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Can Online Off-the-Shelf Lessons Improve Student Outcomes? Evidence from a Field Experiment
Abstract
Many websites now warehouse instructional materials designed to be taught by teachers in a traditional classroom. What are the potential benefits of the new resources? We analyze an experiment in which we randomly give middle school math teachers access to existing high-quality, off-the-shelf lessons, and in some cases, support to promote their use. Teachers receiving access alone increased students' math achievement by a marginally significant 0.06 of a standard deviation. Teachers who received access and support increased students' math achievement by 0.09 of a standard deviation. Weaker teachers experience larger gains, suggesting that these lessons substitute for teacher skill or efforts. The online materials are more scalable and cost effective than most policies aimed at improving teacher quality, suggesting that, if search costs can be overcome, there is a real benefit to making high-quality instructional materials available to teachers on the Internet.
... And related (quasi-)experiments have also shown teacher performance improvements in the first year of a new program (Taylor and Tyler 2012, Jackson and Makarin 2018, Papay et al. 2020, Burgess, Rawal, and Taylor 2021, Briole and Maurin in-press, Hanno 2022. ...
... Most mathematics curriculum interventions result from low mathematics achievements due to learners making errors or misconceptions (Cortes et al., 2015;Domina et al., 2015;Jackson & Makarin, 2016). The mathematics curriculum reforms have focused on teachers grounded in mathematics content knowledge and pedagogical and pedagogical content knowledge (Johnson et al., 2019). ...
The conversation about the mathematics curriculum, its relevance to the current discourse, and its positive contribution to the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) appear to take momentum. However, the mathematics and the discourse surrounding its delivery are still not place-based but rather isolated from the people and the land. For the mathematics curriculum to be place-based and relevant to the African context and paradigm, there is a need for a shift in its content and dissemination. Place-based mathematics education is an approach to critical mathematics education that engages students, teachers, and communities around interests of importance to students and their communities. While the 4IR describes the exponential change in how the communities will live and communicate due to the internet of things and the cyber-physical systems, its direct impact on education and its influence on the mathematics curriculum is yet to be debated and realised. The mathematics curricula, while place base, must conform and adapt to the influence of 4IR. The challenges fronting the proponents of mathematics curriculum reform and effective mathematics instruction are that the subject continues to be underperformed and the instructions are flawed and ineffective. The effect is that the students produced in current mathematical curricula perpetuate the impact of ineffective mathematics instructions. The bearers of 4IR assert that it can support effective mathematical instruction in place-based orientations. This paper explores the current mathematics discourse in Sub Sahara Africa and its preparedness or lack of for the 4IR.KeywordsPlace-based mathematicsMathematics curriculum4IRInstructional approaches
... The daily process of teaching and learning activities involves an interaction of the curriculum itself in its implementation to pupils (Jackson and Makarin, 2018;Danielson, 2007;Lloyd, 2008;Robert, Marzano, and Tree, 2009;Agodini and Harris, 2010;Chingos and Whitehurst, 2016). The most essential predictor of curricular effectiveness is the teacher, who is the driving force behind developing and presenting class material. ...
The goal of this study was to find out what instructors and educators thought about the implementation of the 2022 Prototype curriculum in learning. The descriptive technique is used in this study. This study employs a population study with 19 teachers and education staff members from SMA Negeri 1 Belitang, East OKU, South Sumatra, selected using a purposive sample approach. In this study, questionnaires and interviews were utilized to collect data. The acquired data was then evaluated using descriptive statistics. According to the findings of this study, all participating teachers and education staff agree on the implementation of the Prototype curriculum 2022 in schools and recognize the benefits contained in the Prototype curriculum for 2022 which is contain character building of students.
... This seems especially relevant in the times of coronavirus when educators are overwhelmed with the logistical challenges of physical distancing and simultaneously developing virtual teaching skills but is probably a useful lesson for leaders regardless of the broader circumstances. Notably, our findings on teacher perceptions are consistent with existing evidence on the causal effects of providing curriculum for student achievement (Jackson & Makarin, 2018). ...
Despite interest in online learning for meeting student needs at scale, existing research finds relatively low levels of engagement in most forms of virtual learning, especially among economically disadvantaged students. This is concerning as the Covid-19 pandemic forced a dramatic increase in remote learning among students and educators who did not specifically opt into the model. We study an early innovative effort to virtually serve such K-12 students and teachers and to capitalize on the unique advantages of distance learning to promote educational equity amid the pandemic. This five-week, largely synchronous, summer program served nearly 12,000 rising 4th–9th graders, mostly low-income students of color. To expand access to excellent educators, “mentor teachers,” selected based on merit, provided PD and videos of themselves teaching daily lessons to “partner teachers” across the country. We interviewed a representative sample of teachers and analyzed educator, parent, and student surveys. Our study adds to the existing online learning literature by illustrating that it is possible to virtually engage a more generalizable set of students and teachers than have previously been studied and to use technology to extend the reach of talented teachers. Strategies for online engagement that scholars have identified when studying more specialized groups pre-pandemic appear relevant with a more generalizable population, such as the inclusion of meaningful content and a synchronous delivery format. Consistent with prior research, teachers appreciate receiving adaptable curricular materials and differentiated PD. Findings have implications for future uses of online learning, during periods of disruption and more typical times.
... Eight recent reviews of "what works" in education in developing countries collectively cover hundreds of randomized trials in dozens of countries; most individual studies and these reviews focus almost entirely on average treatment effects. 2 Even re-analyses of the raw data may yield limited evidence, since studies are commonly powered to detect only average effects (Glewwe and Muralidharan 2016). Examples of studies that do examine heterogeneity include Jackson and Makarin (2018), who use a conditional quantile treatment regression approach to show that the lesson plans matter more for weaker teachers, Glewwe, Kremer, and Moulin (2009), who find that textbooks only improve scores for the strongest students, and Moshoeshoe (2015) who investigates heterogeneity in the effects of class size reductions in Lesotho. ...
We document substantial variation in the effects of a highly-effective literacy program in northern Uganda. The program increases test scores by 1.4 SDs on average, but standard statistical bounds show that the impact standard deviation exceeds 1.0 SD. This implies that the variation in effects across our students is wider than the spread of mean effects across all randomized evaluations of developing country education interventions in the literature. This very effective program does indeed leave some students behind. At the same time, we do not learn much from our analyses that attempt to determine which students benefit more or less from the program. We reject rank preservation, and the weaker assumption of stochastic increasingness leaves wide bounds on quantile-specific average treatment effects. Neither conventional nor machine-learning approaches to estimating systematic heterogeneity capture more than a small fraction of the variation in impacts given our available candidate moderators.
