Teachers new to the profession may face various challenges and struggle with pedagogy and classroom management. They tend to be less effective in boosting student learning than their more experienced colleagues (Murnane & Phillips, 1981; Raymond, Fletcher, & Luque, 2001; Rivkin, Hanusheck, & Kain, 2001). Since the early 1980s, there…

Recent efforts to attract and retain effective educators and to improve teaching practices have focused on reforming evaluation and compensation systems for teachers and principals. In 2006, Congress established the Teacher Incentive Fund (TIF), which provides grants to support performance-based compensation systems for teachers and principals in…

Students entering high school in 9th grade face a formidable challenge. The transition to high school from 8th grade brings with it increased risks for all students. For example, students in 9th grade are anywhere from three to five times more likely to fail a class than students in any other grade. Similarly, ninth grade retention rates are…

This study investigates the effects of repeating first grade on children's further academic growth, by tracking the actual performance and the teacher-rated performance of a cohort of Flemish first-graders until the end of elementary school. Two research questions are raised: (1) How do first-grade repeaters, at the cost of one extra year of…