Teacher Preparation 

Better teacher preparation is likely to result in better new teachers - but also help reduce turnover, as new teachers will feel more confident in their abilities. I have conducted research on teacher preparation in two veins:

1. Understanding barriers to credentialing for early childhood educators, and

2. Evaluating PK-12 teacher preparation programs.

Understanding Barriers to Credentialing for Early Childhood Educators

• With Kate Miller-Bains and Daphna Bassok, and through a research-practice partnership with the Louisiana Department of Education, we find that only 31% of early educators who begin a statewide credentialing program (the Early Childhood Ancillary Certificate, or ECAC) complete the program, even when tuition is fully subsidized and completion is associated with tax incentives (report available from the Study of Early Education in Louisiana website).

• With Daphna Bassok, Walter Herring, and Anna J. Markowitz, we identify barriers to completing the ECAC, including high levels of administrative burden - as well as early childhood teacher turnover.

Evaluating PK-12 Teacher Preparation Programs

• With Jane Lincove, Cynthia Osborne, and Nick Mills, we find that, even though teachers from independent non-profits TPPs outperform teachers from other TPPs, these trainees teach only in very select areas of Texas (published in The Journal of Teacher Education).

• With Paul von Hippel, Jane Lincove, Cynthia Osborne, and Nick Mills, we find that it is very difficult to distinguish between TPPs in Texas - differences are small, and estimates are noisy (published in Economics of Education Review). As shown below, few TPPs appear to be significantly different from the average when we correct for multiple testing, and the distribution of TPP effects very closely resembles the null distribution - the distribution of what estimates would look like under homogeneity (if estimates differed only due to random estimation error).

• Paul von Hippel and I apply similar statistical techniques from our Texas study to previous studies in five other states. We find, like in Texas, that detectable differences between teachers from different TPPs are negligible (published in Economics of Education Review; article in Education Next; additional press coverage). We also release a Stata program (ssc install caterpillar) that allows users to replicate our methods, as well as easily calculate null distributions more generally.