School closings displace thousands of teachers in the United States every year. This paper explores how elementary school teachers in North Carolina respond to this labor market shock. After documenting in our study that declining enrollment is a key driver of school closings, we find that whereas most displaced teachers move to new schools in the…

Using unique administrative data from North Carolina that allow us to separate classroom teacher turnover during the school year from end-of-year turnover, we find students who lose their teacher during the school year have significantly lower test score gains (on average -7.5 percent of a standard deviation unit) than those students whose…

Whereas subject-area specialization is common practice in secondary grades, little is known about its incidence and impact in elementary schools. In this study we use data from North Carolina elementary schools to assess which teachers specialize and estimate whether specialization is associated with teacher effectiveness and school achievement.…

We explore the effects of a statewide policy change that increased the number of high school math courses required for admission to four-year public universities in North Carolina. Using data on cohorts of eighth-grade students from 1999 to 2006, we exploit variation by district over time in the math course-taking environment encountered by…

Student absences are a potentially important, yet understudied, input in the educational process. Using longitudinal data from a nationally representative survey and rich administrative records from North Carolina, we investigate the relationship between student absences and academic performance. Generally, student absences are associated with…

Research on the effectiveness of educational inputs, particularly research on teacher effectiveness, typically overlooks teachers' potential impact on behavioral outcomes, such as student attendance. Using longitudinal data on teachers and students in North Carolina I estimate teacher effects on primary school student absences in a value-added…

School districts are a focus of education reform efforts in the United States, but there is very little existing research about how important they are to student achievement. We fill this gap in the literature using 10 years of student-level, statewide data on fourth- and fifth-grade students in Florida and North Carolina. A variance decomposition…

State policies affect the qualifications of beginning teachers in numerous ways, including regulating entry requirements, providing incentives for graduate degrees, and subsidizing preparation programs at public universities. In this paper we assess how these policy choices affect student achievement, specifically comparing traditionally prepared…

We use North Carolina data to explore whether the quality of teachers in the lower elementary grades (K-2) falls short of teacher quality in the upper grades (3-5) and to examine the hypothesis that school accountability pressures contribute to such quality shortfalls. Our concern with the early grades arises from recent studies highlighting how…

Using detailed data from North Carolina, we examine the frequency, incidence, and consequences of teacher absences in public schools as well as the impact of a policy designed to reduce absences. The incidence of teacher absences is regressive: when schools are ranked by the fraction of students receiving free or reduced price lunches, teachers in…