Working Papers, Policy Briefs & Reports
Deconstructing the EL Gap
Authors: Marcus A. Winters & Yasuko Kanno Project SummaryAcross U.S. schools, students classified as English learners (ELs) tend to achieve lower educational outcomes than their non-EL peers. What explains these differences? Are they a product of ELs’ developing English language proficiency and/or the services they receive at school, or do other factors play a role? The authors of this study attempt to deconstruct the "EL gap" in Massachusetts by examining the extent to which differences...
Disparate Teacher Effects, Comparative Advantage, and Match Quality
Author: Wiliam Delgado This reflects work completed in coordination with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research. Project Summary This study uses data from the Chicago Public Schools to examine differences in student performance and experiences relative to varying measures of teacher quality and seeks to ask: Is the best teacher the best for everyone? The analysis explores the extent to which "highly effective" teachers are differentially effective for different groups of...
The Stickiness of Pandemic-Driven Disenrollment from Public Schools
Authors: Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Tareena Musaddiq, Joshua Goodman, & Kevin Stange This reflects joint work with colleagues at the Education Policy Initiative at the University of Michigan's Ford School of Public Policy. Project Summary This study builds upon the authors’ prior research on enrollment shifts across school sectors during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and examines whether these patterns persisted into the subsequent school year. The authors use longitudinal...
Evaluating Emergency Licensure in Massachusetts
Authors: Andrew Bacher-Hicks, Olivia Chi, Ariel Tichnor-Wagner, Sidrah Baloch Project Summary Between 2021-2023 researchers with Boston University's Wheelock Educational Policy Center were contracted by the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) to conduct an evaluation of the emergency license policy, a pandemic-induced change to entry requirements to the profession, on the composition and quality of the workforce in Massachusetts. This research effort spanned...
The Effect of Retention Under Mississippi’s Test-Based Promotion Policy
Authors: Kirsten Slungaard Mumma and Marcus A Winters Project Summary This study examines the impact of Mississippi’s test-based promotion policy, adopted in 2013 as part of a comprehensive statewide effort to improve early literacy. The authors employ a research design that allows them to estimate the causal impact of third-grade retention under the policy on test scores and non-test-score outcomes in the sixth grade. The findings contribute to our growing knowledge of how elementary-level...
Politics and Children’s Books: Evidence from School Library Collections
Authors: Kirsten Slungaard Mumma Project Summary This study begins by compiling a novel data set on the books in over 6,000 school libraries across the country. With this unique look inside school library shelves, the author then details some trends and themes related to the collections based on various characteristics, including for instance difference across high and low-income schools and the political leanings of surrounding areas. Key Findings Schools with more white students, schools...
Can a Commercial Screening Tool Help Select Better Teachers?
Authors: Olivia L Chi, Boston University; Matthew Lenard, Harvard University Project Summary When looking to hire a new teacher, districts can receive anywhere from dozens to hundreds of applications per vacancy. This can require significant time and effort as school leaders wade through the resume stack in order to find a teacher who will be most effective in the classroom. So, when a popular software company offers a product that screens and prioritizes candidates for review, it’s an...
Enrollment Flexibility and Charter School Impacts: The Effect of Backfill on Students in Massachusetts Charter Middle Schools
Authors: Marcus A. Winters, Boston University, Cheonghum Park, Korea Institute of Public Finance Project Summary This study leverages Massachusetts's adoption of a statewide requirement for charter schools to backfill vacancies within some grades to provide the first causal estimates for the effect of incorporating new students on the performance of incumbent charter school pupils. Using data from the universe of Massachusetts public school students enrolled in Grades 5 through 8 from...
Ability Signals and Rigorous Coursework: Evidence from AP Calculus Participation
Authors: Christopher Avery, Harvard University, Joshua Goodman, Boston University Project Summary This study examines how one signal of ability—whether a student achieves “Advanced” status on Massachusetts’ 10th grade statewide standardized assessment—effects subsequent enrollment in Advanced Placement (AP) Calculus courses. The findings suggest that ability signals can positively influence choices around student enrollment, either by changing students’ and families’ course choices or by...
Using Classroom Observations in the Evaluation of Special Education Teachers
Authors: Nathan D. Jones, Courtney A. Bell, Mary Brownell, Yi Qi, David Peyton, Daisy Pua, Melissa Fowler, Steven Holtzman Project Summary While teacher evaluation systems and policies have evolved nationwide during the past decade, the use of structured classroom observation tools remains nearly universal. This paper examines one of the most popular observation systems in the country—Charlotte Danielson’s Framework for Teaching (FFT)—and asks the question: “How well do common observation...