This paper uses individual student-level data from Ohio–which permits a wide range of organizations to authorize charter schools—to examine the relationship between type of authorizer and charter-school effectiveness, as measured by students’ achievement trajectories.

This report describes The Equity Project (TEP) charter school’s instructional and personnel strategies, examines the characteristics and attrition rates of TEP students, and measures TEP’s impacts on student achievement during the school’s first four years of operation.

In the past two decades, the number of states offering alternative certification routes for teachers increased from a handful to 45. Some estimates suggest that a third of any given year's newly hired teachers come through these routes. However, teacher training programs vary widely in their...

To determine how the strategy of replacing principals affected student achievement in D.C. Public Schools, the Walton Family Foundation contracted with Mathematica Policy Research. The resulting study is the first to examine the impact of such a strategy on student achievement.

To determine how the strategy of replacing principals affected student achievement in D.C. Public Schools, the Walton Family Foundation contracted with Mathematica Policy Research. The resulting study is the first to examine the impact of such a strategy on student achievement.

This report presents our examination of impacts of principals trained by New Leaders on student achievement in Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). For the last 10 years, New Leaders has partnered with OUSD in efforts to improve the recruitment and training of effective principals and school...

Mathematica's rigorous evaluation of the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF) will estimate the impact of performance pay on student achievement, as well as educators' attitudes toward and awareness of TIF and their mobility and recruitment. This report provides contextual background on performance pay...

This working paper illustrates—theoretically and through simulations—that the Rothstein falsification test is not definitive in indicating bias in value-added model estimates of current teacher contributions to student learning.

The authors conducted a randomized controlled trial, which showed that during the first year of a teacher’s career, students of teachers in comprehensive induction programs scored no better on achievement tests than students of teachers in their school’s usual induction support. A...