With teacher quality repeatedly cited as the most important "schooling" factor influencing student achievement, there has been increased interest in examining the efficacy of teacher training programs. This paper presents the results of research investigating the relationship between teachers who graduate from different training programs and…

Recent research (Strunk and Reardon forthcoming) applies Partial Independence Item Response (PIIR) models to teacher bargaining agreements in California to calculate the latent restrictiveness of these contracts. Further research (Strunk and Grissom 2010; Strunk forthcoming) tests the external validity of these estimates. Given that much research…

A large literature on teacher collective bargaining describes the potential influence of provisions in teacher union contracts, but little is known about the determinants of these provisions. Using a unique dataset of every active teacher collective bargaining agreement in Washington state, we find that the proximity of two districts is a…

Over 2,000 teachers in the state of Washington received reduction-in-force (RIF) notices across the 2008-09 and 2009-10 school years. We link data on these RIF notices to an administrative dataset that includes student, teacher, school, and district variables to determine the factors that predict the likelihood of a teacher receiving a RIF notice.…

Stories about the importance of teacher effectiveness for student achievement are currently ubiquitous in the media (Gladwell 2008; Kristoff 2009; Felch et al 2010). Teacher quality is also the focus of significant national efforts and investments. A growing body of quantitative research supports the focus on teacher and teacher effectiveness.…