Universal preschool policies introduced in Georgia and Oklahoma offer an opportunity to investigate the impact of government intervention on provision of childcare. Since Georgia used a voucher-like program and Oklahoma utilized its existing public schools, the two states offer a case study of how government provision compares to government subsidization alone. Using a synthetic control group difference-in-difference estimation framework, we examine the effects of universal preschool on childcare providers. In both states there is an increase in the number of formal childcare centers. With the voucher-like program in Georgia, the overall increase in care is partly driven by an increase in the supply of formal childcare in the private sector and partly driven by new publicly-provided preschools. However, there is substantial crowd-out of private consumption of preschool. In Oklahoma, where universal preschool is publicly provided, the increase in the number of childcare providers occurred only in the public sector. The expansion of publicly-provided care seems to be driven largely by movement of employees from private centers to public settings. As such, this case-study comparison suggests that government subsidization through funding was more effective at expanding preschool than government provision.

Teacher attrition has attracted considerable attention as federal, state and local policies- intended to improve student outcomes, increasingly focus on recruiting and retaining more qualified and effective teachers. But policy makers are often frustrated by the seemingly high rates of attrition among teachers earlier on in their careers. This paper analyzes attrition patterns among teachers in New York City elementary and middle schools and explores whether teachers who transfer among schools, or leave teaching entirely, are more or less effective than those who remain. Findings show first-year teachers who are less effective in improving student math scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers. This raises important questions about current retention and transfer policies.

Test-based accountability as well as value-added assessments and much experimental and quasi-experimental research in education rely on achievement tests to measure student skills and knowledge. Yet we know little regarding fundamental properties of these tests, an important example being the extent of test measurement error and its implications for educational policy and practice. While test vendors provide estimates of split-test reliability, these measures do not account for potentially important day-to-day differences in student performance. In this paper, we demonstrate a credible, low-cost approach for estimating the overall extent of measurement error that can be applied when students take three or more tests in the subject of interest (e.g., state assessments in consecutive grades). Our method generalizes the test-retest framework by allowing for i) growth or decay in knowledge and skills between tests, ii) tests being neither parallel nor vertically scaled, and iii) the degree of measurement error varying across tests. The approach maintains relatively unrestrictive, testable assumptions regarding the structure of student achievement growth. Estimation only requires descriptive statistics (e.g., test-score correlations). With student-level data, the extent and pattern of measurement error heteroskedasticity also can be estimated. In turn, one can compute Bayesian posterior-means of achievement and achievement gains given observed scores – estimators having statistical properties superior to those for the observed score (score-gain). We employ math and ELA test-score data from New York City to demonstrate these methods and estimate the overall extent of test measurement error is at least twice as large as that reported by the test vendor.

Examines the effect of school gender organization on gender differences in teachers' perceptions of organizational control. Results from 629 mathematics and English teachers reveal that in coeducational schools and boys' schools, male teachers perceived greater influence over school policies outside of the classroom than did female teachers. Girls' schools tended to be reversed, with female teachers experiencing greater influence.

Low-achieving students often are taught by the least-qualified teachers. These disparities begin when teachers take their first jobs, and in urban areas they are worsened by teachers' sub- sequent decisions to transfer and quit. Such quits and transfers increase disparities in at least two ways. First, more qualified teachers are substantially more likely to leave schools hav- ing the lowest-achieving students. For example, of the new teachers hired in New York City's lowest-achieving schools in 1996-1998, 28 percent scored in the lowest quartile on the general-knowledge certification exam.' Of those remaining in the same schools five years later, 44 percent had scores in the lowest quartile. In contrast, 22 percent of the new teachers in the higher-achieving schools were in the lowest quartile, which only increased to 24 percent for those remaining after five years.2 Second, the generally high teacher turnover in lower- performing schools disadvantage students in those schools since the effectiveness of teachers increases over the first few years of their careers. Twenty-seven percent of first-year teachers in New York City's lower-performing schools do not return the following year, compared to 15 percent in the quartile of schools having the relatively highest student achievement.

