There is considerable debate and evidence about how governments should regulate contractors and other firms, but little on how government should regulate schools. In the first phase of this study, we focus on the correlation between indices of state charter school policies and measures of charter quantity (market share) and three measures of…

Applying qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to large Ns relaxes researchers' case-based knowledge. This is problematic because causality in QCA is inferred from a dialogue between empirical, theoretical, and case-based knowledge. The lack of case-based knowledge may be remedied by various robustness tests. However, being a case-based method,…

On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization officially declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, causing one of the largest disruptions to schooling in history. The COVID-19 pandemic introduced unprecedented challenges for education research and large-scale assessments of student populations. Both schools and researchers were forced to modify…

This dissertation investigates the inequitable distribution and causal impacts of mathematics teachers' content knowledge for teaching (CKT) on instructional quality and student learning outcomes. Using the rich information in the Measures of Effective Teaching (MET) project longitudinal database, the study addresses three core research questions:…

Context: Improving teacher quality and granting every student equal access to high-quality instruction have been a shared goal of many parents, educators, and policy makers for decades. In practice, teacher qualification measures (e.g. teacher degree, years of experience etc.) are often used as proxies of teacher quality. However, Shulman (1986)…