Ten years ago, the reform of teacher evaluation was touted as a mechanism to improve teacher effectiveness. In response, virtually every state redesigned its teacher evaluation system. Recently, a growing narrative suggests these reforms failed and should be abandoned. This response may be overly simplistic. We explore the variability of New York City principals’ implementation of policies intended to promote teaching effectiveness. Drawing on survey, interview, and administrative data, we analyze whether principals believe they can use teacher evaluation and tenure policies to improve teaching effectiveness and how such perceptions influence policy implementation. We find that principals with greater perceived agency are more likely to strategically use tenure and evaluation policies. Results have important implications for principal training and policy implementation.

Text-message programs are increasingly popular as low-cost interventions aimed at improving a variety of health and education outcomes. This study analyzes participant opt out decisions from a set of text messaging programs aimed at fostering parent–child interactions and improving school readiness. Exploiting random assignment of parents of young children to programs and rich data on text messages and recipients, we examine how program design and text and recipient characteristics predict program opt out. The results provide evidence that the text messaging programs reach the parents of traditionally less-resourced children and show that program design affects parent opt out. Programs that provide context and encouragement along with activities reduce opt out compared to programs that send activities alone. A high quantity of texts and more complex texts lead recipients to opt out at greater rates.

The time children spend with their parents affects their development. Parenting programs can help parents use that time more effectively. Text-messaged-based parenting curricula have proven an effective means of supporting positive parenting practices by providing easy and fun activities that reduce informational and behavioral barriers. These programs may be more effective if delivered during times when parents are particularly in need of support or alternatively when parents have more time to interact with their child. This study compares the effects of an early childhood text-messaging program sent during the weekend to the same program sent on weekdays. We find that sending the texts on the weekend is, on average, more beneficial to children’s literacy and math development. This effect is particularly strong for initially lower achieving children, while the weekday texts show some benefits for higher achieving children on higher order skills. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that the parents of lower achieving students, on average, face such high barriers during weekdays that supports are not enough to overcome these barriers, while for parents of higher achieving students, weekday texts are more effective because weekdays are more challenging, but not so difficult as to be untenable for positive parenting.

Researchers commonly interpret effect sizes by applying benchmarks proposed by Jacob Cohen over a half century ago. However, effects that are small by Cohen’s standards are large relative to the impacts of most field-based interventions. These benchmarks also fail to consider important differences in study features, program costs, and scalability. In this article, I present five broad guidelines for interpreting effect sizes that are applicable across the social sciences. I then propose a more structured schema with new empirical benchmarks for interpreting a specific class of studies: causal research on education interventions with standardized achievement outcomes. Together, these tools provide a practical approach for incorporating study features, costs, and scalability into the process of interpreting the policy importance of effect sizes.

A growing number of school systems use self-report surveys to track students’ social-emotional development as a tool to inform policy and practice. We use the first large-scale panel survey of social-emotional learning (SEL) to simulate how four constructs—growth mindset, self-efficacy, self-management, and social awareness—develop from Grade 4 to Grade 12 and how these trends vary by gender, socioeconomic status, and race/ethnicity among students participating in the survey for two consecutive years. With the exception of growth mindset, self-reports of these constructs do not increase monotonically as students move through school; self-efficacy, social awareness, and to a lesser degree self-management decrease after Grade 6. Female students report higher self-management and social awareness than males, but lower self-efficacy relative to males in middle and high school. Economically disadvantaged students and students of color report lower levels of each construct. These patterns highlight the need for policymakers to interpret changes in students’ self-reports over time in light of normative trends in social-emotional development and illustrate how such self-reports may nonetheless be used to set priorities and target interventions and resources.

Informal caregivers (family, friends, and neighbors) spend many hours each week with the children in their care and can have a significant impact on the children’s social-emotional and academic development. Unfortunately, many informal caregivers lack the knowledge of how to do so. We conducted a qualitative 2-year study to investigate informal caregivers’ motivations, assets, and needs. The caregivers received text messages to help them support child development. In Year 1, we used interviews to better understand the needs of informal caregivers and potential opportunities to scaffold their interactions with the children. In Year 2, we expanded the program and invited informal caregivers to complete a survey to extend what we learned in Year 1. Both kin and non-kin informal caregivers are highly motivated to support children’s social and academic development and have adequate material resources to provide enriching educational environments for the children. However, we find that informal caregivers often lack information on useful practices to support child development. The text messages helped informal caregivers to overcome both informational and behavioral barriers to caregiving and supporting child development.

The U.S. Department of Education made recent technical changes reducing eligibility for the Rural and Low-Income School Program. Given smaller budgets and lower economies of scale, rural districts may be less able to absorb short-term funding cuts and experience stronger negative achievement effects. Kansas implemented a state-level finance change (block grant funding) after 2015, which froze district revenue regardless of enrollment and reduced funding in districts where enrollment increased. Difference-in-differences models compare achievement before and after block grant implementation to estimate effects of funding cuts separately in rural and non-rural districts. Between-state and within-state comparisons offer complementary identification strategies in which the strengths of one approach help address limitations of the other. Revenue/spending reductions are similar by geography, but represent a larger fraction of rural district budgets. Results indicate that revenue reductions have larger implications for achievement in rural areas, where they represent a larger proportion of the total budget.

