State policies affect the qualifications of beginning teachers in numerous ways, including regulating entry requirements, providing incentives for graduate degrees, and subsidizing preparation programs at public universities. In this paper we assess how these policy choices affect student...

Federal legislation currently holds institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teachers that they produce. However research has yet to demonstrate that teacher preparation programs (TPPs) have differential effects on the quality of teachers they produce in terms of student...

We are in the midst of what amounts to a national experiment in how best to attract, prepare, and retain teachers, particularly for high-poverty urban schools. Using data on students and teachers in grades 3–8, this study assesses the effects of pathways into teaching in New York City on the...

A key concern in the design of education policies relates to the structure of incentives in accountability systems. This paper examines a school accountability program that provides financial support to low-performing schools but has no direct punishment scheme for recipients who do not exhibit...

We investigate the achievement impact of alternative uses of student assessments. Our dataset covers over 2 million students in 59 countries observed over 6 waves in the international PISA test 2000-2015. Our empirical model exploits the country panel dimension to investigate assessment reforms...

Teachers are among the most important inputs in the education production function. One mechanism by which teachers might affect student learning is through the grading standards they set for their classrooms. However, the effects of grading standards on student outcomes are relatively...

School systems regularly use student assessments for accountability purposes. But, as highlighted by our conceptual model, different configurations of assessment usage generate performance-conducive incentives of different strengths for different stakeholders in different school environments. We...