... In a field study of 363 middle school math teachers, Jackson and Makarin (2017) demonstrated that implementing HQIM can transform an average-performing teacher into one who is performing at the 80 th percentile. The difference between using low-quality instructional materials and HQIM can lead to drastically different learning outcomes (Kane et. ...
A landmark study found that students spend over 500 hours per year on school assignments that are below grade level, negatively affecting their achievement (TNTP, 2018). To correct this situation, many schools have introduced high-quality instructional materials that are rigorous and developmentally appropriate. Unfortunately, the failure to implement these resources as intended often undercuts any impact that they might have (Donohoo & Katz, 2020). While some teachers state a desire to change their pedagogical practices, they fail to do so for a number of reasons (Le Fevre, 2014). In the current study, I examine the efficacy of model lessons by testing this hypothesis: if teachers witness a content specialist model a lesson with new instructional materials using students in their school, they will be more likely to implement the instructional materials in their own classrooms. The findings of this study will help inform the delivery service models of Instruction Partners and add to their theory of change moving forward.
... Eight recent reviews of "what works" in education in developing countries collectively cover hundreds of randomized trials in dozens of countries; most individual studies and these reviews focus almost entirely on average treatment effects. 2 Even re-analyses of the raw data may yield limited evidence, since studies are commonly powered to detect only average effects (Glewwe and Muralidharan 2016). Examples of studies that do examine heterogeneity include Jackson and Makarin (2018), who use a conditional quantile treatment regression approach to show that the lesson plans matter more for weaker teachers, Glewwe, Kremer, and Moulin (2009), who find that textbooks only improve scores for the strongest students, and Moshoeshoe (2015) who investigates heterogeneity in the effects of class size reductions in Lesotho. ...
... Textbook contents are hotly debated in the political sphere (e.g., Stewart, 2014), and notions of expert teaching often go handin-hand with imaginative, adept use of curriculum materials (Ball and Cohen, 1996). Academic inquiry has shown that curriculum materials can impact how teachers teach (Remillard, 2005) and what students learn (Agodini and Harris, 2010;Bhatt and Koedel, 2012;Jackson and Makarin, 2018), while being less expensive than some other policy reform levers (Chingos and Whitehurst, 2012). ...
Research has shown that officially-adopted textbooks comprise only a small part of teachers’ enacted curriculum. Teachers often supplement their core textbooks with unofficial materials, but empirical study of teacher curriculum supplementation is relatively new and underdeveloped. Grounding our work in the Teacher Curriculum Supplementation Framework, we use data from two state-representative teacher surveys to describe different supplement use patterns and explore their correlates. (We use RAND’s American Teacher Panel survey of K-12 ELA teachers, representative of Louisiana, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island, and Harvard’s National Evaluation of Curriculum Effectiveness survey of fourth and fifth grade math teachers, representative of California, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Washington.) We find evidence of four distinct supplement use patterns. We then predict each pattern, producing sparse models using the lasso estimator. We find that teacher-, school-, and textbook-level characteristics are predictive of teachers’ supplement use, suggesting that it may be affected by structures and policies beyond the individual teacher. We recommend researchers use consistent measures to explore the causes and consequences of supplementation.
... In our study, we define these materials as supplemental and not the primary curriculum to teach mathematics. Jackson and Makarin (2018) experimentally evaluated the effectiveness of "off-the-shelf" curriculum materials for middle school math teachers, which we distinguish from complete textbooks. 6 Prior to being updated to the CCSS, enVision was referred to as Scott Foresman-Addison Wesley Elementary Math. ...
Can a school or district improve student achievement simply by switching to a higher‐quality textbook or curriculum? We conducted the first multi‐textbook, multi‐state effort to estimate textbook efficacy following widespread adoption of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and associated changes in the textbook market. Pooling textbook adoption and student test score data across six geographically and demographically diverse U.S. states, we found little evidence of differences in average achievement gains for schools using different math textbooks. We found some evidence of greater variation in achievement gains among schools using pre‐CCSS editions, which may have been more varied in their content than post‐CCSS editions because they were written for a broader set of standards. We also found greater variation among schools that had more exposure to a given text. However, these differences were small. Despite considerable interest and attention to textbooks as a low‐cost, “silver bullet” intervention for improving student outcomes, we conclude that the adoption of a new textbook or set of curriculum materials, on its own, is unlikely to achieve this goal.
... The mere presence of these supports is not as useful as ensuring that the supports are connected, are coherent, and provide nonconflicting guidance (Kaufman, Thompson, and Opfer, 2016). An experimental study of online math lessons for middle school grades found that teachers who received curriculum-aligned supports produced higher gains in student achievement than teachers without supports (Jackson and Makarin, 2018). In addition, a recent meta-analysis of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) instructional improvement programs found that professional development focused on curricula is associated with above-average student gains (Hill et al., 2020). ...
... Logistical resources are practical supports that teachers need to fulfill their responsibilities, including curricular resources and planning time (O'Brien et al., 2019). A strong body of research with general educators, including studies permitting causal inferences, indicates curricular resources can powerfully shape the quality and effectiveness of teachers' instructional practices (e.g., Jackson & Makarin, 2018;Jimenez et al., 2014). A small body of qualitative and mixed-methods research with SETs affirms studies of general educators, suggesting SETs use stronger instructional practices when they have structured curricula that support them in planning and providing instruction relevant to their students' needs (Bishop et al., 2010;Brownell et al., 2014;Siuty et al., 2018). ...
Students with emotional/behavioral disorders (EBD) in self-contained settings depend on special educators to deliver high-quality instruction and behavior management, and special educators depend on administrators to create supportive working environments. Yet, to date, no studies have examined how working conditions relate to special educators’ provision of effective instructional or behavior management practices for students with EBD in self-contained settings. To fill this crucial gap, we conducted a national survey of 171 special educators serving students with EBD in self-contained settings. Using structural equation modeling, we found special educators who experienced more supportive working conditions (i.e., stronger logistical resources and lower demands) reported more manageable workloads, experienced less emotional exhaustion and stress, felt greater self-efficacy for instruction, and reported using evidence-supported instructional practices more often with their students. Results have implications for future research and practice.
... A growing body of research indicates that teachers become more effective at promoting strong student outcomes when they have strong curricula, such as lesson plans and logistical supports for using them (Jackson & Makarin, 2016). For example, Siuty et al. (2018) found that special educators without a reading intervention program tended to use an ad hoc array of materials, drawing on what was readily available and creating many materials themselves while not systematically collecting data to inform instructional decision making. ...
Special educators are responsible for providing quality reading instruction to students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), but they often experience difficulties fulfilling this responsibility, especially for students with EBD who are placed in dedicated settings, including self-contained classes. Administrators can help by ensuring special educators have what they need to provide effective reading instruction. We highlight how administrators can leverage special educators’ working conditions to improve the reading instruction that students with EBD receive in self-contained settings.
