C. Kevin Fortner

Stayers and Leavers Early-Career Teacher Effectiveness and Attrition

Research on teacher development reports significant early-career increases in teacher effectiveness, but the extent to which this is attributable to the development of teachers who persist or to the attrition of less effective teachers is unclear. In this study of novice teachers in North Carolina public schools, the authors investigated the development of teachers’ effectiveness during their first five years in the classroom and contrasted the effectiveness of teachers who stayed with that of those who left. Across grade levels, teachers’ effectiveness increased significantly in their second year of teaching but flattened after three years. The teachers who left the profession were less effective, on average, than those who stayed at least five years, but this finding is somewhat less consistent than the findings of an initial jump in effectiveness and diminishing returns to on-the-job development.

The Effects of Experience and Attrition for Novice High-School Science and Mathematics Teachers

New Teacher Syndrome The employment retention of high-school science and math teachers in the United States has diminished over recent decades, such that now many students are being taught by novice teachers. Henry et al. (p. 1118) have analyzed the effectiveness of teachers by examining data collected from North Carolina public schools. Less-effective teachers seem to have a greater tendency to leave teaching and the greatest gains in teacher effectiveness are when the teacher is new—within the first 3 years on the job. Some subject areas are more likely to be affected by the preponderance of novice teachers than other subjects, including math and science. New teachers face a steep learning curve, and those who fall off tend to leave teaching. Because of the current high proportion of novice high-school teachers, many students’ mastery of science and mathematics depends on the effectiveness of early-career teachers. In this study, which used value-added models to analyze high-school teachers’ effectiveness in raising test scores on 1.05 million end-of-course exams, we found that the effectiveness of high-school science and mathematics teachers increased substantially with experience but exhibited diminishing rates of return by their fourth year; that teachers of algebra 1, algebra 2, biology, and physical science who continued to teach for at least 5 years were more effective as novice teachers than those who left the profession earlier; and that novice teachers of physics, chemistry, physical science, geometry, and biology exhibited steeper growth in effectiveness than did novice non–science, technology, engineering, and mathematics teachers.

The Effects of Teacher Entry Portals on Student Achievement

The current teacher workforce is younger, less experienced, more likely to turnover, and more diverse in preparation experiences than the workforce of two decades ago. Research shows that inexperienced teachers are less effective, but we know little about the effectiveness of teachers with different types of preparation. In this study, we classify North Carolina public school teachers into portals—fixed and mutually exclusive categories that capture teachers’ formal preparation and qualifications upon first entering the profession—and estimate the adjusted average test score gains of students taught by teachers from each portal. Compared with undergraduate-prepared teachers from in-state public universities, (a) out-of-state undergraduate-prepared teachers are less effective in elementary grades and high school, (b) alternative entry teachers are less effective in high school, and (c) Teach For America corps members are more effective in STEM subjects and secondary grades.

Teacher Preparation Policies and Their Effects on Student Achievement

State policies affect the qualifications of beginning teachers in numerous ways, including regulating entry requirements, providing incentives for graduate degrees, and subsidizing preparation programs at public universities. In this paper we assess how these policy choices affect student achievement, specifically comparing traditionally prepared with alternative-entry teachers; in-state traditionally prepared with out-of-state traditionally prepared teachers; teachers beginning with undergraduate degrees with those beginning with graduate degrees; and teachers prepared at in-state public universities with those prepared at in-state private universities. Using school fixed effects to analyze data from North Carolina, we find that: Teach For America corps members are more effective than traditionally prepared teachers; other alternative-entry teachers are less effective than traditionally prepared instructors in high school mathematics and science courses; and out-of-state traditionally prepared teachers are less effective than in-state traditionally prepared teachers, especially in elementary subjects where they constitute nearly 40 percent of the workforce.

