There is mounting evidence of substantial "teacher quality gaps" (TQGs) between advantaged and disadvantaged students but practically no empirical evidence about their history. We use longitudinal data on public school students, teachers, and schools from two states--North Carolina and Washington--to provide a descriptive history of the…

The article is a commentary on "Evaluating English Learner Reclassification Policy Effects across Districts," by Joseph R. Cimpian, Karen D. Thompson, and Martha B. Makowski, which is a wonderful display of the power of combining current analytic methods, present-day educational data sets, practitioner-researcher collaborative…

The spread of examination throughout educational institutions is often viewed as an overly constraining influence, one that distorts pedagogic relationships and prevents more genuine educational activities from taking place. This critique of examination ignores the extent to which the structure of the school and the soul of the child are already…

Although superintendent turnover can hinder district reform and improvement, research examining superintendent exits is scarce. This study identifies factors contributing to superintendent turnover in California by matching original superintendent and school board survey data with administrative data and information hand-collected from news…

Willard Waller's (1932/1976) classic account of what teaching does to teachers is examined through the lens of psychoanalytic theory in conjunction with Ovid's myth of Narcissus. Parallel themes within the two texts are analyzed and interpreted as suggesting that narcissistic psychological processes played a part in distorting teachers'…

The authors examine how the collective bargaining agreement (CBA) negotiated between teachers' unions and districts is associated with schools' and districts' performance under accountability pressures in California. They find that CBA restrictiveness is associated with the increased likelihood that districts will be in Program Improvement (PI)…

Recently, educational researchers and practitioners have turned to value-added models to evaluate teacher performance. Although value-added estimates depend on the assessment used to measure student achievement, the importance of outcome selection has received scant attention in the literature. Using data from a large, urban school district, I…

The present study examined associations between the quality of teacher-child relationships and behavior problems among elementary school students using data from the NICHD Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development, a study of 1,364 children from birth through adolescence. There were two main findings. First, high-quality teacher-child…

Recent scholarship suggests the importance of school district offices in supporting reform. These studies provide strategies for building relations between central offices and sites in order to improve change efforts. However, what is frequently overlooked is that organizational reform efforts are socially constructed. Therefore, examining the…

This article explores the relationship between school contextual factors and teacher retention decisions in New York City. The methodological approach separates the effects of teacher characteristics from school characteristics by modeling the relationship between the assessments of school contextual factors by one set of teachers and the turnover…

This article examines the impact of single-sex schooling on a range of academic outcomes for a sample of British people born in 1958. In terms of the overall level of qualifications achieved, single-sex schooling is positive for girls at age 16 but neutral for boys, while at later ages, single-sex schooling is neutral for both sexes. However,…

This study seeks to empirically ground the debate over mathematics and science teacher shortages and evaluate the extent to which there is, or is not, sufficient supply of teachers in these fields. The authors' analyses of nationally representative data from multiple sources show that math and science are the fields most difficult to staff, but…

This nonexperimental, longitudinal field study examines the extent to which variation in observed classroom supports (quality of emotional and instructional interactions and amount of exposure to literacy and math activities) predicts trajectories of achievement in reading and math from 54 months to fifth grade. Growth mixture modeling detected…

If the notion of public and private spheres seems somehow quaint or old-fashioned, the distinction between public and private corporations will be that much more obscure. Yet Channel One broadcasts in a public school classroom are indisputably the result of a contract between a private corporation (Alloy Media + Marketing) and a public corporation…

This article examines the impact of federal, state, and local policies on the roles that elementary school teachers are asked to assume inside and outside the classroom. Through a detailed analysis of changes in teacher tasks over a 4-year period, the authors determined that role expectations increased, intensified, and expanded in four areas:…