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Purpose: Principals are critical to school improvement and play a vital role in creating inclusive and high-performing schools. Yet, approximately one in five principals leave their school each year, and turnover is higher in schools that serve low-income students of color. Relatedly, high rates of teacher turnover exacerbate challenges associated with unstable learning environments. Our study examines the extent to which principal turnover influences teacher turnover. We build on past work by exploring how the relationship between teacher and principal turnover differs in urban, high-poverty settings and by examining the effects of chronic principal turnover. Research Methods/Approach: We draw on a student- and employee-level statewide longitudinal dataset from Texas that includes all public K-12 schools from school years 1999–2000 to 2016–17. We estimate teacher-level models with school fixed effects, allowing us to compare teacher turnover in schools leading up to and immediately following a principal exit, to otherwise similar schools that do not experience principal turnover. Findings: Teacher turnover spikes in schools experiencing leadership turnover, and these effects are greater among high-poverty and urban schools, in schools with low average teacher experience, and in schools experiencing chronic principal turnover. Implications: Improving leadership stability, especially in urban schools experiencing chronic principal turnover may be an effective approach to reducing teacher turnover. Principal and teacher turnover and their relationship with each other requires further investigation. The field would benefit from qualitative research that can provide important insights into the individual decisions and organizational processes that contribute to principal turnover. 

Studies show that historically underserved students are disproportionately assigned to less qualified and effective teachers, leading to a “teacher quality gap.” Past analyses decompose this gap to determine whether inequitable access is driven by teacher and student sorting across and within schools. These sorting mechanisms have divergent policy implications related to school finance, student desegregation, teacher recruitment, and classroom assignment. I argue that analyses of the teacher quality gap that consider how teachers and students are sorted across labor markets offer additional policy guidance. Using statewide data from Texas, I show that teacher quality gaps are driven by sorting across school districts within the same labor market, but this finding differs depending on how “teacher quality” is defined. 

As workforce participation increasingly requires a college degree, ensuring that more students from traditionally underrepresented populations have the opportunity to enter and complete college is an equity imperative. To that end, high school reforms have promoted “college-going cultures” in low-performing high schools through interventions such as rigorous course offerings and college counseling. College access research has focused on issues specific to academics and college-going processes. Yet this research has tended to ignore broader school climate factors such as school safety and extracurricular programming, which may play a critical role in postsecondary opportunity, especially for historically underserved students. The current study applies hierarchical generalized linear modeling to the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 to 2006 to examine the role of college-going culture and high school climate characteristics on college enrollment and persistence. We find that while some components of college-going culture are associated with the likelihood of college enrollment and persistence, that relationship is moderated by school climate factors. We conclude that efforts to implement a college-going culture may struggle if extracurricular opportunities, school safety, and overall school climate issues are ignored. 

Staffing classrooms with effective teachers remains a persistent policy challenge in the U.S. Teaching positions requiring STEM expertise are particularly difficult to fill. Scholars have identified similar trends in other industrialized nations. Yet, limited research examines international comparisons of the causes and consequences of staffing challenges. We use the 2015 Trends in Mathematics and Science Study to track teacher staffing difficulties in 27 countries. We find substantial variation across countries in the proportion of principals reporting difficulties filling STEM positions, with U.S. schools mirroring international averages. We also find consistent relationships between lower math and science achievement and attending a hard-to-staff school. 

U.S. charter schools are publicly funded through state school finance formulas that often mirror the traditional public school finance systems. While charter school advocates and critics disagree over whether charters receive an equitable share of funding, few discussions are based on rigorous analyses of funding and expenditures. Most prior analyses, especially those presented in policy briefs or white papers, examine average funding differences without exploring underlying cost factors between the two sectors. Our purpose is to demonstrate how careful analysis of charter school funding with appropriate methodological approaches can shed light on disagreements about charter school finance policy. Using detailed school finance data from Texas as a case study, we find that after accounting for differences in accounting structures and cost factors, charter schools receive significantly more state and local funding compared to traditional public schools with similar structural characteristics and student demographics. However, many small charter schools are actually underfunded relative to their traditional public school counterparts. Policy simulations demonstrate that on average, each student who transfers to a charter school increases the cost to the state by $1,500. We discuss the implications of these findings for both school finance policy in Texas and nationally. 

Scholars have not reached consensus on the best approach to measure state school finance equity. The regression-based approach estimates the relationship between district poverty rate and funding level, controlling for other district cost factors. A second commonly used approach involves estimating the weighted average funding level for low-income students or other subgroups. Meanwhile, policymakers have preferences for their own data systems and poverty indicators when reading reports and assessing progress. We constructed parallel, district-level panel data sets using data from the California Department of Education and the U.S. Census. We estimated changes over time in district-level school finance equity under California’s Local Control Funding Formula, using multiple school finance measurement approaches, with each of the two data sets. Our results show that different methods and analytic choices result in policy-relevant differences in findings. We discuss the implications for policy and future research. 

We evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of two early childhood interventions that use instructional coaching and parent coaching as levers for improvement. The study design allows us to compare the individual effects of each intervention as well as their combined effect on student outcomes. We find that teachers receiving instructional coaching improve their use of evidence‐based instructional practices, while families receiving parent coaching show increases in numerous responsive parenting behaviors associated with positive child outcomes. Both interventions demonstrate positive impacts on students, but only parent coaching shows statistically significant effects across a range of student outcomes. Instructional coaching alone is substantially less costly and may therefore be the most cost‐effective of the three treatment conditions; however, small sample sizes limit our ability to reach definitive conclusions. Policy simulations suggest that implementing these interventions could raise the overall cost‐effectiveness of Head Start by at least 16 percent.