Demetra Kalogrides

Principal Preferences and the Uneven Distribution of Principals across Schools.

The authors use longitudinal data from one large school district to investigate the distribution of principals across schools. They find that schools serving many low-income, non-White, and low-achieving students have principals who have less experience and less education and who attended less selective colleges. This distribution of principals is partially driven by the initial match of first-time principals to schools, and it is exacerbated by systematic attrition and transfer away from these schools. The authors supplement these data with surveys of principals and find that their stated preferences for school characteristics mirror observed distribution and transfer patterns: Principals prefer to work in easier-to-serve schools with favorable working conditions, which tend to be schools with fewer poor, minority, and low-achieving students.

EFFECTIVE SCHOOLS: TEACHER HIRING, ASSIGNMENT, DEVELOPMENT, AND RETENTION

The literature on effective schools emphasizes the importance of a quality teaching force in improving educational outcomes for students. In this article we use value-added methods to examine the relationship between a schools effectiveness and the recruitment, assignment, development, and retention of its teachers. Our results reveal four key findings. First, we find that more effective schools are able to attract and hire more effective teachers from other schools when vacancies arise. Second, more effective schools assign novice teachers to students in a more equitable fashion. Third, teachers who work in schools that were more effective at raising achievement in a prior period improve more rapidly in a subsequent period than do those in less effective schools. Finally, we find that more effective schools are better able to retain higher-quality teachers. The results point to the importance of personnel and, perhaps, school personnel practices for improving student outcomes.

Different Teachers, Different Peers: The Magnitude of Student Sorting Within Schools

The authors use administrative data from three large urban school districts to describe student sorting within schools. Students are linked to each of their teachers and students’ classmates are identified. There are differences in the average achievement levels, racial composition, and socioeconomic composition of classrooms within schools. This sorting occurs even in self-contained elementary school classrooms and is much larger than would be expected were students assigned to classrooms randomly. Much of the racial and socioeconomic sorting is accounted for by differences in achievement, particularly at the high school level. Classrooms with the most low-achieving, minority, and poor students are more likely to have novice teachers. Sorting students by achievement level exposes minority and poor students to lower quality teachers and less resourced classmates.

Using Student Test Scores to Measure Principal Performance.

Expansion of the use of student test score data to measure teacher performance has fueled recent policy interest in using those data to measure the effects of school administrators as well. However, little research has considered the capacity of student performance data to uncover principal effects. Filling this gap, this article identifies multiple conceptual approaches for capturing the contributions of principals to student test score growth, develops empirical models to reflect these approaches, examines the properties of these models, and compares the results of the models empirically using data from a large urban school district. The article then assesses the degree to which the estimates from each model are consistent with measures of principal performance that come from sources other than student test scores, such as school district evaluations. The results show that choice of model is substantively important for assessment. While some models identify principal effects as large as 0.18 standard deviations in math and 0.12 in reading, others find effects as low as 0.0.05 (math) or 0.03 (reading) for the same principals. We also find that the most conceptually unappealing models, which over-attribute school effects to principals, align more closely with nontest measures than do approaches that more convincingly separate the effect of the principal from the effects of other school inputs.

Systematic Sorting: Teacher Characteristics and Class Assignments

Although prior research has documented differences in the distribution of teacher characteristics across schools serving different student populations, few studies have examined the extent to which teacher sorting occurs within schools. This study uses data from one large urban school district and compares the class assignments of teachers who teach in the same grade and in the same school in a given year. The authors find that less experienced, minority, and female teachers are assigned classes with lower achieving students than are their more experienced, white, and male colleagues. Teachers who have held leadership positions and those who attended more competitive undergraduate institutions are also assigned higher achieving students. These patterns are found at both the elementary and middle/high school levels. The authors explore explanations for these patterns and discuss their implications for achievement gaps, teacher turnover, and the estimation of teacher value-added.

The Declining Significance of Race in College Admissions Decisions

Using 18 years of data from more than 1,300 four‐year colleges and universities in the United States, we investigate the extent to which institutional characteristics and contextual factors influence the propensity of colleges to indicate that they engage in affirmative action in their admissions decisions. Consideration of race/ethnicity in admissions declined sharply after the mid‐1990s, especially at public institutions. Rather than being shaped by specific historical and political contexts, affirmative action in admissions appears to be a widely institutionalized practice in higher education that has been tempered by changes in the policy environment over time.

No place like home? Familism and Latino/a-white differences in college pathways.

Recent research has argued that familism, defined as a cultural preference for privileging family goals over individual goals, may discourage some Latino/a youth from applying to and attending college, particularly if they must leave home (Desmond and López Turley, 2009). Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study, we find that Latino/a students and parents indeed have stronger preferences than white students and parents for living at home during college. For students, most differences in preferences for proximate colleges are explained by socioeconomic status, academic achievement and high school/regional differences. Moreover, controlling for socioeconomic background and prior achievement explains most racial/ethnic gaps in college application and attendance among high school graduates, suggesting that familism per se is not a significant deterrent to college enrollment above and beyond these more primary factors. However, results indicate generational differences; cultural factors may contribute to racial/ethnic gaps in parental preferences for children to remain at home.

Generational Status and Academic Achiev Ement among Latino High School Students: Evaluating the Segmented Assimilation Theory:

In this study, the author evaluates some of the key assertions of the segmented assimilation theory by examining the generational pattern of achievement among Latino high school students. Segmented assimilation theory posits that the outcomes of immigrants will not necessarily improve monotonically across generations, especially in disadvantaged contexts, and that maintaining familial and ethnic ties can have a protective effect on immigrant students. The author tests these ideas by examining variation in the generational pattern of achievement in low-income schools among Latino high school students. The author finds that changes in achievement across generations generally follow a pattern of classical assimilation with small, though not statistically significant, improvements in achievement from the first to the second generation and from the second to the third generation in both poor and nonpoor schools. Contrary to hypotheses derived from segmented assimilation theory, the author finds no evidence of “downward assimilation” across generations among Latinos attending low-income schools.

Strategic Staffing? How Performance Pressures Affect the Distribution of Teachers Within Schools and Resulting Student Achievement:

School performance pressures apply disproportionately to tested grades and subjects. Using longitudinal administrative data—including achievement data from untested grades—and teacher survey data from a large urban district, we examine schools’ responses to those pressures in assigning teachers to high-stakes and low-stakes classrooms. We find that teachers with more positive performance measures in both tested and untested classrooms are more likely to be placed in a tested classroom in the following year. Performance measures even more strongly predict a high-stakes teaching assignment in schools with low state accountability grades and where principals exercise more assignment influence. In elementary schools, we show that such “strategic” teacher assignment disadvantages early grades, concentrating less effective teachers in K–2 classrooms. Reassignment of ineffective upper-grades teachers to early grades systematically results in lower K–2 math and reading achievement gains. Moreover, evidence suggests that students’ lower early-grades achievement persists into subsequent tested grades.

The Micropolitics of Educational Inequality: The Case of Teacher-Student Assignments.

Politics of education researchers have long recognized the role of micropolitics in school decision-making processes. We argue that investigating micropolitical dynamics is key to an important set of school decisions that are fundamental to inequities in access to high-quality teachers: assignments of teachers and students to classrooms. Focusing on the intraorganizational political power of experienced teachers, our analysis of survey and administrative data from a large urban district suggests that more experienced teachers have more influence over which students are assigned to their classrooms. By a variety of measures, we also find that more experienced teachers are assigned fewer disadvantaged students, on average, a pattern inconsistent with goals of ameliorating educational inequality by matching more qualified teachers with the students who need them most.