... Other nudges involve reminders, but the data are sparse. Webinars and an online discussion board for teachers did not significantly increase the effectiveness of a math curriculum intervention (Jackson & Makarin, 2018). On the contrary, in the arena of parenting, another highly complex practice, simple text message reminders to engage in literacy activities, such as letter identification, can effectively alter parenting practices and improve student achievement (York, Loeb, & Doss, 2018). ...
More than half of U.S. children fail to meet proficiency standards in mathematics and science in fourth grade. Teacher professional development and curriculum improvement are two of the primary levers that school leaders and policymakers use to improve children’s science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) learning, yet until recently, the evidence base for understanding their effectiveness was relatively thin. In recent years, a wealth of rigorous new studies using experimental designs have investigated whether and how STEM instructional improvement programs work. This article highlights contemporary research on how to improve classroom instruction and subsequent student learning in STEM. Instructional improvement programs that feature curriculum integration, teacher collaboration, content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, and how students learn all link to stronger student achievement outcomes. We discuss implications for policy and practice.
... Several educational quality measures, including student-to-teacher ratio, school term length (days of the year when school is open to students), and per-pupil expenditure, have been associated with higher educational attainment (Jackson, Johnson, & Persico, 2016) and earnings Krueger, 1990, 1991), with low-income and minority students benefitting more (Jackson, 2016). School term length is thought to reflect better quality as states that prioritize educational quality have longer term length; term length is also correlated with selfreported educational quality (Manly et al., 2018). ...
Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are patterned by educational attainment but educational quality is rarely examined. Educational quality differences may help explain racial disparities. Health and Retirement Study respondent data (1992-2014; born 1900-1951) were linked to state- and year-specific educational quality measures when the respondent was 6 years old. State-level educational quality was a composite of state-level school term length, student-to-teacher ratio, and per-pupil expenditure. CVD-related outcomes were self-reported (N = 24,339) obesity, heart disease, stroke, ever-smoking, high blood pressure, diabetes and objectively measured (N = 10,704) uncontrolled blood pressure, uncontrolled blood sugar, total cholesterol, high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL), and C-reactive protein. Race/ethnicity was classified as White, Black, or Latino. Cox models fit for dichotomous time-to-event outcomes and generalized estimating equations for continuous outcomes were adjusted for individual and state-level confounders. Heterogeneities by race were evaluated using state-level educational quality by race interaction terms; race-pooled, race by educational quality interaction, and race-specific estimates were calculated. In race-pooled analyses, higher state-level educational quality was protective for obesity (HR = 0.92; 95%CI(0.87,0.98)). In race-specific estimates for White Americans, state-level educational quality was protective for high blood pressure (HR = 0.95; 95%CI(0.91,0.99). Differential relationships among Black compared to White Americans were observed for obesity, heart disease, stroke, smoking, high blood pressure, and HDL cholesterol. In race-specific estimates for Black Americans, higher state-level educational quality was protective for obesity (HR = 0.88; 95%CI(0.84,0.93)), but predictive of heart disease (HR = 1.07; 95%CI(1.01,1.12)), stroke (HR = 1.20; 95%CI(1.08,1.32)), and smoking (HR = 1.05; 95%CI(1.02,1.08)). Race-specific hazard ratios for Latino and Black Americans were similar for obesity, stroke, and smoking. Better state-level educational quality had differential associations with CVD by race. Among minorities, better state-level educational quality was predominately associated with poorer CVD outcomes. Results evaluate the 1900-1951 birth cohorts; secular changes in the racial integration of schools since the 1950s, means results may not generalize to younger cohorts.
... Defaulting teachers to get well curated detailed lesson plans will lead to better classroom teaching by teachers, leading to higher student outcomes. Studies have shown that online access to the pre-made lessons with supports for teachers increased student's math test score by about 0.08 standard deviation (which is considered between small-medium effect size by industry standards (Lipsey et al, 2012) (Jackson & Makarin, 2016). Since our proposal does more than making a pre-designed lesson plan accessible online, and since defaulting will result in high take up rate (Beshears et al, 2008), we expect a medium-big effect (by industry standards (Lipsey et al, 2012)) on student outcomes. ...
In this paper we propose a behaviorally informed intervention to address the 'learning crisis' plaguing government schools in Indian. The proposed intervention is aimed at encouraging government school teachers to create and employ lesson plans to increase their effectiveness and improve student learning outcomes. We use behaviorally informed tools such as enhanced active choice, defaults, anchors, and checklists. As well as behavioral insights on social norms and present-bias to inform our intervention design.
The advances in ICTs and the digitization of services offer new ways to reach, engage with, and provide services to consumers. Recent advances in technology have fueled the rapid growth of digitization in education, and the education industry has witnessed radical changes in the provision and delivery of its products and services. Digital textbooks, which are equipped with various learning resources including multimedia aids, assessment questions, and hyperlinks to external resources, can be an important channel for harnessing technologies in classrooms. Korea’s digital textbook experiment provides a unique empirical setting to examine the effects of digital textbooks on students’ academic outcomes. The authors employ a panel regression model with teacher fixed-effects, propensity score weighting method, and instrumental variable strategy to find that greater usage of digital textbooks in class improves students’ academic performance, academic interest, and learning skills. The authors explore the heterogeneity in the utilization effect across student levels to find greater improvements in academic performance for low-achieving students. The findings have important managerial and policy implications for major stakeholders in the education sector, including teachers, school administrators, students, and policymakers.
Harnessing a cluster randomized controlled trial, we estimated the impact on students’ advanced placement (AP) examination performance of a project-based learning (PBL) approach to AP compared with a lecture-based AP approach. Through PBL, teachers primarily play a facilitator role, while students work on complex tasks organized around central questions leading to a final product. We estimated positive and significant treatment effects on AP exam performance for the overall sample, within both AP courses studied, and within low- and high-income student groups. Results support teacher-driven adoption of the PBL AP approach within both courses studied, among districts with open-enrollment AP policies and supportive of PBL, for students from low- and high-income households.
