In this article, we explore whether the evaluation instruments used in the teacher selection process in Peru are good predictors of teacher effectiveness. To this end, we estimate teacher value-added (TVA) measures for public primary school teachers and test their relationship with Peru's results of two rounds of the teacher evaluation (i.e., a…

Since the fall semester of 2016, first-time international student enrollment (ISE[subscript ft]) has declined at U.S. colleges and universities. This trend disrupts a steady upwards trajectory of ISE[subscript ft] rates. Previous research has demonstrated that various political, social, and macroeconomic factors influence the number of…

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a multicycle international survey of adult skills and competencies sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The survey examines a range of basic skills in the information age and assesses these adult skills consistently across…

Guided pathways is arguably the most widespread whole-college community college reform movement in decades. In this report, the authors present findings from a study on the scale of adoption of guided pathways practices across community and technical colleges in three states--Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington--where there are state-level efforts to…

Most researchers and policymakers rely on the share of students eligible for free and reduced-price meals when describing student socioeconomic background in schools. But shares of students receiving free and reduced-price meals, and other measures related to the distribution of school meals, vary by state and across time because of changes in…

The effect of remote learning on student performance has been a frequent topic of research and discussion in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet little is known about the impact of remote instruction on the performance of teachers. This study documents how relative effectiveness of teachers changed when moving from in-person to remote…

This paper examines how different measures of teacher quality are related to students' long-run educational trajectories. We estimate teachers' "test-based" and "nontest" value-added (the latter based on contributions to student absences, suspensions, grade progression, and grades) and assess how these predict various student…

Research consistently shows that among young children, poor social skills and problem behaviors can lead to poor relationships with teachers and peers (Boivin et al., 1995), higher risk of academic failure (Buhs et al., 2006), and higher school dropout (Gilliam, 2005). Moreover, prekindergarten (PreK) and kindergarten (K) teachers report feeling…

New knowledge tracing models are continuously being proposed, even at a pace where state-of-the-art models cannot be compared with each other at the time of publication. This leads to a situation where ranking models is hard, and the underlying reasons of the models' performance -- be it architectural choices, hyperparameter tuning, performance…

The Program for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) is a multicycle survey of adult skills and competencies sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The survey examines a range of basic skills in the information age and assesses these adult skills consistently across participating…

These are the appendices for the technical report, "An Investigation of the Comparability of Commission-Approved Teaching Performance Assessment Models." California's Commission on Teacher Credentialing (Commission) requires all programs of preliminary multiple and single subject teacher preparation to use a Commission-approved Teaching…

Colleges have increasingly turned to predictive analytics to target at-risk students for additional support. Most of the predictive analytic applications in higher education are proprietary, with private companies offering little transparency about their underlying models. We address this lack of transparency by systematically comparing two…

Corequisite remediation involves placing students who have been designated as underprepared directly into college-level courses with concurrent supports--such as in-class tutoring, online learning labs, or a supplemental class--rather than making them take non-credit-bearing developmental courses first. There are multiple corequisite course…

Short-cycle higher education programs (SCPs), lasting two or three years, capture about a quarter of higher education enrollment in the world and can play a key role enhancing workforce skills. In this paper, we estimate the program-level contribution of SCPs to student academic and labor market outcomes, and study how and why these contributions…

Advising is powerful because it attends to core elements of each student's success: setting academic goals based on transfer and/or career interests, developing an academic plan to attain those goals, and staying on track until those goals are met. Each of these big-picture tasks encompasses dozens of smaller ones which include: (1) Raising…