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Baltimore City's High School Reform Initiative (Research Report)Author(s): Becky Smerdon,
Jennifer CohenThis report presents findings from the first detailed study of Baltimore's 5 year high school reform. Using administrative data, Urban Institute researchers found that test scores and attendance rates were higher for students in Baltimore's innovation high schools than in the city's comprehensive or newly formed neighborhood high schools. Students in innovation and neighborhood schools also showed more stability in their enrollment than their counterparts in comprehensive schools. These findings remained after controlling for students' backgrounds and previous achievements even though students at innovation schools were more academically advantaged than their peers in other schools prior to entering high school.
| Posted: December 16, 2007 | Availability: HTML | PDF |
Feeling the Florida Heat?: How Low-Performing Schools Respond to Voucher and Accountability Pressure (CALDER Working Paper)Author(s): Cecilia Elena Rouse,
Jane Hannaway,
Dan Goldhaber,
David FiglioThis paper brings to bear new evidence from a remarkable five-year survey conducted of a census of public schools in Florida, coupled with detailed administrative data on student performance. We show that schools facing accountability pressure changed their instructional practices in meaningful ways. In addition, we present medium-run evidence of the effects of school accountability on student test scores, and find that a significant portion of these test score gains can likely be attributed to the changes in school policies and practices that we uncover in our surveys.
| Posted: November 29, 2007 | Availability: HTML |
Value-Added Analysis and Education Policy (CALDER Brief)Author(s): Steven RivkinThis brief describes estimation and measurement issues relevant to estimating the quality of instruction in the context of a cumulative model of learning. It also discusses implications for the use of value-added estimates in personnel and compensation matters. The discussion highlights the importance of accounting for student differences and the advantages of focusing on student achievement gains as opposed to differences in test scores. Despite potential shortcomings, value-added analysis can provide valuable information for use in evaluating and compensating teachers. The key is not to be cavalier about the information contained in value-added estimates but to understand the pieces that go into producing estimates of teacher quality.
| Posted: November 29, 2007 | Availability: HTML | PDF |
From the School to the Community (mp3): Systems and Strategies for Effective Urban Schools (Audio Files / Thursday's Child)Author(s): The Urban InstituteWhat makes an effective school in a high-poverty neighborhood? How do community factors, social service systems, and school leaders affect school performance? Beatriz Chu Clewell of the Urban Institute, Cheryl Smithgall of Chapin Hall Center for Children, Bryan Samuels of Chicago Public Schools, and Cynthia Brunswick of the Chicago New Teacher Center discuss. Elizabeth Brackett from The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer moderates.
| Posted: November 02, 2007 | Availability: HTML |
Are Public Schools Really Losing Their "Best"?: Assessing the Career Transitions of Teachers and Their Implications for the Quality of the Teacher Workforce (CALDER Working Paper)Author(s): Dan Goldhaber,
Betheny Gross,
Daniel PlayerMost studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of high-quality teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, which recent research finds to be only weakly correlated with value-added measures of teachers' performance. We examine attrition and mobility of teachers using teacher value-added measures for early-career teachers in North Carolina public schools from 1996 to 2002. Our findings suggest that the most-effective teachers tend to stay in teaching and in specific schools. Contrary to common expectations, we do not find that more-effective teachers are more likely to leave more-challenging schools.
| Posted: October 29, 2007 | Availability: HTML |