Using two RCTs in middle schools in Pakistan, we show that brief, expert-led, curriculum-based videos integrated into the classroom experience improved teaching effectiveness: student test scores in math and science increased by 0.3 standard deviations, 60 percent more than the control group, after 4 months of exposure. Students and teachers increased their attendance, and students were more likely to pass the high-stakes government exams. By contrast, providing similar content to students on personal tablets decreased student scores by 0.4 SD. The contrast between the two effects shows the importance of engaging teachers and the potential for technology to do so. (JEL I21, I28, J45, O15, O30)
Research Findings: Several barriers can impede the use and effectiveness of intensive professional development programs, such as courses and coaching, for educators across today’s mixed delivery early education system. The present study introduces and tests a light-touch text message-based approach to encourage educators’ use of two high-quality practices with children: (a) making transitions more efficient and (b) promoting children’s language through open-ended questioning. As part of a six-week intervention, 116 educators participating in a statewide study of early education were randomized to a treatment group receiving three text messages per week about the targeted practices or to a control group receiving no messages. At the end of the intervention, teachers in the treatment group, as compared to those in the control group, spoke more to children in their settings, although they listened less. No statistically significant impacts were observed on transition-related outcomes. Moderated impacts by provider type were observed, with educators in family child care programs experiencing the largest changes in language practices. Practice & Policy. Text message supports can influence educators’ practices with young children, though not always in expected ways or for all educators, suggesting that individualized light-touch approaches could respond to early educators’ unique strengths and needs.
Since the standards-based education movement began in the early 1990s, mathematics education reformers have developed and evaluated many interventions to support students in mastering more rigorous content. We conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of U.S. PreK-12 mathematics intervention effects from 1991 to 2017 to study sources of heterogeneity. From more than 9,000 published and unpublished study reports, we found 191 randomized control trials that met our inclusion criteria, with 1,109 effect size estimates representing more than a quarter of a million students. The average effect size on student mathematics achievement was 0.31, with wide heterogeneity of most effects ranging from −0.60 to 1.23. Two modeling approaches—meta-regression and machine learning—provided converging evidence that outcome measure type (researcher-created vs. standardized) and technology delivery (vs. teacher or interventionist delivery) were predictors of effect size. Intervention type, intervention length, grade level, and publication year were also identified as potentially explanatory factors.
The vast majority of U.S. teachers supplement their officially adopted curriculum materials with unofficial materials. Despite this, the body of supplementation-relevant literature tends not to focus on supplementation specifically, so lacks cohesion, and sometimes fails to capture all aspects the phenomenon. I systematically review supplementation-relevant literature from 2015 to 2020 and report seven areas of consensus in the literature around (1) who is involved in teacher-level curriculum supplementation, (2) important dimensions of supplementation, and (3) the educational value of supplementation. To provide future researchers a common starting point for studying teacher curriculum supplementation, I propose the Teacher Curriculum Supplementation Framework, a flexible yet testable analytical tool for systematizing scholarly inquiry around teacher curriculum supplementation and its effects on teachers and students.
Scholars have documented long-standing disparities in access to well-qualified, well-supported teachers, including disparities in access to special education teachers (SETs), based on student socioeconomic status. In response, policy initiatives have aimed to incentivize teaching in higher-poverty schools. Thus, we examined changes over time in disparities between SETs’ demands and resources (including internal resources, such as qualifications, and school-based resources, such as adequate materials), using multiple waves of the nationally representative Schools and Staffing Survey. We found that, by one metric, disparities in certification have closed since 2000. However, SETs in higher poverty schools are significantly more likely to work in self-contained settings than those in lower-poverty schools, and disparities in school-based resources continue to be significant, such that SETs in higher-poverty schools were significantly more likely to teach in self-contained classes, rated teacher cooperation significantly lower, and reported having significantly weaker access to material resources.
The My Brother's Keeper (MBK) Challenge developed by President Obama supports communities that promote civic initiatives designed to improve the educational and economic opportunities specifically for young men of color. In Oakland, California, the MBK educational initiative features the African American Male Achievement (AAMA) program. The AAMA focuses on regularly scheduled classes exclusively for Black, male students and taught by Black, male teachers who focus on social-emotional training, African-American history, culturally relevant pedagogy, and academic supports. In this study, we present quasi-experimental evidence on the dropout effects of the AAMA by leveraging its staggered scale-up across high schools in the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). We find that AAMA availability led to a significant reduction in the number of Black males who dropped out as well as smaller reductions among Black females, particularly in ninth grade.
Can schools that boost student outcomes reproduce their success at new campuses? We study a policy reform that allowed effective charter schools in Boston, Massachusetts to replicate their school models at new locations. Estimates based on randomized admission lotteries show that replication charter schools generate large achievement gains on par with those produced by their parent campuses. The average effectiveness of Boston’s charter middle school sector increased after the reform despite a doubling of charter market share. An exploration of mechanisms shows that Boston charter schools compress the distribution of teacher effectiveness and may reduce the returns to teacher experience, suggesting the highly standardized practices in place at charter schools may facilitate replicability. (JEL H75, I21, I28)
In recent years, there has been widespread interest around the potential for technology to transform learning. As investment in education technology continues to grow, students, parents, and teachers face a seemingly endless array of education technologies from which to choose—from digital personalized learning platforms to online courses to text message reminders to submit financial aid forms. Amid the excitement, it is important to step back and understand how technology can help—or in some cases hinder—learning. This review article synthesizes and discusses rigorous evidence on the effectiveness of technology-based approaches to education in developed countries and outlines areas for future inquiry. In particular, we examine randomized controlled trials and regression discontinuity studies across the following categories of education technology: (i) access to technology, (ii) computer-assisted learning, (iii) technology-enabled behavioral interventions in education, and (iv) online learning. We hope this synthesis will advance academic understanding of how technology can improve education, outline key areas for new experimental research, and help drive improvements to the policies, programs, and structures that contribute to successful teaching and learning. (JEL H52, H75, I20, O33)
Changing pedagogical practices is a promising, cost-effective avenue for improving education in developing countries, especially when done without changing current inputs such as teachers and instruction time. This article presents the results of a randomized evaluation of a program that aimed at changing the pedagogical approach used to teach the existing national mathematics curriculum. The program provides tools to regular preschool teachers to use an inquiry- and problem-based learning approach to tailor instruction to preschoolers in Peru. The results show an improvement of overall mathematics outcomes, which persist for some content areas even one year after the program ended. In contrast to results from previous research that suggest mathematics programs are biased along gender and socioeconomic lines, there is no evidence of differential effects by gender, language spoken at home, or proxies for socioeconomic status. Results also imply persistent stronger impacts on students whose teachers have university degrees.
