Background: Since the COVID-19 pandemic, American students have demonstrated substantial losses in achievement (Amplify, 2021; Domingue et al., 2021; Dorn et al., 2020; Storey & Zhang, 2023), while chronic absenteeism doubled after the pandemic, with the largest increase among low-income students (Chang et al., 2022; Dorn et al., 2021). Among…

Teachers are among the most important school-provided determinants of student success. Effective teachers improve students' test scores as well as their attendance, behavior, and earnings as adults. However, students do not enjoy equal access to effective teachers. This article reviews some of the key challenges associated with teacher policy…

We study the relative performance of two policy-relevant value-added models--a one-step fixed effect model and a two-step aggregated residuals model--using a simulated data set well grounded in the value-added literature. A key feature of our data generating process is that student achievement depends on a continuous measure of economic…

In this article, several ways to adjust gross school effects are discussed to set the stage for estimating treatment effects in schooling. Although it is quite hazardous to hypothesize realistic benchmarks for results from meta-analyses, because of the dependency of effect sizes on subject matter area, grade level, and study characteristics, a…

Given that "teacher appraisal can be a key lever for increasing the focus on teaching quality" (OECD, 2013b, p.9) and that many reforms in the past have failed (Kleinhenz & Ingvarson, 2004), an understanding of the various aspects of successful performance appraisal is essential. The literature has begun to refer to a number of…