We use 35 years of data on public school teachers in Washington to calculate several different measures of teacher attrition and mobility. We explore how these rates vary over time and their relationship with the state unemployment rate. Annual rates of teacher attrition from the workforce have been between 5% and 8% for each of the past 35 years,…

We use statewide data from Massachusetts to investigate teacher performance evaluations as a measure of teaching effectiveness. Schools tend to classify most of their teachers as proficient, but we document substantial variation across schools in the extent to which ratings differentiate teachers. Using event study and teacher fixed effects…

We use administrative panel data from seven states covering nearly 3 million students to document and explore variation in "academic mobility," a term we use to describe the extent to which students' ranks in the distribution of academic performance change during their public schooling careers. On average, we show that student ranks are…

We contextualize the magnitude of teacher attrition during the pandemic, including from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2021-2022 school year, using longitudinal data on teachers in Washington since the 1984-1985 school year. The teacher attrition rate after the 2020-2021 school year (7.3%) increased by almost one percentage point from the…

In many school districts, the policies that regulate teaching personnel are governed by collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). While there is significant policy attention that has affected the scope of these agreements, there is relatively little research on how CBAs vary over time, or whether they change in response to states' legislative…

While spring of 2020 introduced virtual instruction to all public schools, virtual schooling had already been growing in most states. We focus on pre-COVID-19 changes to full-time virtual school enrollment in public schools, and provide evidence on the relationship between virtual school enrollment, internet speed, community demographics, and…

We use data on over 14,000 teacher candidates in Washington state, merged with employment data from the state's public schools and Unemployment Insurance system, to investigate the career paths and earnings of teacher candidates in the state. Around 75% of candidates are employed in some education position in each of the 5 years after student…

Teacher attrition is squarely in the policy spotlight. Major news outlets have featured recent stories highlighting the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on teacher shortages. In this brief, the authors frame the magnitude of teacher attrition during the pandemic, including from the 2020-2021 school year to the 2021-22 school year, using publicly…

States are responsible for setting and evaluating the standards that teacher preparation programs (TPPs) must meet for accreditation. Despite the considerable investment that states make in this process, no prior research has linked the ratings of TPPs generated by program reviews to inservice teacher performance. In this paper, we describe…

While spring of 2020 introduced virtual instruction to all public schools, virtual schooling had already been growing in most states. We focus on pre-COVID-19 changes to fulltime virtual school enrollment in public schools, and provide evidence on the relationship between virtual school enrollment, internet speed, community demographics, and…

Prior research has connected characteristics of cooperating teachers who supervise student teaching to performance measures of the teacher candidates they host, suggesting more effective teachers may also be better mentors. The specific measures of cooperating teacher effectiveness considered in this prior literature (value added and performance…

Students' performance on standardized tests is clearly predictive of their later outcomes (Goldhaber & Özek, 2019) but whether the costs of administering tests are justified by the value of the tests for improving students' outcomes is controversial. This controversy fuels heated debates over federal testing requirements, such as those…

We use data on over 14,000 teacher candidates in Washington state, merged with employment data from the state's public schools and Unemployment Insurance system, to investigate the career paths and earnings of teacher candidates in the state. Around 75% of candidates are employed in some education position in each of the 5 years after student…

The COVID-19 pandemic heightened tensions around standardized testing policy and prompted the United States Department of Education to allow states to request waivers from federal standardized testing requirements. Paul Bruno and Dan Goldhaber describe the waivers that states requested and received, what they suggest about how state test results…

We use comprehensive administrative data from three states to document the relationships between geographic mobility and student outcomes during K-12 schooling. We focus specifically on "nonstructural" mobility events--which we define as school or district changes that do not occur naturally as the result of planned transitions between…