I evaluate long-run academic impacts of specialized programming for high-achieving students by analyzing Advanced Work Class (AWC), an accelerated curriculum delivered in dedicated classrooms for fourth through sixth graders in Boston Public Schools. Fuzzy regression discontinuity estimates show that AWC has positive yet imprecise impacts on test scores and improves longer-term outcomes, increasing high school graduation and college enrollment. These gains are driven by black and Latino students. An analysis of mechanisms highlights the importance of staying “on track” throughout high school, with little evidence that AWC gains result from peer effects. (JEL H75, I21, I28, J15)
Can we nudge children, adolescents and their parents to make better decisions on education? And can we nudge teachers to support and encourage better decision making? Education decisions are taken at young ages and involve immediate costs and potential, future benefits. In such settings behavioural barriers (e.g. lack of self-control, limited attention and social norms) likely influence choices and this may motivate the use of low cost ‘nudges’ to gently push behaviour in the desired direction. Our review of nudging interventions shows that while nudging often has positive effects, the greatest effects often arise for individuals affected most by the behavioural barrier targeted by the intervention. Hence understanding underlying behavioural mechanisms is crucial. Negative effects may arise in situations where nudges potentially crowd-out intrinsic motivation, if nudges pressurise individuals, or in situations where the choice architect has an insufficient understanding of behavioural mechanisms.
We estimate relative achievement effects of the four most commonly adopted elementary mathematics textbooks in the fall of 2008 and fall of 2009 in California. Our findings indicate that one book, Houghton Mifflin’s California Math, is more effective than the other three, raising student achievement by 0.05 to 0.08 student-level standard deviations of the Grade 3 state standardized math test. We also estimate positive effects of California Math relative to the other textbooks in higher elementary grades. The differential effect of California Math is educationally meaningful, particularly given that it is a schoolwide effect and can be had at what is effectively zero marginal cost.
We assigned two cohorts of kindergarten students, totaling more than 24,000 children, to teachers within schools with a rule
that is as-good-as-random. We collected data on children at the beginning of the school year, and applied 12 tests of math,
language and executive function (EF) at the end of the year. All teachers were filmed teaching for a full day, and the videos
were coded using a well-known classroom observation tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (or CLASS). We find substantial
classroom effects: A one-standard deviation increase in classroom quality results in 0.11, 0.11, and 0.07 standard deviation
higher test scores in language, math, and EF, respectively. Teacher behaviors, as measured by the CLASS, are associated with
higher test scores. Parents recognize better teachers, but do not change their behaviors appreciably to take account of differences
in teacher quality.
Since the Coleman report, many have questioned whether public school spending affects student outcomes. The school finance
reforms that began in the early 1970s and accelerated in the 1980s caused dramatic changes to the structure of K–12 education
spending in the US. To study the effect of these school-finance-reform-induced changes in public school spending on long-run
adult outcomes, we link school spending and school finance reform data to detailed, nationally-representative data on children
born between 1955 and 1985 and followed through 2011. We use the timing of the passage of court-mandated reforms, and their
associated type of funding formula change, as exogenous shifters of school spending and we compare the adult outcomes of cohorts
that were differentially exposed to school finance reforms, depending on place and year of birth. Event-study and instrumental
variable models reveal that a 10 percent increase in per-pupil spending each year for all twelve years of public school leads
to 0.31 more completed years of education, about 7 percent higher wages, and a 3.2 percentage-point reduction in the annual
incidence of adult poverty; effects are much more pronounced for children from low-income families. Exogenous spending increases
were associated with notable improvements in measured school inputs, including reductions in student-to-teacher ratios, increases
in teacher salaries, and longer school years.
The monograph “The inquiry-based instruction: its
concept, essence, importance and contribution” reacts on the currents
needs resulting not only from the educational practice and the
pedagogical theory, but also from the demands of the society that
manifest themselves in the emphasis on the pupils’ competences development
in domains of thinking, coping with the new situations and
also in solving of the problem situations. It focuses on the solution of
a relatively limited area of the pedagogical reality, which, however,
has some broader connections that manifest themselves in the links
to the related scientific fields — psychology, philosophy, or technics
among others.
The publication mostly relates to the works of the prominent
methodological and psychological theoreticians. It provides an analysis
of the pieces of knowledge that were already published, compares
them with each other, and it evaluates them critically in order to
create a basis matching the current state of cognition.
Conceptually, the paper is devoted to the solution of the terminological
problems that come mostly from the pedagogical theory, which
is currently limited by the lack of the elaborated area devoted to the
inquiry-based instruction. The publication defines the basic terms,
it solves the pupil’s inquiry essence on the cognitive and emotional
level, and it elaborates the teacher’s competences to realize highquality
inquiry-based instruction. The accomplished results revise
and expand the pedagogical and methodological theory, furthermore,
their application is possible also within the frame of the field-specific
methodology. At the same time, the monograph also presents the
results of the realized empirical research thematically aimed on the
teacher’s competences that are connected to the realization of the
inquiry-based instruction.
For the last decade we have been using double-blind survey techniques and randomized sampling to construct management data on over 10,000 organizations across twenty countries. On average, we find that in manufacturing American, Japanese, and German firms are the best managed. Firms in developing countries, such as Brazil, China and India tend to be poorly managed. American retail firms and hospitals are also well managed by international standards, although American schools are worse managed than those in several other developed countries. We also find substantial variation in management practices across organizations in every country and every sector, mirroring the heterogeneity in the spread of performance in these sectors. One factor linked to this variation is ownership. Government, family, and founder owned firms are usually poorly managed, while multinational, dispersed shareholder and private-equity owned firms are typically well managed. Stronger product market competition and higher worker skills are associated with better management practices. Less regulated labor markets are associated with improvements in incentive management practices such as performance based promotion.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
This paper provides new evidence on the long-term benefits of Head Start using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. I compare siblings who differ in their participation in the program, controlling for a variety of pre-treatment covariates. I estimate that Head Start participants gain 0.23 standard deviations on a summary index of young adult outcomes. This closes one-third of the gap between children with median and bottom quartile family income, and is about 80 percent as large as model programs such as Perry Preschool. The long-term impact for disadvantaged children is large despite "fadeout" of test score gains. (JEL H52, J13, I28, I38)
This paper provides the first credible evidence on the economic value of the certification of "green buildings" -- value derived from impersonal market transactions rather than engineering estimates. For some 10,000 subject and control buildings, we match publicly available information on the addresses of Energy Star and LEED-rated office buildings to the characteristics of these buildings, their rental rates and selling prices. We find that buildings with a "green rating" command rental rates that are roughly three percent higher per square foot than otherwise identical buildings - controlling for the quality and the specific location of office buildings. Ceteris paribus, premiums in effective rents are even higher - above six percent. Selling prices of green buildings are higher by about 16 percent. For the Energy-Star-certified buildings in this sample, we subsequently obtained detailed estimates of site and source energy usage from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Our analysis establishes that variations in the premium for green office buildings are systematically related to their energy-saving characteristics. For example, an increase of ten percent in the site energy utilization efficiency of a green building is associated with a two percent increase in selling price - over and above the 16 percent premium for a labeled building. Further calculations suggest that a one dollar saving in energy costs from increased thermal efficiency yields roughly eighteen dollars in the increased valuation of an Energy-Star certified building.
