The talk examined shortages, inequities, and incentives in the substitute teacher labor market. Grace Falken, Research Program Associate, Annenberg Institute at Brown University, presented “Shortages, Inequities, and Incentives in the Substitute Teacher Labor Market” at the Institute on April 6, 2021 in a virtual session. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

Jesse Bruhn, Postdoctoral Fellow, Princeton University, presented work in progress at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on December 3, 2019. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

Pursuing Democracy Through Crisis was a Zoom webinar hosted by the Annenberg Institute. This event took place on February 4, 2022 as a virtual session.

Are Two Teachers Better Than One? The Effect of Co-Teaching on Students with and without Disabilities

Today the large majority of students with disabilities (SWDs) spend at least 80% of their instructional time in a general classroom. Co-teaching, in which a general education teacher and special education teacher collaboratively provide instruction to students with and without disabilities in the same classroom, has emerged as a common strategy for addressing the challenges associated with educating students within inclusive environments. Co-teaching is intuitively appealing and has substantial support among policymakers and within the special education literature. And yet, to date we know little about its effects. We leverage longitudinal administrative data in Massachusetts in order to provide the first causal estimate for the effect of co-teaching across a large public school system. The effect of co-teaching differs by subject and grade level. Co-teaching has a marginal positive effect on student math scores. In English language arts (ELA), attending a co-taught classroom has a modest but statistically significant positive effect for SWDs in elementary grades, but a significant modest negative effect for both students with and without disabilities in secondary grades. For both groups, the effect of co-teaching is independent of the impact from increasing the proportion of SWDs in the classroom.

Marcus Winters, Associate Professor and Department Chair for Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Boston University, presented “Are Two Teachers Better Than One? The Effect of Co-Teaching on Students with and without Disabilities” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on March 3, 2020. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

The Effects and Local Implementation of School Finance Reforms on Teacher Salary, Hiring and Turnover

This paper assesses the extent to which policy-induced salary schedule changes affect teacher recruitment and retention. We examine a legislative funding formula change in Washington state—induced by the McCleary court-ordered finance reform of 2012—that allocated more state-level funding for certificated, administrative, and classified staff salaries beginning in the 2018-19 academic year. Using a simulated instrument strategy embedded in an explanatory sequential mixed methods design, we observed that local collective bargaining directed new state-level funding to increase teacher salaries, particularly for senior teachers. Variation in political power, priorities, and interests of both districts and unions led to greater heterogeneity in teacher salary schedules among districts. The rate of new recruitment decreased in year two of the reform, and the rates of teachers’ transfer between districts decreased in the first and second years of the reform. Suggestive evidence indicates that a $1,000 salary increase would have larger effects on early-career and junior teachers’ hiring and reduce early and mid-career teachers’ transfers between districts to a greater extent than late-career teachers. These findings can inform policymakers to strategically allocate salary resources to achieve their teacher workforce development goals.

Christopher Candelaria, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Education, Vanderbilt University, presented “The Effects and Local Implementation of School Finance Reforms on Teacher Salary, Hiring and Turnover” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on March 9, 2022. The talk was part of the Annenberg Seminars on Educational Policy, a series that brings education researchers from institutions across the country to Brown to present and discuss their work.

The Annenberg Institute hosted a wine and cheese reception for Brown faculty affiliates at 164 Angell Street. This event took place on September 24, 2024.

The talk used the tax records of school-supporting non-profits to examine inequality of school resources. Emily Rauscher, Associate Professor of Sociology, Brown University, presented “Hidden Money: School-Supporting Non-Profit Tax Records and Inequality of School Resources” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on November 9, 2021. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

Please join us on Thursday, February 25, at 4 p.m. for “Kinder-ready clinics: Emerging models of how clinics can support parents in early-childhood development through low-cost, scalable interventions,” presented by Susanna Loeb, PhD, and Lisa Chamberlain, MD, MPH.

Dr. Loeb is director of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform and professor of education and of international and public affairs at Brown University. Dr. Loeb is a member of the Executive Council of The Policy Lab at Brown.

Dr. Chamberlain is associate professor of pediatrics, associate chair of policy and community and the Arline and Pete Harman Faculty Scholar at Stanford Children’s Hospital. She founded and co-directs the Stanford Pediatric Advocacy Program to train leaders in community pediatrics and advocacy.

Please register to receive the Zoom link for this virtual event.

Susanna Loeb, Director of the Annenberg Institute, Brown University, and Lisa Chamberlain, Associate Professor of Pediatrics, Stanford University, presented “Kinder-ready clinics: Emerging models of how clinics can support parents in early-childhood development through low-cost, scalable interventions” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on February 25, 2021 in a virtual session.

The talk examined the temporal dynamics of teacher hiring. Jessalynn James, Postdoctoral Researcher, Annenberg Institute at Brown University, presented “The Temporal Dynamics of Teacher Hiring” at the Institute on January 12, 2021 in a virtual session. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.

The talk presented evidence from public school teachers on employee evaluation and human capital investment. Eric Taylor, Associate Professor, Harvard University, presented “Employee evaluation and human capital investment: Evidence from public school teachers” at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University on December 14, 2021. The talk was part of Annenberg’s Education Policy Workshop Series, an hour-long “works in progress” seminar centered on empirical research related to education and education policy. Speakers come from a variety of disciplinary traditions, and the series welcomes faculty, postdocs, graduate students, and research staff from across the university who are interested in empirical research in education.