Teacher Policy Research

Teacher Policy Research (TPR) is a research partnership between the University of Virginia, Stanford University and the University at Albany that examines the behavior of teachers and administrators with the goal of developing policies that will attract and retain high-quality teachers and leaders, especially in low-performing schools. The research covers a broad range of issues in teacher policy, including teacher preparation, teacher labor market institutions, how teachers are distributed across schools, and teacher retention, particularly in urban, low performing schools. We have received financial support from the Carnegie Corporation, the City University of New York, The National Science Foundation, the New York State Department of Education, The Smith Richardson Foundation, The Spencer Foundation, the Noyce Foundation and the U.S. Department of Education.

Who Enters Teaching? Encouraging Evidence that the Status of Teaching is Improving

The relatively low status of teaching as a profession is often given as a factor contributing to the difficulty of recruiting teachers, the middling performance of American students on international assessments, and the well-documented decline in the relative academic ability of teachers through the 1990s. Since the turn of the 21st century, however, a number of federal, state, and local teacher accountability policies have been implemented toward improving teacher quality over the objections of some who argue the policies will decrease quality.

Performance Screens for School Improvement: The Case of Teacher Tenure Reform in New York City

Tenure is intended to protect teachers with demonstrated teaching skills against arbitrary or capricious dismissal. Critics of typical tenure processes argue that tenure assessments are superficial and rarely discern whether teachers in fact have the requisite teaching skills. A recent reform of the tenure process in New York City provides an unusual opportunity to learn about the role of tenure in teachers’ career outcomes. We find the reform led to many fewer teachers receiving tenure.

Teacher Pathway Project

The attributes and career paths of principals: Implications for improving policy

This paper examines the attributes and career paths of New York States principals. We believe a better understanding of the attributes and career paths of principals and how these have changed over time, are the foundation for additional analysis that will inform policies for the recruitment and retention of effective school leaders. We find that many of the commonly held beliefs about principals are supported by a systematic examination of the data.

Initial matches, transfers, and quits: Career decisions and the disparities in average teacher qualifications across schools

Using a unique dataset, this paper follows the careers of all NYS public school teachers over the previous 20 years. It asks questions such as: What is the typical path of a teacher? How do career paths differ across schools and across teachers having different characteristics? How do career paths contribute to the observed distribution of teachers across schools?

Improving Science Achievement: The Role of Teacher Workforce Policies

This paper examines the difficulty hard-to-staff and low-performing schools have in hiring and keeping high quality teachers. Students failing to achieve even minimal levels of educational achievement are most dependent on their teachers and schools for academic learning, yet they typically are taught by individuals with relatively weak and/or inadequate qualifications.

Who leaves? Teacher attrition and student achievement

Teacher attrition has attracted considerable attention as federal, state and local policies- intended to improve student outcomes, increasingly focus on recruiting and retaining more qualified and effective teachers. But policy makers are often frustrated by the seemingly high rates of attrition among teachers earlier on in their careers. This paper analyzes attrition patterns among teachers in New York City elementary and middle schools and explores whether teachers who transfer among schools, or leave teaching entirely, are more or less effective than those who remain.

Measuring test measurement error: A general approach

Test-based accountability as well as value-added assessments and much experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet we know little regarding fundamental properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of test measurement error and its implications for educational policy and practice. While test vendors provide estimates of split-test reliability, these measures do not account for potentially important day-to-day differences in student performance.

Teacher Policy Research

Teacher Policy Research (TPR) is a research partnership between the University of Virginia, Stanford University and the University at Albany that examines the behavior of teachers and administrators with the goal of developing policies that will attract and retain high-quality teachers and leaders, especially in low-performing schools. The research covers a broad range of issues in teacher policy, including teacher preparation, teacher labor market institutions, how teachers are distributed across schools, and teacher retention, particularly in urban, low performing schools.

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