Education Week commentary.

This paper clarifies four areas of confusion about value-added methodology and its role in teacher evaluation: (1) use of value-added information; (2) consequences for teachers versus those for students of classifying and misclassifying teachers as effective or ineffective; (3) reliability of...

We use a unique longitudinal sample of student teachers (“interns”) from six Washington state teacher training institutions to investigate patterns of entry into the teaching workforce. We estimate split population models that simultaneously estimate the impact of individual characteristics...

While numerous recent authors have studied the effects of school accountability systems on student test performance and school “gaming” of accountability incentives, there has been little attention paid to substantive changes in instructional policies and practices resulting from school...

A large literature on teacher collective bargaining describes the potential influence of the provisions in collectively bargained teacher union contracts on teachers and student achievement, but little is known about what influences the provisions that end up in these contracts. Using a unique...

In this article we focus on two questions: How well do teachers understand their current pension plans, and what do they think about alternative plan structures? The data come from administrative records and a 2006 survey of teachers in Washington State. The results suggest that Washington's...

Investment in the certification of teachers by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) represents a significant policy initiative for the nation's public school teachers. This article investigates the potential impact of NBPTS certification on teachers' career paths. Using...

This brief summarizes findings from several research articles that focus on the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS). This work focuses on three key questions: Who applies for and becomes National Board certified? Where do National Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) teach?...