Comparative interrupted time series (CITS) designs evaluate impact by modeling the relative deviation from trends among a treatment and comparison group after an intervention. The broad applicability of the design means it is widely used in education research. Like all non-experimental evaluation methods however, the internal validity of a given…

We use data from six Washington State teacher education programs to investigate the relationship between teacher candidates' student teaching experiences and their later teaching effectiveness. Our primary finding is that teachers are more effective when the student demographics of their current school are similar to the student demographics of…

Although the importance of primary schools in the long term is of interest in educational effectiveness research, few studies have examined the long-term effects of schools over the past decades. In the present study, long-term effects of primary schools on the educational positions of students 2 and 4 years after starting secondary education are…

The purpose of this study is to examine graduation and dropout rates for Hispanic or Latino K-12 students enrolled in fully online and blended public school settings in Arizona. The independent variables of school type (charter vs. non-charter) and delivery method (fully online vs. blended) were examined using multivariate and univariate methods…

A growing number of states experimented with alternative governance structures in response to pressure to raise student achievement. Post-Katrina experimentation in New Orleans was widely regarded as a model example of new governance reforms and provided a unique opportunity to learn about the variation in student achievement and behavior within…

This brief describes (1) what parents look for when they choose a school and (2) how these preferences affect the sorting of students into schools under different school-choice policies. The findings are based on lists of preferred schools submitted by over 20,000 applicants to a citywide lottery for more than 100 traditional and charter public…

We estimate school-choice preferences revealed by the rank-ordered lists submitted by more than 22,000 applicants to a citywide lottery for more than 200 traditional and charter public schools in Washington, DC. The results confirm previously reported findings that commuting distance, school demographics, and academic indicators play important…

Disparate findings on whether students attending charter schools outperform peers in traditional public schools (TPS) may stem from mixing differing types of charters or inadequately accounting for pupil background. To gauge prior family selection and heterogeneous effects, we distinguish between conversion and start-up charter schools, along with…

Schools and neighborhoods are thought to be two of the most important contextual influences on student academic outcomes. Drawing on a unique data set that permits simultaneous estimation of neighborhood and school contributions to student test score gains, we analyze the distributions of these contributions to consider the relative importance of…

A large urban district (N = 90,546 students, n = 180 schools) implemented restorative interventions as a response to school discipline incidents. Findings from multilevel modeling of student discipline records (n = 9,921) revealed that youth from groups that tend to be overrepresented in suspensions and expulsions (e.g., Black, Latino, and Native…

In-service teacher professional development has been used to improve teacher effectiveness. In Kentucky, the National Science Foundation funded a large professional development program called the Appalachian Math and Science Partnership (AMSP) to provide content-based professional development to teachers in rural schools. We show that students…

Present federal education policies promote learning in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) and the participation of minority students in these fields. Using longitudinal data on students in Florida and North Carolina, value-added estimates in mathematics and science are generated to categorize schools into performance levels…

This article compares charter schools and other public schools in New York State. School Report Card (SRC) data measuring student, teacher, and school characteristics from the state's 16 urban school districts with charter schools were examined. Descriptive and multivariate analysis was used. The findings suggest that there are more similarities…

In the Netherlands, school choice is free and all schools are equally funded by the government. We measured distance from home to school as a proxy for the selectivity of choice and used characteristics of the nearest school to explain the choice of a school other than the nearest school. Almost 89% of all pupils in the 4 largest cities do not…

Scholars have long argued that principals should be "instructional leaders," but few studies have empirically linked specific instructional leadership behaviors to school performance. This study examines the associations between leadership behaviors and student achievement gains using a unique data source: in-person, full-day…