of the education landscape. These lessons won’t allow policymakers to eliminate the educational harm associated with layoffs, but they do suggest concrete ways to mitigate the harm to students associated with painful cuts to educational budgets. In this policy brief, we describe some of the research on the effects of teacher layoffs, and what it suggests about impacts on students.
Citation: Dan Goldhaber, Roddy Theobald (2020). The COVID-19 Crisis and Teacher Layoffs: Research on How to Mitigate Harm. CALDER Policy Brief No. 20
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.
This paper was published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis in July 2021 and can be found here.
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.
This paper was published in Educatinal Evaluation and Policy Analysis in November 2020 and can be found here.
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, 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 examines the effects of internal migration driven by severe natural disasters on host communities, and the mechanisms behind these effects, using the large influx of migrants into Florida public schools after Hurricane Maria. I find adverse effects of the influx in the first year on existing student test scores, disciplinary problems, and student mobility among high-performing students in middle and high school that also persist in the second year. I also find evidence that compensatory resource allocation within schools is an important factor driving the adverse effects of large, unexpected migrant flows on incumbent students in the short-run.
This paper was published in The Journal of Human Resources in January 2021 and can be found here.
WP 233-0320 was originally released in March 2020. This updated version, WP 233-0320-2, was released in January 2021.
Citation: Umut Özek (2020). Examining the Educational Spillover Effects of Severe Natural Disasters: The Case of Hurricane Maria . CALDER Working Paper No. 233-0320-2
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.
This paper was published in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis in August 2021 and can be found here.
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
We use data on the teacher preparation experiences and workforce outcomes of more than 1,300 graduates of special education teacher education programs in Washington to provide a descriptive portrait of special education teacher preparation, workforce entry, and early career retention. We find high rates of workforce entry for special education candidates (over 80%), but we document considerably lower rates of entry into special education classrooms for candidates who hold a dual endorsement in special education and another subject. We also find that special education teachers who are dual endorsed and begin their careers teaching in special education classrooms are less likely stay in these classrooms. Both sets of findings are supported by an instrumental variable analysis that exploits passing score cutoffs on required licensure tests to provide plausibly causal evidence that obtaining a dual endorsement significantly reduces the likelihood that special education candidates teach in special education classrooms.
This paper has been published in Exceptional Children and can be found here, April 2021.
Citation: Roddy Theobald, Dan Goldhaber, Natsumi Naito, Marcy Stein (2020). The Special Education Teacher Pipeline: Teacher Preparation, Workforce Entry, and Retention. CALDER Working Paper No. 231-0220
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.
This paper has been published in Race and Social Problems and can be found here, January 2021.
Citation: Charles Clotfelter, Helen Ladd, Calen R. Clifton, Mavzuna Turaeva (2020). School Segregation at the Classroom Level in a Southern ‘New Destination’ State. CALDER Working Paper No. 230-0220-3
Teacher turnover has adverse consequences for student achievement and imposes large financial costs for schools. Some have argued that high-stakes testing may lower teachers’ satisfaction with their jobs and could be a major contributor to teacher attrition. In this paper, we exploit changes in the tested grades and subjects in Georgia to study the effects of eliminating high-stakes testing on teacher turnover and the distribution of teachers across grades and schools. To measure the effect of testing pressures on teacher mobility choices we use a "difference-in-differences" approach,comparing changes in mobility over time in grades/subjects that discontinue testing vis-à-vis grades/subjects that are always tested. Our results show that eliminating testing did not have an impact on the likelihood of leaving teaching, changing schools within a district, or moving between districts. We only uncover small negative effects on the likelihood of grade switching. However,we do find relevant positive effects on retention of beginning teachers in the profession. In particular, the average probability of exit for teachers with 0-4 years of experience fell from 14 to13 percentage points for teachers in grades 1 and 2 and from 14 to 11 percentage points in grades 6 and 7.
Citation: Dillon Fuchsman, Tim Sass, Gema Zamarro (2020). Testing, Teacher Turnover and the Distribution of Teachers Across Grades and Schools. CALDER Working Paper No. 229-0220
