We use a unique dataset of student teaching placements in the State of Washington and a proxy for teacher shortages, the proportion of new teacher hires in a school or district with emergency teaching credentials, to provide the first empirical evidence of a relationship between student teaching placements and teacher shortages. We find that…

We use a database of over 15,000 teacher candidates from 15 teacher education programs in Washington state to investigate the connections between specific teacher preparation experiences and the likelihood that these candidates enter and stay in the state's public teaching workforce. As has been found in prior research, candidates with…

Emerging research finds connections between teacher candidates' student teaching placements and their future career paths and effectiveness. Yet relatively little is known about the factors that influence these placements and how teacher education programs (TEPs) and K-12 school systems match teacher candidates to mentor teachers. In our study of…

Student teaching has long been considered the most important component of an effective teacher education program. Recently, new research is finding links between these experiences and teacher candidates' future effectiveness, yet relatively little is known about the student teacher placement process and, in particular, the processes that lead to…

We exploit within-teacher variation in the years that teachers host an apprentice ("student teacher") in Washington State to estimate the causal effect of these apprenticeships on student achievement, both during the apprenticeship and afterwards. The average causal effect of hosting a student teacher on student performance in the year…

We use a novel database of the preservice apprenticeships ("student teaching placements") of teachers in Washington State to investigate the relationship between mentor effectiveness (as measured by value added) and the future effectiveness of their mentees. We find a strong, positive relationship between the effectiveness of a teacher's…

We use data from Washington State to examine two distinct stages of the teacher pipeline: the placement of prospective teachers in student teaching assignments; and the hiring of prospective teachers into their first teaching positions. We find that prospective teachers are likely to complete their student teaching near their college and…