Research

Abstract: The use of four-day school weeks (4dsw) in the United States has expanded rapidly over the past two decades. Previous work examines the impact of 4dsw on student outcomes, but less research to date examines its effect on teachers even though schools in some locales have adopted 4dsw to improve recruitment and retention. This paper uses a difference-in-differences design to estimate the effect of 4dsw adoption in Oregon, a state with early and widespread 4dsw use, on teacher retention in both the short- and long-term. We find that adopting a four-day week increased turnover among teachers by approximately 2 percentage points overall. The increases are driven by schools that adopted prior to the COVID-19 pandemic and persist even a decade after the policy is implemented. The findings suggest that policymakers interested in implementing 4dsw for improved teacher retention should exercise caution.

Links: Published version, EdWorkingPapers version

Media coverage: Education Week, FutureEd, NEA Today

Abstract: Non-teaching staff comprise over half of all school employees and their turnover may be consequential for school operation, culture, and student success, yet we lack evidence documenting their attrition. We use 17 years (2007-2023) of administrative data from Oregon to examine mobility and exit among teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, licensed staff, and non-licensed staff. Although teacher turnover dominates turnover conversations, teachers are consistently the most stable employee group, even as turnover surged following the COVID-19 pandemic. School factors, like colleague experience, predict turnover rates for all employees, but within-school turnover between staff groups is not highly correlated and associations with some school context factors vary by employee group. Results suggest that employee turnover is not a homogenous phenomenon across staffing groups.

Links: Published version, EdWorkingPapers version

Media coverage: National Council on Teacher Quality

Abstract: Early intervention (EI) and early childhood special education (ECSE) services for children with disabilities have expanded substantially across the U.S. over the past few decades, necessitating efforts to recruit and retain a qualified workforce to meet their needs. Despite widespread reports of staffing challenges in this sector, few contemporary studies provide large-scale evidence on this workforce. Using administrative data for all EI/ECSE employees in Oregon from 2008 to 2023, we provide longitudinal descriptive evidence on their composition, distribution, and stability. We show that the workforce has increased significantly, is growing more racially/ethnically diverse, and is more highly educated but less experienced than the state’s K-12 workforce. Turnover remained fairly constant during this period, with the exception of paraprofessionals and non-licensed staff whose retention steadily declined to historic lows. Finally, we show that staff are distributed somewhat inequitably throughout the state, with areas serving more low-income students having the highest child-staff ratios and fewer highly-educated teachers/interventionists. Together these analyses contribute the first longitudinal portrait of an EI/ECSE workforce, providing key insights into their staffing dynamics at scale.

Links: Published version, EdWorkingPapers version 

Abstract: This study uses administrative data from Oregon to estimate the extent to which base salary increases reduce teacher turnover and to investigate whether these effects are heterogeneous by teacher characteristics. Using multiple sets of fixed effects to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in salaries across experience bands within a district, we find that increases in salary are associated with decreases in teacher turnover. In our fully specified model, we estimate that a 1 percent increase in current and future base salary is associated with a 0.15 percentage point decline in turnover. This relationship appears to attenuate for mid-career teachers. While increasing salary reduces turnover among BA and MA degree teachers, these effects are not statistically different from each other. We also find that teachers in special education positions are more responsive to salary increases than those only assigned general education classes. Together, our results indicate the varied impact salaries may have in ameliorating teacher staffing challenges across different teacher characteristics.

Links: EdWorkingPapers version

Media coverage: National Council on Teacher Quality

Abstract: Currently, 6.1 percent of K-12 students in the United States receive gifted education. Using education and IRS data that provide information on students and their family income, we show pronounced differences in who schools identify as gifted across the distribution of family income. Under 4 percent of students in the lowest income percentile are identified as gifted, compared with 20 percent of those in the top income percentile. Income-based differences persist after accounting for student test scores and exist across students of different sexes and racial/ethnic groups, underscoring the importance of family resources for gifted identification in schools.

