Half of all college students will enroll in remedial coursework but evidence of its effectiveness is mixed. Using a regression-discontinuity design with data from a large urban community college system, we make three contributions. First, we articulate three alternative hypotheses regarding the potential impacts of remediation. Second, in addition…

About one third of college students are required to take remedial courses. Assignment to remediation is generally made on the basis of performance on a placement exam. When students are required to take a placement exam "prior" to enrolling in college-level courses, assignment to remediation may dissuade students from actually going to…

This article presents findings from the first independent, third-party appraisal of the impact of the Teacher Advancement Program (TAP) on student test score gains in mathematics. TAP is a comprehensive school reform model designed to attract highly effective teachers, improve instructional effectiveness, and elevate student achievement. We use a…

The Project on Incentives in Teaching (POINT) was a three-year study testing the hypothesis that rewarding teachers for improved student scores on standardized tests would cause scores to rise. Results, as described in Springer et al. (2010b), did not confirm this hypothesis. In this article we provide additional information on the POINT study…

We compare the link between parents' schooling and their children's college-entrance test scores in Israeli kibbutzim (communal villages) and in the general population. Though kibbutzim are committed to an egalitarian ethos and provide all kibbutz children with similar need-based access to educational resources, we still find a substantial link…

A number of high schools across the United States have moved to later bell times on the belief that their previous bell times were too early for the "biological clocks" of adolescents. In this article I study whether doing so improves academic performance. I first focus on the Twin Cities metropolitan area, where Minneapolis and several suburban…

Research on the relationship between teacher characteristics and teacher effectiveness has been underway for over a century, yet little progress has been made in linking teacher quality with factors observable at the time of hire. To extend this literature, we administered an in-depth survey to new math teachers in New York City and collected…

In 2001, California instituted a statewide test measuring English proficiency for English learners, students who are not proficient in English. In 2003 and 2004, nearly 500,000 English learners in grades 1-5 took this test each year. The relationship between bilingual education receipt and English proficiency is estimated using value-added…

We use data on students in grades 4-7 in the Canadian province of British Columbia to investigate the effect of having disabled peers on value-added exam outcomes. Longitudinal data for multiple cohorts of students are used together with school-by-grade-level fixed effects to account for endogenous selection into schools. Our estimates suggest…

Value-added measures of teacher quality may be sensitive to the quantitative properties of the student tests upon which they are based. This article focuses on the sensitivity of value added to test score ceiling effects. Test score ceilings are increasingly common in testing instruments across the country as education policy continues to…

In this article, I examine the current policy of full inclusion of children receiving special education services in regular education classrooms. Specifically, I focus on the policy's effects on the "classmates" of children with special needs, with a particular focus on classmates of students with serious emotional problems. Results suggest that…

The utility of value-added estimates of teachers' effects on student test scores depends on whether they can distinguish between high- and low-productivity teachers and predict future teacher performance. This article studies the year-to-year variability in value-added measures for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers from five large…

Do students perform better on statewide assessments in years in which they have more school days to prepare? We explore this question using data on math and reading assessments taken by students in the third, fifth, and eighth grades since 1994 in Maryland. Our identification strategy is rooted in the fact that tests are administered on the same…

This article proposes an unusual identification strategy to estimate the effects of disruptive students on peer behavior and academic outcomes. Because boys with names most commonly given to girls may be more prone to misbehavior as they get older, they may become differentially disruptive in school. In elementary school there is no relationship…