This paper estimates the effects of school quality--measured by the pupil/teacher ratio, average term length, and relative teacher pay--on the rate of return to education for men born between 1920 and 1949. Using earnings data from the 1980 census, the authors find that men who were educated in states with higher-quality schools have a higher return to additional years of schooling. Rates of return are also higher for individuals from states with better-educated teachers and with a higher fraction of female teachers. Holding constant school quality measures, however, the authors find no evidence that parental income or education affects average state-level rates of return. Copyright 1992 by University of Chicago Press.
This paper studies inference in randomized controlled trials with covariate‐adaptive randomization when there are multiple treatments. More specifically, we study in this setting inference about the average effect of one or more treatments relative to other treatments or a control. As in Bugni, Canay, and Shaikh (2018), covariate‐adaptive randomization refers to randomization schemes that first stratify according to baseline covariates and then assign treatment status so as to achieve “balance” within each stratum. Importantly, in contrast to Bugni, Canay, and Shaikh (2018), we not only allow for multiple treatments, but further allow for the proportion of units being assigned to each of the treatments to vary across strata. We first study the properties of estimators derived from a “fully saturated” linear regression, that is, a linear regression of the outcome on all interactions between indicators for each of the treatments and indicators for each of the strata. We show that tests based on these estimators using the usual heteroskedasticity‐consistent estimator of the asymptotic variance are invalid in the sense that they may have limiting rejection probability under the null hypothesis strictly greater than the nominal level; on the other hand, tests based on these estimators and suitable estimators of the asymptotic variance that we provide are exact in the sense that they have limiting rejection probability under the null hypothesis equal to the nominal level. For the special case in which the target proportion of units being assigned to each of the treatments does not vary across strata, we additionally consider tests based on estimators derived from a linear regression with “strata fixed effects,” that is, a linear regression of the outcome on indicators for each of the treatments and indicators for each of the strata. We show that tests based on these estimators using the usual heteroskedasticity‐consistent estimator of the asymptotic variance are conservative in the sense that they have limiting rejection probability under the null hypothesis no greater than and typically strictly less than the nominal level, but tests based on these estimators and suitable estimators of the asymptotic variance that we provide are exact, thereby generalizing results in Bugni, Canay, and Shaikh (2018) for the case of a single treatment to multiple treatments. A simulation study and an empirical application illustrate the practical relevance of our theoretical results.
Teachers affect a variety of student outcomes through their influence on both cognitive and noncognitive skill. I proxy for students’ noncognitive skill using non–test score behaviors. These behaviors include absences, suspensions, course grades, and grade repetition in ninth grade. Teacher effects on test scores and those on behaviors are weakly correlated. Teacher effects on behaviors predict larger impacts on high school completion and other longer-run outcomes than their effects on test scores. Relative to using only test score measures, using effects on both test score and noncognitive measures more than doubles the variance of predictable teacher impacts on longer-run outcomes.
I conducted a randomized field experiment in traditional public elementary schools in Houston, Texas designed to test the potential productivity benefits of teacher specialization. The average impact of encouraging schools to specialize their teachers on student achievement is -0.11 standard deviations per year on a combined index of math and reading test scores. I argue that the results are consistent with a model in which the benefits of specialization driven by sorting teachers into a subset of subjects based on comparative advantage is outweighed by inefficient pedagogy due to having fewer interactions with each student, though other mechanisms are possible.
This paper explores the consequences of cognitive dissonance, coupled with time-inconsistent preferences, in an intertemporal decision problem with two distinct goals: acting decisively on early information (vision) and adjusting flexibly to late information (flexibility). The decision maker considered here is capable of manipulating information to serve her self-interests, but a tradeoff between distorted beliefs and distorted actions constrains the extent of information manipulation. Building on this tradeoff, the present model provides a unified framework to account for the conformity bias (excessive reliance on precedents) and the confirmatory bias (excessive attachment to initial perceptions).
We present results from a randomized study of a well-defined use of computers in schools, a popular instructional computer program for pre-algebra and algebra. We primarily assess the program using a test designed to target pre-algebra and algebra skills. Students randomly assigned to computer-aided instruction score significantly higher on a pre-algebra and algebra test than students randomly assigned to traditional instruction. We hypothesize that this effectiveness arises from increased individualized instruction as the effects appear larger for students in larger classes and in classes with high student absentee rates.
We provide evidence on whether ICT-related teaching practices affect student achievement. We use a unique student-teacher dataset containing variables on a wide set of very specific uses of computer and ICT by teachers matched with data on national standardized tests for 10th grade students. Our identification strategy relies on a within-student between-subject estimator and on a rich set of teacher's controls. We find that computer-based teaching methods increase student performance when they increase students’ awareness in ICT use and when they enhance communication. Instead, we find a negative impact of practices requiring an active role of the students in classes using ICT. Our findings suggest that the effectiveness of ICT at school depends on the actual practice that teachers make of it and on their ability to integrate ICT into their teaching process.
In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This article evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K-3-as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores-have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades, but gains in noncognitive measures persist.
We analyze data from a field experiment in which an auto repair firm provided checklists to mechanics and monitored their use. Revenue was 20 percent higher during the experiment, and the effect is equivalent to that of a 1.6 percentage point (10 percent) commission increase. Checklists appear to boost productivity by serving both as a memory aid and a monitoring technology. Despite the large benefits to the firm, mechanics did not use checklists without the firm directly monitoring their use. We show that a moral hazard can explain why mechanics do not otherwise adopt checklists.
Does adoption of broadband internet in firms enhance labor productivity and increase wages? And is this technological change
skill biased or factor neutral? We combine several Norwegian datasets to answer these questions. A public program with limited
funding rolled out broadband access points, and provides plausibly exogenous variation in the availability and adoption of
broadband internet in firms. Our results suggest that broadband internet improves (worsens) the labor market outcomes and
productivity of skilled (unskilled) workers. We explore several possible explanations for the skill complementarity of broadband
internet. We find suggestive evidence that broadband adoption in firms complements skilled workers in executing nonroutine
abstract tasks, and substitutes for unskilled workers in performing routine tasks. Taken together, our findings have important
implications for the ongoing policy debate over government investment in broadband infrastructure to encourage productivity
and wage growth.