Links: U.S. Census Bureau Center for Economic Studies working paper version 

Abstract: We examine whether increasing the frequency of formative evaluations for lower-performing public school teachers improves student learning. In 2011, Chile mandated that teachers rated "basic'' (the second-lowest performance category) be re-evaluated after two years (instead of four). Using administrative data covering all Chilean public primary teachers and students (2005-2015) and a difference-in-differences strategy, we find the reform sharply increased re-evaluations (by 58.9 percentage points). However, point estimates are close to zero or negative for student learning, with a -0.055 standard deviation decline in test scores the year teachers are assigned to be re-evaluated (p<0.05). This negative effect is concentrated precisely among those subgroups expected to benefit more: less-experienced teachers, female teachers, and the lowest-performing "basic'' teachers. For the year of the re-evaluation and the following year, we rule out improvements in student learning exceeding 0.04 standard deviations. Consistent with these results, we find no meaningful improvements in teaching practices or teacher caring. These findings suggest that increasing evaluation frequency alone may not improve student learning and may provoke unintended consequences. They inform the design of teacher evaluation systems and, more broadly, efforts to remediate lower-performing public servants.

Abstract: Students with disabilities (SWDs) are central to many public investments in private schools, both through federal requirements to provide special education (SpEd) services to some children in private institutions and an increase in private school choice programs across the U.S. Despite this, we know relatively little about how private schools serve SWDs at scale. Using special education employees as one key measure of service provision, we provide the first empirical estimates of special education staffing in private schools using state administrative data. Leveraging novel population data on school employees in Nebraska from 2002 to 2025, we show that private schools are 55 percentage points less likely to have a SpEd teacher and 70 percentage points less likely to have other SpEd licensed staff compared to public schools. Access to SpEd teachers and staff is highly geographically concentrated in the state for private schools whereas SpEd staff are broadly available across the state in public schools. At the same time, special educators employed in private schools are more experienced and more racially diverse compared to their public school counterparts, though they turn over at much higher rates. Together, these results provide new insights on special education staffing in private schools and raise questions about whether students with disabilities will have equal educational access as states continue to expand choice options outside of traditional public school settings.

Project description: While U.S. schools have dramatically increased the number of various kinds of non-teaching staff they employ over the past two decades, this has not been true for school librarians. Since 2008, school librarian employment has declined nationally by 27 percent. The disappearance of librarians across many schools at a time when staffing levels are increasing for other groups raises questions about the impact that school librarians have on student outcomes and what tradeoffs schools are making in deciding whether to employ librarians. In this paper, I study the effect of school librarians in Montana using state adminsitrative data and a quasi-experimental regression discontinuity (RD) design. School accreditation standards in the state mandate librarian staffing at certain student enrollment levels. Specifically, schools with more than 125 students must have at least 0.5 certified librarian FTE and schools with over 250 students must have a full-time certified librarian. Importantly, this is the only staffing requirement that changes discontinuously at these student enrollment levels. This creates plausibly exogenous variation in librarians that I use to estimate the causal effects of increasing librarian staffing on student outcomes and teacher retention. These analyses stand to offer novel evidence of the effects of non-teaching staff on students and teachers at a time when schools are grappling with important staffing decisions amidst declining budgets. 

Project description: Teachers are important determinants of student outcomes, but their effectiveness varies tremendously. Policies aimed at improving teacher quality have produced mixed results, potentially due to limited teacher buy-in, and there remains little evidence on whether these policies enhance students’ well-being over the long term. In this paper, we examine the impacts of an effort to raise teacher quality in Oregon through a program called CLASS. From 2008 to 2018, cohorts of districts designed new policies for how they paid, evaluated, trained, and promoted teachers, but unlike similar reform efforts elsewhere, teachers themselves took a leading role in designing the policies. Using state administrative data from Oregon and a quasi-experimental difference-in-differences design, we find that these teacher-led policy reforms improved student achievement, high school graduation, and college enrollment. Next, we will examine if the program had long-term impacts by linking students to IRS and court records housed at the U.S. Census Bureau to study effects on adult employment, wages, and criminal-legal system contact. We will also examine potential mechanisms, like changes to teacher experience or turnover, and heterogeneity by student and district characteristics. Together, these results stand to contribute new evidence on whether investments in teacher quality can be effective when giving teachers opportunities to lead and whether efforts to improve teacher quality generate long-term benefits for students.