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This study uses national survey data to examine why charter school teachers are more likely to turnover than their traditional public school counterparts. We test whether the turnover gap is explained by different distributions of factors that are empirically and theoretically linked to turnover risk. We find that the turnover rate of charter school teachers was twice as high as traditional public school teachers in 2003-04. Differences in the distributions of our explanatory variables explained 61.0% of the total turnover gap. The higher proportions of uncertified and inexperienced teachers in the charter sector, along with the lower rate of union membership, were the strongest contributors to the turnover gap. Charter school teachers were more likely to self-report that working conditions motivated their decisions to leave the profession or move schools, although we found no measurable evidence that the actual working conditions of charter and traditional public schools were different.

This focus on improving teaching is evident in recent grants. A new report on foundation activity, Critical Contributions: Philanthropic Investment in Teachers and Teaching (www.criticalcontributions.org), released today by the University of Georgia and Kronley & Associates, found that foundations directed $684 million to teachers and teaching between 2000 and 2008.

Ditch Testing (Part 5): Testing Has Not Improved Education The evidence is clear. Test-score cheating is not isolated to Atlanta, Baltimore, and a few other schools, as testing proponents tend to suggest. It is not a problem that can be fixed with technical measures such as tightened security. It may be human nature but it is the high and unreasonable pressure of high-stakes standardized testing that leads to corruption. Thus, we cannot minimize the problem, trivialize potential solutions, or blame a few educators who have been caught. The Atlanta scandal should serve as a wake-up call to all of us, especially to those who continue to promote testing as a necessary and effective way to improve education.

Georgia investigators have found evidence of cheating at close to 80 percent of the Atlanta schools where they examined the 2009 administration of state tests.

"We need to take stock of the growing evidence of significant problems with states' charter experiments. Data show most charter schools perform the same or worse than host district schools, and many charters rank among states' persistently lowest performing schools. Studies also show that charter schools are not serving students comparable to those enrolled in district schools, particularly very low income students, students with disabilities and those learning English."

"While politicians and the media misrepresent the achievement gap in order to demonize schools and teachers, we have ample evidence that addressing the whole life of the child is the only avenue to closing an achievement gap."

When policy and politics collide, the outcome is telling.  A recent exchange between a legislator from another district and our superintendent escalated into a public spectacle when the senator represented his views to a columnist who then issued a scathing article headlined, "State Senator Puts School Superintendent in His Place".  We believe that our public should be allowed to consider the evidence and decide for itself.

Test-based accountability rests on the assumption that accountability for scores on tests will provide needed incentives for teachers to improve student performance. Evidence shows, however, that simple test-based accountability can generate perverse incentives and seriously inflated scores. This paper discusses the logic of achievement tests, issues that arise in using them as proxy indicators of educational quality, and the mechanism underlying the inflation of scores. It ends with suggestions, some speculative, for improving the incentives faced by teachers by modifying systems of student assessment and combining them with numerous other measures, many of which are more subjective than are test scores.

School systems around the country are in transition. Propelled by a combination of evidence, logic, and intuition about the need for fundamental improvements in the content and management of public education, districts and states are continuing to exhibit an innovative drive that has in some ways been a hallmark of the American system since its beginnings nearly two centuries ago.

In any case, among these five interventions (tutoring, extended time, improving human capital, interim assessments and "high expectations"), only one of them - "improving human capital" through more selective hiring and performance bonuses - focuses directly on improving teacher quality, the primary tool advocated by market-based reformers. Frankly, the human capital component is really the only one that could be called "market-based" by any reasonable definition (though the regular analysis of interim assessment data might be loosely classified as such). In other words, the teacher-focused, market-based philosophy that dominates our public debate is not very well represented in the "no excuses" model, even though the latter is frequently held up as evidence supporting the former.

The votes won't be cast and counted for weeks but several candidates for Louisiana's Board of Elementary and Secondary Education already hold big leads when it comes to raising money, evidence that the usually low-key BESE elections are drawing new attention from self-styled reformers and business interests. Those interests typically back charter schools and an accountability system that has seen the state take control of failing schools from local officials in New Orleans and other parts of Louisiana.

In education policy, Congress and President Obama's administration continue to seek an unrealizable national whip that will somehow transform American schools for the better. These efforts ignore both evidence and common sense.

s it true that education policies are so skewed toward boosting academic achievement among low-performing students that high-performing students suffer? A recent report jointly released by the Fordham Institute and Northwest Evaluation Association, Do High Flyers Maintain Their Altitude? argues that the academic performance of high-achieving students is being undermined by a policy focus on lower-achieving students. Is this claim supported by evidence?

When it released the 2011 Progress Reports to the public last month, the DOE made a point of noting that charter schools received more A's than did their regular public school counterparts. Technically that's true, but technically is about as far as it goes. When we compare the charter middle school A's to the public middle school A's for example, we see that the Progress Reports offer little evidence of better student achievement. In fact, in spite of an uneven playing field that should have tilted the scores in favor of the charters, the Progress Reports actually indicate that when it comes to academics, the middle school charters that got A's did not do that well.

In education policy, Congress and President Obama's administration continue to seek an unrealizable national whip that will somehow transform American schools for the better. These efforts ignore both evidence and common sense.

Gotham Schools reports that the New York City Department of Education rolled out this year's school report card grades by highlighting the grades' stability between this year and last. That is, they argued that schools' grades were roughly the same between years, which is supposed to serve as evidence of the system's quality.

...mounting evidence suggests that the seeming relationship between student demographics and teacher turnover is driven, not by teachers' responses to their students, but by the conditions in which they must teach and their students are obliged to learn.

This article critically reviews the recent empirical literature on teacher recruitment and retention published in the United States. It examines the characteristics of individuals who enter and remain in the teaching profession, the characteristics of schools and districts that successfully recruit and retain teachers, and the types of policies that show evidence of efficacy in recruiting and retaining teachers. The goal of the article is to provide researchers and policymakers with a review that is comprehensive, evaluative, and up to date. The review of the empirical studies selected for discussion is intended to serve not only as a compendium of available recent research on teacher recruitment and retention but also as a guide to the merit and importance of these studies.

We investigate the effectiveness of Idaho charter schools relative to traditional public schools, using the average difference in test score gains in the two sectors as well as the student fixed effects estimator favored in the literature.  Our findings are quite sensitive to the choice of estimator.  When student fixed effects are included, charter schools appear more effective than traditional public schools in the elementary grades.  When student fixed effects are omitted, this is no longer true.  We attribute the difference to biases associated with heterogeneity in schools and in the quality of school-student matches when the fixed effects estimator is used.  We find much less evidence of selection bias, the standard rationale for the fixed effects estimator. 

"A common claim these days, either in political rhetoric or in the context of litigation over the equity and adequacy of state school finance systems is that money simply doesn't matter. The amount of money we put into any school or district is inconsequential to the outcomes children achieve or quality of education they receive. The public schooling system is simply a money black hole! Thus, it matters not how much money we throw at the system generally and it matters not whether some children get more than others. Further, it matters not whether children with greater educational needs have resources comparable to those with lesser needs and greater preexisting advantages. Yes, these arguments are contradicted by the vast body of empirical evidence which finds otherwise! And these arguments are often used to deflect emphasis from disparities in resources across children that are egregious on their face, and often not merely a function of state legislative neglect of state school finance systems, but state legislative actions to drive more public resources to those already more advantaged. And things are only getting worse."