All children deserve a safe and clean place to learn. Context is critical for student achievement and improving school facilities is particularly beneficial for low-income students. Although low-income students benefit more from school districts’ spending on facilities, high-income districts receive more funds for facility improvements. The distribution of facilities funding is inefficient. Comparing high- and low-income student achievement in districts that narrowly pass and narrowly fail to pass a bond measure in California provides evidence.

THE CASE IN CALIFORNIA

California’s public education funding formula provides more education funding to economically disadvantaged school districts. These funds support operating expenses, such as teacher salaries. But school facilities funding depends on local property tax revenue, supported by the state on a first-come first-served basis. Higher property values allow economically advantaged districts to raise facility improvement funds at a lower tax rate. The disadvantages for low-income districts are compounded by the fact that higher-income areas have more administrative support, which allows them to request matching funds from the state. This facility improvements funding system allows advantaged districts to receive more funding for capital investments than disadvantaged districts. This limits the potential benefits of school facility investments.

BOND MEASURES IN CALIFORNIA

From 1999 to 2013 in California, there were 678 close school district elections on general obligation bonds to improve school facilities. General obligation bonds are bonds backed by local governments that ensure bondholders they will be repaid – via tax revenues, if necessary. Close elections are those where the proportion of votes in favor of passing the bond was within 10 percentage points of the threshold required to pass.

I compare changes in achievement (test scores) in districts that narrowly passed and narrowly failed a bond election. Within a narrow window of voter support around the pass threshold, the assumption of this approach is that achievement changes would be similar, except for variation in voter support, which is held constant. I vary the width of the window around the pass threshold and find similar results.

Facilities funding increased achievement among low-income but not high-income students. Compared to districts that narrowly failed a bond measure, districts that narrowly passed a bond experienced no change in achievement among high-income students. In contrast, low-income achievement increased more in districts that narrowly passed a bond compared to districts that narrowly failed a bond measure. The benefit to low-income achievement amounts to approximately a third of the average gap between low- and high-income achievement in the time period.

The benefits of facilities funding emerge after a delay. The benefits for low-income achievement are delayed and do not emerge until six years after the election measure. This delayed benefit matches the timing of capital spending, which increased two years after the measure. Facilities funding created temporary disruptions to student learning and low-income achievement was most sensitive to those disruptions. This pattern suggests achievement benefits emerge after capital investment in facilities are completed and the proverbial “dust” has settled.

The benefits of facilities funding are limited to low-income districts. Narrowly passing a bond measure increases achievement among low-income students in low-income districts (with high free lunch eligibility), but not in high-income districts. Benefits for low-income achievement in low-income districts emerge both five and six years after passing a bond.

The benefits of facilities funding are larger and more persistent in small districts. Districts often renovate or build one school at a time, so only a proportion of students experience improved context from district spending on school facilities. When we examine districts with fewer than 5 schools – where a larger proportion of students enjoy the improved context – the benefits for low-income achievement are larger and persist for up to 9 years.

Policy Implications

Passing a bond measure (to fund school facilities improvements) expands equality of opportunity by increasing achievement among low-income students without influencing achievement among high-income students.

Districts and states could work to mitigate the temporary disruptions in achievement for low-income students after passing a bond election measure. If the temporary disruptions could be reduced, the benefits of school facility improvements would become more apparent, investments would be more efficient, and equality of opportunity would improve. One potential way to mitigate disruptions would be to provide extra support for students and teachers in the form of teacher’s aides or assistants.

In recent years, states have sought to increase accountability for public school teachers by implementing a package of reforms centered on high-stakes evaluation systems. We examine the effect of these reforms on the supply and quality of new teachers. Leveraging variation across states and time, we find that accountability reforms reduced the number of newly licensed teacher candidates and increased the likelihood of unfilled teaching positions, particularly in hard-to-staff schools. Evidence also suggests that reforms increased the quality of new labor supply by reducing the likelihood new teachers attended unselective undergraduate institutions. Decreases in job security, satisfaction, and autonomy are likely mechanisms for these effects.

Narrative accounts of classroom instruction suggest that external interruptions, such as intercom announcements and visits from staff, are a regular occurrence in U.S. public schools. We study the frequency, nature, and duration of external interruptions in the Providence Public School District (PPSD) using original data from a district-wide survey and classroom observations. We estimate that a typical classroom in PPSD is interrupted over 2,000 times per year, and that these interruptions and the disruptions they cause result in the loss of between 10 to 20 days of instructional time. Administrators appear to systematically underestimate the frequency and negative consequences of these interruptions. We propose several organizational approaches schools might adopt to reduce external interruptions to classroom instruction.