Roll Call! In a new preprint, @JingLiu28 & @SusannaLoeb study the relationship between teachers and school absence in teen students. Unsurprisingly, teachers who place a high value on attendance can increase a student's likelihood of finishing high school. https://t.co/48UkxLGUgP pic.twitter.com/03qtAwNEHK

— The JHR (@J_HumanResource) July 17, 2019

Teachers who are able to engage with students have more success with boosting attendance numbers in middle and high schools, according to a new study from Brown University researchers Jing Liu and Susanna Loeb focusing on attendance as a teacher evaluation metric, Chalkbeat reports.

The paper, by Brown University’s Susanna Loeb and Jing Liu, is the latest effort by researchers to understand what makes a good teacher without relying solely on test scores, usually the most readily available metric.

Loeb and Liu examined attendance data from tens of thousands of middle and high school students across several years in one (anonymous) city in California. They had access to granular information about each class a student was scheduled to attend, allowing them to link a given teacher to students’ presence. That matters because whether a student is absent isn’t always a yes or no question, since students often skip single classes.

Democratic presidential candidates have generated headlines with multibillion-dollar plans to raise teacher salaries. Kamala Harris set the bar by proposing to give public school teachers an average raise of $13,500. Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are among the major candidates that have since followed suit, both announcing ambitious platforms to elevate the teaching profession at town hall meetings.

These lofty, well-meaning proposals are sure to pay dividends for presidential hopefuls jockeying for the endorsement of teacher unions and the votes of a growing number of Americans who support increasing teacher pay. Seventy-eight percent of the public agrees that teacher salaries are too low. Support for increasing their pay jumped to 49 percent from 36 percent, in the wake of widespread teacher strikes in the past couple of years.

New @AnnenbergInst and @hgse research out in @EEPAjournal (with Kathleen Lynch, Heather C Hill, @KatieEGonzalez & Cynthia Pollard) exposes what works in #STEM teacher PD. Curriculum integration, collaboration, and focus on how students learn are key: https://t.co/EgjORVUjRV

— Annenberg Institute at Brown (@AnnenbergInst) June 3, 2019

Welcome this great group of @BrownUniversity students to @AnnenbergInst Undergraduate Fellows for Education and Social Policy program. Going to be engaging and skills development 8-weeks of empirical research in #education and #socialpolicy. And fun! https://t.co/AVlphYkClT pic.twitter.com/h061PREeEB

— Annenberg Institute at Brown (@AnnenbergInst) June 4, 2019

Terrific forum on Educational Equity & Teacher Diversity Policy #gotequityRI. Thank you @equityinst @LPIRWU @PLEERI and all attending. Special thanks to @DomingoMorel.

Introducing New, Open-Source, and Relevant @AnnenbergInst national #EdWorkingPapers portal providing access to high-quality papers on #Education that have strong implications for #Policy

Susanna Loeb of the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, a former academic advisor with Ready4K, Is helping BIT to adapt the texting program into a UK context.

“The main barrier to successful implementation in the UK is to ensure that the text messages are relevant to parents in the North East of England,” said Loeb.

“BIT and I are working together to implement an extensive piloting phase with parents and teachers to ensure the messages are suitable for the target population,” she said.