Young children in poor communities are spending more hours in non-parental care due to policy reforms and expansion of early childhood programs. Studies show positive effects of high-quality center-based care on children's cognitive growth. Yet we know little about the effects of center care typically available in poor communities or the effects of home-based care. Using a sample of children age 12 to 42 months when their mothers entered welfare-to-work programs, this paper finds positive cognitive effects for children in center care. Children also display stronger cognitive growth when caregivers are more sensitive and responsive, and stronger social development when providers have education beyond high school. Children in family child care homes show more behavioral problems but no cognitive differences.

The last decade has seen a surge in empirical research byeconomists addressing the impact of school reform poli-cies. This wave of research dates back to Card and Krueger(1992) and a series of analyses that look across the UnitedStates to test the effects of school inputs on outcomes such asachievement, educational attainment, and earnings. Many ofthese studies use either Census data (Heckman, Layne–Farrar,and Todd, 1996) or national longitudinal surveys (Betts 1996;Loeb and Bound, 1996; Grogger, 1996) to estimate input ef-fects. Since then, much of the research has turned from thenation to states and cities, using local administrative and ex-perimental data to focus on specific policy initiatives.1 Theshift in emphasis from the national to the local has enabledresearchers to incorporate greater institutional and policydetail into their analyses. Local data often follow individualsover time, allowing researchers to use empirical techniquesnot possible with pooled cross–sectional Census data. At thesame time, the administrative data provide deep coverage oflocal areas, which national surveys that sample only a smallportion of any locality, do not. While local administrative dataprovide advantages over census and survey data for estimat-ing the causal effects of some policies, experimental data al-leviate the perennial concern that correlational analyses havenot established causality. However, experiments are not easyto implement in education, they can't be used to address alltypes of education policy, and they tend to be too small toelicit the responses generated by large–scale reforms.

This study explores the effects of the social context of Chapter 1 prekindergarten classrooms on children's learning. Chapter 1 (also called Title I) is a federal government preschool program directed at children in low-income schools who are at risk of later school failure. Using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) and a sample of 677 4-year-olds in 55 1990-91 Chapter 1 prekindergarten classes in 5 states, the study explores factors that influence gains on the Preschool Inventory (PSI) over the preschool year. Social context is defined here mainly in terms of the cognitive and social composition of the classroom. Contextual factors defined in terms of demographics are shown to be related to learning, but the average cognitive level of the class is not. On average, children learn less in classrooms with high concentrations of minorities, children with special needs, recent immigrants, and children whose mothers have little education. The study explores differential effects of racial concentration on race differences in learning. Policy implications are discussed.

This study explores whether teachers and students are influenced by the size of the inner-city elementary school to which they belong. Focusing on teachers' attitudes about their responsibility for student learning and students' l-year gains in mathematics achievement scores, we used data from almost 5,000 teachers and 23,000 sixth and eighth-grade students in 264 K-8 Chicago schools. The data were collected through 1997 surveys and annual standardized tests. We employed hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to estimate school effects. On both outcomes, small schools (enrolling fewer than 400 students) are favored compared with medium-sized or larger schools. In small schools, teachers have a more positive attitude about their responsibility. for students' learning and students learn more. Even after taking size into account, learning is also higher in schools with higher levels of collective responsibility. Thus, we conclude that school size influences student achievement directly and indirectly, through its effect on teachers' attitudes.

This paper uses rich new data on New York State teachers to: determine how much variation in the average attributes of teachers exists across schools, identify schools that have the least-qualified teachers, assess whether the distribution has changed over time, and determine how the distribution of teachers is impacted by attrition and transfer, as well as by the job matches between teachers and schools at the start of careers. Our results show striking differences in the qualifications of teachers across schools. Urban schools, in particular, have lesser-qualified teachers; and New York City stands out among urban areas. Low-income, low-achieving and non-white students, particularly those in urban areas, find themselves in classes with many of the least skilled teachers. Salary variation rarely compensates for the apparent difficulties of teaching in urban settings and, in some cases, contributes to the disparities.