Estimating the “Effective Teaching Gap”

Inequality in educational outcomes is substantial and persistent in the United States.

Study of Teacher Coaching Based on Classroom Videos: Impacts on Student Achievement and Teachers’ Practices

This study examined one promising strategy for individualized coaching: professional coaches—rather than district or school staff—providing feedback to teachers based on videos of their instruction.

How Does School Choice Affect Racial Integration?

This brief examines how school choice options, including charter schools, vouchers, magnet schools, district-wide choice, and inter-district choice, affect the racial and economic integration of students.

How Does School Choice Affect Student Achievement in Traditional Public Schools?

This brief describes how two types of school choice—charter schools and private school vouchers—affect student achievement in traditional public schools.

From Innovation to Dissemination: Blueprint for Building Partnerships to Share Educator Development Strategies

This blueprint describes an approach to building organizational partnerships that support and strengthen educator development.

Knowledge Sharing through Organizational Partnerships: Insights from the SEED Partnership Project

This brief shares lessons learned from a three-year project to develop partnerships between national non-profits implementing evidence-based strategies to prepare and develop effective educators, and educational organizations interested in applying the lessons learned from their work.

Building a System of Supports for Instructional Coaching: Insights from the New Teacher Center

This brief offers insights from the New Teacher Center on how districts can better implement instructional coaching by tracking coaching activities, providing clear guidance to coaches, and engaging district leaders as they implement a coaching program.

Preparing Teacher Leaders to Lead Professional Learning: Insights from the National Writing Project

This brief offers insights to help address these challenges based on the National Writing Project’s experience preparing teachers to lead one of its professional development programs.

Strengthening Principal Preparation Through On-The-Job Training: Insights from KIPP's Strategies for Developing Assistant Principals as School Leaders

As KIPP has grown to become the largest charter school network in the country, the organization has greatly expanded its pipeline of new principals.

Implementing Online Professional Learning Communities: Insights from WestEd's Blended Professional Development Model

This brief describes insights from WestEd’s Reading Apprenticeship Across the Disciplines program that blends online and in-person professional development to support teachers in a variety of subject areas as they work to build students’ literacy skills.

Connecting Professional Development to the Curricula: Insights from the Center for Civic Education

Amid recent calls for improvements in professional development, a frequent refrain is that teachers need more training geared specifically to the curricula they teach.

Fathers' Views of Co-Parenting Relationships: Findings from the PACT Evaluation

In-depth qualitative interviews with a subset of low-income fathers participating in a Responsible Fatherhood program offer insights into the nature of fathers’ co-parenting relationships with their children’s mothers, the tenor of these relationships, and the fathers’ efforts to co-parent their children.

Are High- and Low-Income Students Taught by Equally Effective Teachers? (Study Snapshot)

This snapshot examines whether low-income students are taught by less effective teachers than high-income students, and if so, whether reducing this inequity would close the student achievement gap.

Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to Effective Teachers? Evidence from 26 Districts (Executive Summary)

This executive summary examines whether low-income students are taught by less effective teachers than high-income students, and if so, whether reducing this inequity would close the student achievement gap.

Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to Effective Teachers? Evidence from 26 Districts (Final Report)

This report examines whether low-income students are taught by less effective teachers than high-income students, and if so, whether reducing this inequity would close the student achievement gap.

In Their Own Voices: The Hopes and Struggles of Responsible Fatherhood Program Participants in the Parents and Children Together Evaluation

This report describes findings from the first round of in-depth interviews conducted as part of the Parents and Children Together (PACT) evaluation. Interviews were held with 87 low-income, mostly noncustodial fathers who voluntarily enrolled in one of the four Responsible Fatherhood (RF) programs being...

Do Disadvantaged Students Get Less Effective Teaching? Key Findings from Recent Institute of Education Sciences Studies (Evaluation Brief)

This study explores the disparity in access to effective teachers in 29 school districts across the country, revealing that disadvantaged students receive poorer-quality instruction, on average, compared with other students. Mathematica conducted the studies for the Institute of Education Sciences.

Transfer Incentives for High Performing Teachers (In Focus Brief)

Many education policy experts have raised concerns that disadvantaged students, who are often concentrated in low-performing schools, do not have the same access to highly effective teachers as other students.

Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students (Executive Summary)

In this report, we describe disadvantaged students’ access to effective teaching in grades 4 through 8 in 29 diverse school districts, using value-added analysis to measure effective teaching.

Access to Effective Teaching for Disadvantaged Students (In Focus Brief)

Recent federal initiatives in education, such as Race to the Top, the Teacher Incentive Fund, and the flexibility policy for the Elementary and Secondary Education Act are designed in part to ensure that disadvantaged students have equal access to effective teaching.

Transfer Incentives for High-Performing Teachers: Results from a Multisite Randomized Experiment

Many education policy experts have raised concerns that disadvantaged students do not have the same access to highly effective teachers as other students. To address this issue, IES sponsored an evaluation of an intervention known to study participants as the Talent Transfer Initiative (TTI).

Do Low-Income Students Have Equal Access to the Highest-Performing Teachers?

Most research on equal educational opportunity has focused on inputs like teacher experience and degrees. This brief estimated teachers’ value added (contribution to student achievement growth) and measured access to highest-performing teachers in high- and low-poverty schools.

Using Data to Monitor and Improve the Work Participation of TANF Recipients: Examples from New York City and Utah

This brief profiles two programs, one statewide and one local, for analyzing, reporting, and using data to hold case managers and administrators accountable for increasing the work participation of TANF recipients.

A Study of States' TANF Diversion Programs

In response to higher effective work participation rates that followed the reauthorization of the TANF program in 2005, states added new policies and programs that divert eligible families from the TANF system.

TANF Recipients as Potential Long-Term Care Workers: An Assessment of the Prospects in the District of Columbia, Illinois, Maryland, and South Carolina

The long-term care industry’s need for workers and TANF recipients’ need for jobs could be mutually beneficial if, indeed, recipients’ characteristics, skills, and circumstances match the requirements, accessibility, and availability of these jobs.