observable teacher characteristics like graduate education and experience (beyond the first few years) are not typically correlated with increased productivity. Many researchers and policymakers have suggested that, under these conditions, the only way to adjust the teacher distribution for the better is to gather information on individual productivity through evaluation and then dismiss low performers. This paper offers evidence that evaluation can shift the teacher effectiveness distribution through a different mechanism: by improving teacher skill, effort, or both in ways that persist long-run. We study a sample of mid-career math teachers in the Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) who were assigned to evaluation in a manner that permits a quasi-experimental analysis. All teachers in our sample were evaluated by a year-long classroom observation–based program, the treatment, between 2003–2004 and 2009–2010; the timing of each teacher’s specific evaluation year was determined years earlier by a district planning process. To this setting we add measures of student achievement, which were not part of the evaluation, and use the within-teacher over-time variation to compare teacher performance before, during, and after their evaluation year. We find that teachers are more productive during the school year when they are being evaluated, but even more productive in the years after evaluation. A student taught by a teacher after that teacher has been through the Cincinnati evaluation will score about 10 percent of a standard deviation higher in math than a similar student taught by the same teacher before the teacher was evaluated. Under our identification strategy, these estimates may be biased by patterns of student assignment that favor previously evaluated teachers, or by preexisting positive
The emergence of large longitudinal data sets linking students to teachers has led to rapid growth in the study of teacher effects on student outcomes by economists over the past decade. One large literature has documented wide variation in teacher effectiveness that is not well explained by observable student or teacher characteristics. A second literature has investigated how educational outcomes might be improved by leveraging teacher effectiveness through processes of recruitment, assignment, compensation, evaluation, promotion, and retention. These two lines of inquiry are closely tied; the first tells us about the importance of individual teachers, and the second tells us how this information can be used in policy and practice. We review the most recent findings in economics on the importance of teachers and on teacher-related policies aimed at improving educational production.
This paper presents results from a randomized controlled trial whereby approximately 1,000 OLPC XO laptops were provided for home use to children attending primary schools in Lima, Peru. The intervention increased access and use of home computers, with some substitution away from computer use outside the home. Children randomized to receive laptops scored about 0.8 standard deviations higher in a test of XO proficiency but showed lower academic effort as reported by teachers. There were no impacts on academic achievement or cognitive skills as measured by the Raven's Progressive Matrices test. Finally, there was little evidence for spillovers within schools.
Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores (value-added) a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate partly because of a lack of evidence on whether high value-added (VA) teachers improve students' long-term outcomes. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we find that students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, and are less likely to have children as teenagers. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5 percent with an average teacher would increase the present value of students' lifetime income by approximately $250,000 per classroom.
Recent proposals would strengthen the dependence of teacher pay and retention on performance, in order to attract those who will be effective teachers and repel those who will not. I model the teacher labor market, incorporating dynamic self-selection, noisy performance measurement, and Bayesian learning. Simulations indicate that labor market interactions are important to the evaluation of alternative teacher contracts. Typical bonus policies have very small effects on selection. Firing policies can have larger effects, if accompanied by substantial salary increases. However, misalignment between productivity and measured performance nearly eliminates the benefits while preserving most of the costs.Institutional subscribers to the NBER working paper series, and residents of developing countries may download this paper without additional charge at www.nber.org.
The large-scale expansion of primary education in developing countries has led to the increasing use of teachers on annually renewable contracts who are often not professionally trained and who are paid much lower salaries than regular civil service teachers. This has been a controversial policy, but there is very limited evidence on the effectiveness of contract teachers in improving student learning (with identification being a key constraint). We present experimental evidence from a program that provided an extra contract teacher to a randomly-chosen subset of a representative sample of government-run primary schools in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. At the end of two years, students in schools with an extra contract teacher performed significantly better than those in comparison schools by 0.15 and 0.09 standard deviations in math and language tests respectively. We also find strong evidence for heterogeneous treatment effects, with the largest gains in test scores being for students in the first grade in treatment schools, suggesting that smaller class sizes matter most in younger grades. Contract teachers were less likely to be absent than civil service teachers (16% vs. 27%), and were more likely to be engaging in teaching activity (46% vs. 39%), when observed during unannounced visits to schools.
We use data from one of the few states where information on curriculum adoptions is available – Indiana – to empirically evaluate differences in performance across three elementary-mathematics curricula. The three curricula that we evaluate were popular nationally during the time of our study, and two of the three remain popular today. We find large differences in effectiveness between the curricula, most notably between the two that held the largest market shares in Indiana. Both are best-characterized as traditional in pedagogy. We also show that the publisher of the least-effective curriculum did not lose market share in Indiana in the following adoption cycle; one explanation is that educational decision makers lack information about differences in curricular effectiveness.
A simple minimization problem yielding the ordinary sample quantiles in the location model is shown to generalize naturally to the linear model generating a new class of statistics we term "regression quantiles." The estimator which minimizes the sum of absolute residuals is an important special case. Some equivariance properties and the joint aymptotic distribution of regression quantiles are established. These results permit a natural generalization to the linear model of certain well-known robust estimators of location. Estimators are suggested, which have comparable efficiency to least squares for Gaussian linear models while substantially out-performing the least-squares estimator over a wide class of non-Gaussian error distributions.
Researchers often use as dependent variables quantities estimated from auxiliary data sets. Estimated dependent variables (EDV) models arise, for example, in studies where counties or states are the units of analysis and the dependent variable is an estimated mean or fraction. A new source of such EDV regressions has been created by King's ecological inference estima-tor (King 1997). Researchers have fit regression models to quantities such as percent minority turnout that were estimated using King's EI (Gay 1998). Scholars fitting EDV models have generally recognized that variation in the sampling variance of the observations on the de-pendent variable will induce heteroscedasticity. In this paper, I show that the most common approach to this problem, weighting the regression by the inverses of the sampling standard errors of the dependent variable, will usually lead to inefficient estimates and underestimated standard errors. I show that the degree of this inefficiency and overconfidence can be very large. I also suggest two alternative approaches that are simple to implement and more effi-cient and yield consistent standard error estimates.
Although schools across the country are investing heavily in computers in the classroom, there is surprisingly little evidence that they actually improve student achievement. In this paper, we present results from a randomized study of a well-defined use of computers in schools: a popular instructional computer program, known as Fast ForWord, which is designed to improve language and reading skills. We assess the impact of the program on students having difficulty learning to read using four different measures of language and reading ability. Our estimates suggest that while use of the computer program may improve some aspects of students’ language skills, it does not appear that these gains translate into a broader measure of language acquisition or into actual readings skills.
Many teaching practices implicitly assume that conceptual knowledge can be abstracted from the situations in which it is learned and used. This article argues that this assumption inevitably limits the effectiveness of such practices. Drawing on recent research into cognition as it is manifest in everyday activity, the authors argue that knowledge is situated, being in part a product of the activity, context, and culture in which it is developed and used. They discuss how this view of knowledge affects our understanding of learning, and they note that conventional schooling too often ignores the influence of school culture on what is learned in school. As an alternative to conventional practices, they propose cognitive apprenticeship (Collins, Brown, & Newman, in press), which honors the situated nature of knowledge. They examine two examples of mathematics instruction that exhibit certain key features of this approach to teaching.