Targeted Funding for Educationally Disadvantaged Students A Regression Discontinuity Estimate of the Impact on High School Student Achievement

Evaluating the impacts of public school funding on student achievement has been an important objective for informing education policymaking but fraught with data and methodological limitations. Findings from prior research have been mixed at best, leaving policymakers with little advice about the benefits of allocating public resources to schools or how it might best be done. In this study, the authors take advantage of a pilot supplemental funding program in North Carolina that used a quantitative index of educational advantage to select the most educationally disadvantaged districts in the state to receive funding. The targeted districts received supplemental funds of

Faculty research following merger: a job stress and social identity theory perspective

250 per pupil or

The Policy of Enforcement Red Light Cameras and Racial Profiling

840 per academically disadvantaged pupil for the 2 years of the pilot. Using a regression discontinuity design and multilevel models with extensive controls, the authors estimate that the marginal average treatment effect of the supplemental funding was 0.133 standard deviation units and that the effect on educationally disadvantaged students was 0.098 standard deviation units. The treatment effect represents approximately one third of the difference between the average score in top performing and low performing high schools.

Relationships between the use of test results and US students’ academic performance

With conflicting public pressure for greater access to higher education and budget reductions and with continuing backlash over increasing tuition and skyrocketing student debt, public universities have intensified efforts to improve organizational efficiency, effectiveness, and productivity. One strategic option is merging institutions of higher education to better utilize resources, reap cost savings, and increase scholarly outputs. Mergers and acquisitions more commonly occur in the business domain and analysis specific to the higher education arena is limited to this point. Our research examines the effects of university merger on knowledge production in the form of faculty scholarly productivity. We use results of a continuing study of merger of two state-funded higher education institutions, with quite different organizational cultures and research orientations, to explore merger impacts. Using the extensive prior literature on job stress and associated person–organization fit, as well as social identity theory, we develop a model of predictors of post-merger research time allocation and associated productivity. We find lingering effects of pre-merger institutional affiliation, particularly for the low status university faculty, on post-merger job stress, organizational fit, and resulting research productivity. The results of our study advance practical approaches to mergers in higher education for policy makers and managers of higher education.

Kindergarten redshirting: Motivations and spillovers using census-level data

We explore the question of whether some of the often conflicting evidence of racial profiling can be cleared up using red light camera observations to measure racial disparities in traffic violations. Using data from cameras at intersections matched to census data, we find that although citations from the red light cameras are issued to a disproportionate number of minorities based on the racial composition of the surrounding location, the racial composition of the violator is consistent with the racial composition of the block group in which they reside. Our study indicates that red light cameras may have a present and future role in assisting public policy makers on issues of racial profiling thresholds.The use of red light cameras has focused on traffic safety issues with well established results. In this paper we explore the potential public policy benefits of red light cameras as tools to assess information relating to racial profiling. Specifically, we explore the question of whether or not some of the often conflicting rhetoric about racial profiling and gaps in the literature concerning the prevalence of racial profiling can be cleared up using red light camera observations to measure racial disparities in traffic violations. Using data from cameras at intersections matched to census data, we find that although citations from the red light cameras are issued to a disproportionate number of minorities based on the racial composition of the population surrounding the location of the infraction, the racial composition of the violators is consistent with the racial composition of the block group in which they reside. This confirms those studies of racial profiling that show the fallacy of measuring racial disparities of persons stopped, cited, or arrested for traffic violations based on location of the violation. Instead, we propose that racial profiling in traffic stops is not occurring if the distribution of violators cited by a red light camera is consistent with the distribution of violators cited by law enforcement officers. Using the red light camera violation information and census data, this study finds no evidence of differential behavior in red-light running based on race and evidence of a decrease in red-light running behavior for low-income groups. Our study indicates that red light cameras may have a present and future role in assisting public policy makers on issues of racial profiling thresholds.

Within Classroom Peer Effects and Tracking: Assessing the Impact of Classroom Peer Variation and Ability Tracking with Disaggregated High School Data

In this study, we examined relationships between the use of test results and US students’ math, reading, and science performance in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2009. Based on a literature review, we hypothesized that the 16 items in the PISA school questionnaire, which are related to the use of test results, can be categorized according to 4 factors. We validated this hypothesized factor structure using a confirmatory factor analysis and then obtained composite scores for each factor. As revealed by a multilevel analysis, when student and school demographic variables were controlled for, using test results to hold schools accountable to authority and the public was significantly positively related to students’ performance across all 3 subjects. No statistically significant relationship, however, was detected between students’ performance and the following uses of test scores: informing parents of their children’s performance, providing information for instructional purposes, and evaluating teachers and principals.