Children's noncognitive skills, mental health, and behavior are important predictors of future earnings and educational attainment. Their behavior in the classroom also affects their peers' behavior and achievement. There is limited prior evidence, however, concerning the impact of school...

The vast majority of research and policy related to teacher quality focuses on the supply of teachers and ignores teacher demand. In particular, the important role of school principals in hiring teachers is rarely considered. Using interviews of school principals in a midsized Florida school...

Many states have used professional judgment panels to determine the resources schools need to meet certain performance targets. This study initiates a critical study of that method. Using budget simulations with hypothetical schools, we collected the judgments of forty-five principals about how...

Value-added indicators are now a central part of school accountability in England, and value-added information is routinely used in school improvement at both the national and the local levels. This article describes the value-added models that are being used in the academic year 2007–8 by...

This article develops a model for longitudinal student achievement data designed to estimate heterogeneity in teacher effects across students of different achievement levels. The model specifies interactions between teacher effects and students' predicted scores on a test, estimating both...

Educational equality is one important value of justice in education, but it is only one. This article makes a case for a meritocratic principle of educational equality and shows that certain arguments against that principle do not justify rejecting it. It would be wrong to, for the sake of...

Despite increased requirements for high school graduation, almost one-third of the nation's college freshmen are unprepared for college-level math. The need for remediation is particularly high among students who are low income, Hispanic, and black. Female students are also less likely than...

The No Child Left Behind Act imposes sanctions on schools if the fraction of students demonstrating proficiency on a high-stakes test falls below a statewide pass rate. While the motivation behind this system is improved public school performance, it also provides incentives for schools to focus...

We use data on students in grades 4–7 in the Canadian province of British Columbia to investigate the effect of having disabled peers on value-added exam outcomes. Longitudinal data for multiple cohorts of students are used together with school-by-grade-level fixed effects to account for...

This article provides an explicit framework for evaluating the expected benefit to college-bound students of courses offered by Advanced Placement (AP) versus concurrent enrollment programs (CEP). District personnel can use it to assess the relative merits of these programs, given the...