Recruiting Effective Math Teachers: How Do Math Immersion Teachers Compare?: Evidence from New York City

School districts often struggle to recruit and retain effective math teachers. Alternative-route certification programs aim to expand the pool of teachers available; however, many alternate routes have not been able to attract large numbers of teacher candidates with undergraduate degrees in math. In response, some districts, including Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., and New York City, have developed alternative programs with a math immersion component to recruit candidates who do not have undergraduate majors in math. Such programs provide potential math teachers with intensive math preparation to meet state certification requirements while, at the same time maintaining an early-entry approach in which individuals who have not completed a teacher preparation program can become qualified to teach with only five to seven weeks of coursework and practice teaching. Four years since its inception, the New York City Teacher Fellows Math Immersion program supplies 50 percent of all new certified math teachers to New York City public schools. In this study, we find that Math Immersion teachers have stronger academic qualifications than their College Recommending (traditionally certified) peers, although they have weaker qualifications than Teach for America teachers. However, despite stronger general academic qualifications Math Immersion teachers produce somewhat smaller gains in math achievement for middle school math students than do College Recommending teachers and substantially smaller gains than do Teach for America teachers.

Who Leaves? Teacher Attrition and Student Achievement

Almost a quarter of entering public-school teachers leave teaching within their first three years. High attrition would be particularly problematic if those leaving were the more able teachers. The goal of this paper is estimate the extent to which there is differential attrition based on teachers' value-added to student achievement. Using data for New York City schools from 2000–2005, we find that first-year teachers whom we identify as less effective at improving student test scores have higher attrition rates than do more effective teachers in both low-achieving and high-achieving schools. The first-year differences are meaningful in size; however, the pattern is not consistent for teachers in their second and third years. For teachers leaving low-performing schools, the more effective transfers tend to move to higher achieving schools, while less effective transfers stay in lower-performing schools, likely exacerbating the differences across students in the opportunities they have to learn.

Out-of-School Time Programs This Summer: Paving the Way for Children to Find Passion, Purpose & Voice - Parent, Teacher & OST Provider Perceptions

??When it comes to summer—particularly a summer that follows a year of pandemic-induced isolation—parents have three priorities for what they want summer programming to address for their children: their social and emotional health, providing them with physical outdoor activities and helping them discover their passion and purpose.???A new, national survey by Arlington, VA-based market research firm Edge Research, in conjunction with Learning Heroes, a nonprofit dedicated to elevating the voice of parents in education, was commissioned by Wallace to explore the unique, differentiated role out-of-school time (OST) programs play in youth development compared with home and school, how parents assess quality in OST programs and the impact of COVID-19 for summer 2021—and beyond.??Findings revealed substantial worries among parents about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, with many feeling their children are struggling academically, socially and emotionally: 40 percent worried that children were missing out on social connections and friendship; 32 percent about too much screen time; and 26 percent about falling behind academically. Similar concerns were voiced among teachers and OST providers, with teachers most worried about students falling behind academically (39 percent) and OST providers most worried about emotional well-being (26 percent)

Measure for Measure: The relationship between measures of instructional practice in middle school English Language Arts and teachers’ value-added scores

Even as research has begun to document that teachers matter, there is less certainty about what attributes of teachers make the most difference in raising student achievement. Numerous studies have estimated the relationship between teachers' characteristics, such as work experience and academic performance, and their value-added to student achievement; but, few have explored whether instructional practices predict student test score gains. In this study, we ask what classroom practices, if any, differentiate teachers with high impact on student achievement in middle school English Language Arts from those with lower impact. In so doing, the study also explores to what extent value-added measures signal differences in instructional quality. Even with the small sample used in our analysis, we find consistent evidence that high value-added teachers have a different profile of instructional practices than do low value-added teachers. Teachers in the fourth (top) quartile according to value-added scores score higher than second-quartile teachers on all 16 elements of instruction that we measured, and the differences are statistically significant for a subset of practices including explicit strategy instruction.

Classification of patient-safety incidents in primary care

Primary care lags behind secondary care in the reporting of, and learning from, incidents that put patient safety at risk. In primary care, there is no universally agreed approach to classifying the severity of harm arising from such patient-safety incidents. This lack of an agreed approach limits learning that could lead to the prevention of injury to patients. In a review of research on patient safety in primary care, we identified 21 existing approaches to the classification of harm severity. Using the World Health Organization's (WHO's) International Classification for Patient Safety as a reference, we undertook a framework analysis of these approaches. We then developed a new system for the classification of harm severity. To assess and classify harm, most existing approaches use measures of symptom duration (11/21), symptom severity (11/21) and/or the level of intervention required to manage the harm (14/21). However, few of these approaches account for the deleterious effects of hospitalization or the psychological stress that may be experienced by patients and/or their relatives. The new classification system we developed builds on WHO's International Classification for Patient Safety and takes account not only of hospitalization and psychological stress but also of so-called near misses and uncertain outcomes. The constructs we have outlined have the potential to be applied internationally, across primary-care settings, to improve both the detection and prevention of incidents that cause the most severe harm to patients

NBER WORKING PAPER SERIES WHO LEAVES? TEACHER ATTRITION AND STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

views expressed in the paper are solely those of the authors and may not reflect those of the funders. Any errors are attributable to the authors. ¸ The views expressed herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research