School value-added models are widely applied to study, monitor, and hold schools to account for school differences in student learning. The traditional model is a mixed-effects linear regression of student current achievement on student prior achievement, background characteristics, and a school random intercept effect. The latter is referred to…

This dissertation consists of two chapters at the intersection of labor and the economics of education. In Chapter 1, I examine the role of management in the public sector, focusing on school principals and how they impact student outcomes. I find that a one standard-deviation increase in principal quality raises average student achievement by…

Desired affordances and appropriate product semantics are important when considering products that are easy to use and easy to understand. Despite affordances and product semantics being taught in some design educations, many designers in industry do not explicitly consider affordances nor product semantics during the design process. This is…

California is one of just two states (with Kansas) that does not use a student-level growth model to measure school performance. This brief lays out a number of common beliefs about growth models and provides evidence that these beliefs are inaccurate or unsupported. In so doing, the brief makes a positive case that the state should adopt such a…

School accountability systems increasingly hold schools to account for their performances using value-added models purporting to measure the effects of schools on student learning. The most common approach is to fit a linear regression of student current achievement on student prior achievement, where the school effects are the school means of the…

The success of many students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, most measures of teacher value-added measures (VAM) fail to distinguish between a teacher's effectiveness in educating students with and without disabilities. We create two VAM measures: one focusing on teachers' effectiveness…

The purpose of this study was to describe how frontline student service professionals in Western Canadian higher education describe their personal engagement at work, through the lens of Kahn's (1990) theory of employee engagement and psychological dimensions of meaningfulness, safety, and availability. It was motivated by the prospect that…

The effect of remote learning on student performance has been a frequent topic of research and discussion in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, yet little is known about the impact of remote instruction on the performance of teachers. This study documents how relative effectiveness of teachers changed when moving from in-person to remote…

There is no final consensus regarding which covariates should be used (in addition to prior achievement) when estimating value-added (VA) scores to evaluate a school's effectiveness. Therefore, we examined the sensitivity of evaluations of schools' effectiveness in math and language achievement to covariate selection in the applied VA model. Four…

Assessment is not an end in itself but a vehicle for educational improvement. Assessment is vital to the educational process as it enhances teaching and learning, promotes accountability, motivates students, guides instructional decisions, and drives systemic improvements. Assessment plays a crucial role in the educational process as it serves…

The success of students with disabilities (SWDs) depends on access to high-quality general education teachers. Yet, teacher value-added measures (VAMs) generally fail to distinguish between effectiveness in educating students with or without disabilities. Using data from the Los Angeles Unified School District, we create two VAMs: one focusing on…

The clinical teaching experience is one of the most important components of teacher preparation. Prior observational research has found that more effective mentors and schools with better professional climates are associated with better preparation for teacher candidates. We test these findings using an experimental assignment of teacher…

Contemporary teacher evaluation policies are built upon multiple-measure systems including, primarily, teacher-level value-added and observational estimates. However, researchers have not yet investigated how using these indicators to evaluate teachers might distort validity, especially when one indicator seemingly trumps, or is trusted over the…

This paper examines how different measures of teacher quality are related to students' long-run educational trajectories. We estimate teachers' "test-based" and "nontest" value-added (the latter based on contributions to student absences, suspensions, grade progression, and grades) and assess how these predict various student…

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…