Teacher effectiveness varies substantially, yet principals' evaluations of teachers often fail to differentiate performance among teachers. We offer new evidence on principals' subjective evaluations of their teachers' effectiveness using two sources of data from a large, urban district: principals' high-stakes personnel evaluations of teachers,…

As educational policy makers seek strategies to improve the teacher workforce, the early career period represents a unique opportunity to identify struggling teachers, examine the likelihood of future improvement, and make strategic pretenure investments in development or dismissals. It is also a useful time to identify particularly promising…

Districts, states, and researchers are using value-added models with increasing frequency to evaluate educational policies and programs, as well as teachers and other educators individually. Despite their prevalence, little research assesses whether value-added measures (VAM) are consistent across student subgroups. Are teachers who are effective…

Measures of teachers' "value added" to student achievement play an increasingly central role in k-12 teacher policy and practice, in part because they have been shown to predict teachers' long-term impacts on students' life outcomes. However, little research has examined variation in the long-term effects of teachers with similar…

Although prior research has documented differences in the distribution of teacher characteristics across schools serving different student populations, few studies have examined the extent to which teacher sorting occurs within schools. This study uses data from one large urban school district and compares the class assignments of teachers who…

Many large urban school districts are rethinking their personnel management strategies, often giving increased control to schools in the hiring of teachers, reducing, for example, the importance of seniority. If school hiring authorities are able to make good decisions about whom to hire, these reforms have the potential to benefit schools and…

This study seeks to identify the characteristics and training experiences of teachers who are differentially effective at promoting academic achievement among English language learners (ELLs). Our analyses indicate that general skills such as those reflected by scores on teacher certification exams and experience teaching non-ELL students are less…

The capacity of the nation's public schools to recruit and retain highly skilled teachers is a perennial concern of policy makers and school leaders. Over the past two decades, major policy strategies including the federal No Child Left Behind Act and alternative pathways to teaching, as well as changes in the broader labor market, have altered…

Even as research has begun to document that teachers matter, there is less certainty about what attributes of teachers make the most difference in raising student achievement. Numerous studies have estimated the relationship between teachers' characteristics, such as work experience and academic performance, and their value-added to student…

This article explores the relationship between school contextual factors and teacher retention decisions in New York City. The methodological approach separates the effects of teacher characteristics from school characteristics by modeling the relationship between the assessments of school contextual factors by one set of teachers and the turnover…

Even as research documents that teachers matter, there is less certainty about the attributes of teachers that make the most difference in raising student achievement. Many studies have estimated the relationship between teachers' characteristics (i.e., experience and academic performance) and their value-added to student achievement. Few have…

While prior research has documented differences in the distribution of teacher characteristics across schools serving different student populations, few studies have examined how teacher sorting occurs within schools. Comparing teachers who teach in the same grade and school in a given year, the authors find less experienced, minority, and female…

Used data on New York state teachers to determine how much variation in the average attributes of teachers exists across schools, identify schools with the least qualified teachers, assess changes in the distribution over time, and determine how the distribution of teachers is affected by attrition, transfer, and the matches between teachers and…

Value-added models in education research allow researchers to explore how a wide variety of policies and measured school inputs affect the academic performance of students. Researchers typically quantify the impacts of such interventions in terms of "effect sizes", i.e., the estimated effect of a one standard deviation change in the…

This report summarizes current knowledge about the labor market for teachers and provides policy recommendations to enhance the supply of high-quality teachers. Many schools throughout the country, particularly those with low-income and low-achieving students, have difficulty attracting and retaining high-quality teachers. These schools…