Margarita Pivovarova

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Associate) at Arizona State University

Traditional teacher compensation systems based solely on observable characteristics (such as experience and degree) have shown weak correlations with student learning outcomes. Teacher merit-pay incentives aim to strengthen the links between teacher remuneration and student learning outcomes. In this study, we examined the student achievement outco...

Figure 1: Youth participate in a stretching session while wearing inertial measurement units (IMUs) wirelesssly coupled to laptops that generate music in the classroom. Abstract We, a team of teachers and researchers, share examples of collectively playable instruments that challenge normative assumptions about intention and agency in digital music...

This article describes teachers’ beliefs about the pedagogical approaches of very good teachers. Our exploratory factor analysis and analysis of variance based on the data from an online survey of K-12 public school teachers (N = 179) revealed two main findings. First, the teachers distinguished between relationship-emphasized and content-emphasize...

In this study, we estimated the relationship between two popular measures of teacher effectiveness—teachers’ value-added model (VAM) estimates, represented in this study via median growth percentiles (MGPs), and teachers’ observational scores, derived from the TAP System for Teacher and Student Advancement. We examined the relationship between thes...

Local education agencies (LEAs) continue to use value-added models (VAMs) for teacher evaluation policies and purposes, often with consequences attached. Although the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) provides more flexibility to LEAs, few have discontinued VAM use, suggesting they interpret VAMs as a valid measure of teacher effectiveness. In this...

In this article, we describe public beliefs about the pedagogical approaches of very good teachers. Using an online survey of 334 adult participants and conducting an exploratory factor analysis, an analysis of variance, and multiple regression analysis, along with descriptive statistics, we found that participants believed that very good teachers...

Statewide assessments in reading and math are required every year under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015, at an annual expense of billions of taxpayer dollars. Analyzing 10 years of school-level results from public schools in two states—Nebraska and Texas—we found that year-to-year correlations of schools’ test scores were exceptionall...

Background One way of evaluating immigrants’ labor market outcomes is to assess the extent to which immigrants are able to enter into jobs that are commensurate with their education and experience. An imperfect alignment between workers’ educational qualifications and these required for their current job, or education-job mismatch, has implications...

In this study, we analyzed public school teacher employment data from 2009 to 2015 to understand why teacher attrition is 54% higher in charter schools compared to traditional public schools. We investigated the factors associated with the differences in exit rates of teachers from traditional public and charter schools in Arizona which has a large...

In this study, we explore the potential of data from large-scale assessments to provide insights into how students’ environmental knowledge could address the global challenge of environmental threats to humanity and the transition to sustainable development. We analyze data from the 2015 PISA survey to understand the extent to which 15-year old stu...

With many states increasingly adopting Quality Rating and Improvement Systems (QRIS) to rate their early childhood education (ECE) and child care programs, researchers question the use of these systems. Specifically, they are trying to understand the value of information provided by QRIS ratings and the implications QRIS ratings have on the quality...

Background/Context The Race to the Top federal initiatives and requirements surrounding waivers of No Child Left Behind promoted expanded use of value-added models (VAMs) to evaluate teachers. Even after passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) relaxed these requirements, allowing more flexibility and local control, many states and district...

This article presents data from 1,751 survey responses on how adults remember their share of very good teachers in K-12 education and their characteristics. Participants remembered most of their teachers as good or very good and typically just over 15 percent as bad or worse. Further, participants remembered their very good teacher as predominantly...

This study examined the improvement trajectories and rate of change in the teaching quality of 1283 preservice teachers over the course of their student residency. The quality of student teaching was measured four consecutive times using an observational rubric. Results indicate that student teachers improve at significantly different rates and the...

Enforcing and expanding immigration restrictions have been at the forefront of the Trump administration’s agenda since his inauguration in January 2017. Underlying these policies is an assumption that immigrants harm U.S. citizens. More specifically, both authorized and undocumented immigrants are framed as consuming a disproportionate share of soc...

This study examines the consequences of two controversial Arizona immigration laws, the Legal Arizona Workers Act and SB 1070, on school enrollment and student achievement trends. In the period after implementation of both policies, Arizona public schools have demonstrated growth in student achievement on standardized tests arguably due to the stat...

Immigrants and their children are the fastest-growing demographic group in the United States, and schools are often the first social institution young immigrants engage with on a sustained basis. As such, the academic achievement of immigrant students can be viewed as an indicator of their incorporation and a predictor of educational and employment...

Teacher attrition is one of the driving contributors to the shortage of effective teachers internationally and in the United States. The common factors that spur teachers worldwide to leave the profession include low salaries, quality of teacher preparation programs, overwhelming workload, and poor working conditions. In this study, we analyzed thr...

While states are no longer required to set up teacher evaluation systems based in significant part on student test scores, quite a few continue to use value-added (VAMs) or student growth percentile (SGP) models for that purpose. In this study, we analyzed three years of teacher data to illustrate the performance of teachers’ median growth percenti...

Preparing, recruiting, and retaining high-quality teachers into the profession has been a concern of policy makers and practitioners for some time. Teacher attrition is problematic and costly for schools and districts. However, relatively few studies have investigated the relationship between preservice teacher quality and teacher attrition. In thi...

The 2016 Presidential election and the first months of the Trump administration have propelled immigration to the center of U.S. political debates. We use data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012 to provide insights into the school experiences of high school–age immigrants and their U.S.-born peers. Our findings indi...

In this case study, two members from a team of a tenured professor, an early career professor, and a doctoral student outline their experiences from conducting an online qualitative survey research study. The goal of the study was to seek the opinion of experts in the field of education, statistics, and economics about the use of value-added models...

In this case study, two members from a team of a tenured professor, an early career professor, and a doctoral student outline their experiences from conducting an online qualitative survey research study. The goal of the study was to seek the opinion of experts in the field of education, statistics, and economics about the use of value-added models...

Being an expert involves explaining how things are supposed to work, and, perhaps more important, why things might not work as supposed. In this study, researchers surveyed scholars with expertise in value-added models (VAMs) to solicit their opinions about the uses and potential of VAMs for teacher-level accountability purposes (for example, in th...

In this critical review of literature, we summarize the major theoretical frameworks that have been used to study teacher mobility. In total we identified 40 teacher mobility studies that met our inclusion criteria. We conclude that relatively few theoretical frameworks have been used to study teacher mobility and those that have been used are lack...

Value-added models (VAMs) are being used in education in order to link the contribution of individual teachers and schools to students’ learning. The use of VAMs has been surrounded by controversy and high-profile public debates. On April 8, 2014 the American Statistical Association (ASA) released a statement on VAMs related to their use in educati...

The extensive coverage of household surveys in conflict regions in recent decades has fueled a growing literature on the microeconomic effects of war. In this paper, we use a unique panel dataset to quantify the impact of the Nepalese civil conflict on schooling attainment. Given longitudinal data, we are able to directly estimate unobserved indivi...

This paper explores the role of community effects -ethnic composition of the com-munity and aggregate level of village development -on the probability of school enroll-ment among the low caste girls in rural Nepal. Using data from the Nepalese Living Standards Surveys 1996 and 2004, I find that girls from the underprivileged groups (low castes) who...