Introduction General Conditions for the Randomization-Validity of Infinite-m Repeated-Imputation Inferences Examples of Proper and Improper Imputation Methods in a Simple Case with Ignorable Nonresponse Further Discussion of Proper Imputation Methods The Asymptotic Distribution of (Q̄m, Ūm, Bm) for Proper Imputation Methods Evaluations of Finite-m Inferences with Scalar Estimands Evaluation of Significance Levels from the Moment-Based Statistics Dm and Δm with Multicomponent Estimands Evaluation of Significance Levels Based on Repeated Significance Levels
This paper presents the results of two randomized experiments conducted in schools in urban India. A remedial education program hired young women to teach students lagging behind in basic literacy and numeracy skills. It increased average test scores of all children in treatment schools by 0.28 standard deviation, mostly due to large gains experienced by children at the bottom of the test-score distribution. A computer-assisted learning program focusing on math increased math scores by 0.47 standard deviation. One year after the programs were over, initial gains remained significant for targeted children, but they faded to about 0.10 standard deviation. Copyright by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
This paper analyzes data on 11,600 students and their teachers who were randomly assigned to different size classes from kindergarten through third grade. Statistical methods are used to adjust for nonrandom attrition and transitions between classes. The main conclusions are (1) on average, performance on standardized tests increases by four percentile points the first year students attend small classes; (2) the test score advantage of students in small classes expands by about one percentile point per year in subsequent years; (3) teacher aides and measured teacher characteristics have little effect; (4) class size has a larger effect for minority students and those on free lunch; (5) Hawthorne effects were unlikely. © 2000 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
We present results from a randomized study of a well-defined use of computers in schools, a popular instructional computer program for pre-algebra and algebra. We primarily assess the program using a test designed to target pre-algebra and algebra skills. Students randomly assigned to computer-aided instruction score significantly higher on a pre-algebra and algebra test than students randomly assigned to traditional instruction. We hypothesize that this effectiveness arises from increased individualized instruction as the effects appear larger for students in larger classes and in classes with high student absentee rates. (JEL H75, I21)
We used a random-assignment experiment in Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate various non-experimental methods for estimating teacher effects on student test scores. Having estimated teacher effects during a pre-experimental period, we used these estimates to predict student achievement following random assignment of teachers to classrooms. While all of the teacher effect estimates we considered were significant predictors of student achievement under random assignment, those that controlled for prior student test scores yielded unbiased predictions and those that further controlled for mean classroom characteristics yielded the best prediction accuracy. In both the experimental and non-experimental data, we found that teacher effects faded out by roughly 50 percent per year in the two years following teacher assignment.
Considerable controversy surrounds the impact of schools and teachers on the achievement of students. This paper disentangles the separate factors influencing achievement with special attention given to the role of teacher differences and other aspects of schools. Unique matched panel data from the Harvard/UTD Texas Schools Project permit distinguishing between total effects and the impact of specific, measured components of teachers and schools. While schools are seen to have powerful effects on achievement differences, these effects appear to derive most importantly from variations in teacher quality. A lower bound suggests that variations in teacher quality account for at least 7« percent of the total variation in student achievement, and there are reasons to believe that the true percentage is considerably larger. The subsequent analysis estimates educational production functions based on models of achievement growth with individual fixed effects. It identifies a few systematic factors a negative impact of initial years of teaching and a positive effect of smaller class sizes for low income children in earlier grades but these effects are very small relative to the effects of overall teacher quality differences.
This paper disentangles the impact of schools and teachers in influencing achievement with special attention given to the potential problems of omitted or mismeasured variables and of student and school selection. Unique matched panel data from the UTD Texas Schools Project permit the identification of teacher quality based on student performance along with the impact of specific, measured components of teachers and schools. Semiparametric lower bound estimates of the variance in teacher quality based entirely on within-school heterogeneity indicate that teachers have powerful effects on reading and mathematics achievement, though little of the variation in teacher quality is explained by observable characteristics such as education or experience. The results suggest that the effects of a costly ten student reduction in class size are smaller than the benefit of moving one standard deviation up the teacher quality distribution, highlighting the importance of teacher effectiveness in the determination of school quality. Copyright The Econometric Society 2005.
How technology affects learning has been at the centre of recent debates over educational inputs. In 1994, the Israeli State Lottery sponsored the installation of computers in many elementary and middle schools. This programme provides an opportunity to estimate the impact of computerisation on both the instructional use of computers and pupil achievement. Results from a survey of Israeli school-teachers show that the influx of new computers increased teachers’ use of computer-aided instruction (CAI). Although many of the estimates are imprecise, CAI does not appear to have had educational benefits that translated into higher test scores.
That small miracle can be replicated in every school, rich and poor, across America ... Every child in American deserves a chance to participate in the information revolution.
President Clinton, at the East Somerville Community School, 5 June 1998.
We could do so much to make education available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, that people could literally have a whole different attitude toward learning.
Newt Gingrich talking to the Republican National Committee, quoted in Oppenheimer (1997).
Netanyahu explained to a group of politicians and computer professionals how he wanted to provide a quarter-million of his country's toddlers with interconnected computers.
Recounted by MIT computer scientist Michael Dertouzos, September 1998.
This paper presents the case for investing more in young American children who grow up in disadvantaged environment. It is argued that, on productivity grounds, it makes sense to invest in young children from disadvantaged environments. Substantial evidence shows that these children are more likely to commit crime, have out-of-wedlock births and drop out of school. Early interventions that partially remediate the effects of adverse environments can reverse some of the harm of disadvantage and have a high economic return. They benefit not only the children themselves, but also their children, as well as society at large [NBER WP 13016].
After Two Years, Three Elementary Math Curricula Outperform a Fourth. National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences
- Roberto Agodini
- Barbara Harris
- Neil Seftor
- Janine Remillard
- Melissa Thomas
Agodini, Roberto, Barbara Harris, Neil Seftor, Janine Remillard, and Melissa Thomas. 2013. After
Two Years, Three Elementary Math Curricula Outperform a Fourth. National Center for Education
Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Institute of Education Sciences. Washington, DC, September.
Choosing Blindly: Instructional Materials, Teacher Effectiveness, and the Common Core
- Matthew M Chingos
- Grover J Whitehurst
Chingos, Matthew M., and Grover J. Whitehurst. 2012. Choosing Blindly: Instructional Materials,
Teacher Effectiveness, and the Common Core. Brown Center on Education Policy at Brookings.
Washington, DC, April.