Papers and Presentations Employing Data from the North Carolina Education Research Data Center

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Presentations and publications since 2009 are in bold text. Presentations and publications since 2010 are in bold text and marked with an *. Presentations and Publications since 2011 are in bold text and marked with **.

Minority Achievement Gap

Armor, David and Stephanie Duck. 2006. “Unravelling Black Peer Effects on Black Test Scores” Paper presented at APPAM meetings, Madison, WI.

Castellino, Domini R., Karolyn D. Tyson, and William Darity. 2004. “High achieving African American students: Individual, family, and school correlates to the success.” Poster presented at the biennial meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Baltimore, MD.

Castellino, Domini R., Julie A. Moore, Karolyn D Tyson, and William Darity. 2003. “Minority presence in advanced curricula: A statewide investigation of school context effects.” Poster presented at the Biennial Meetings of the Society for Research in Child Development, Tampa, FL.

* Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor. Forthcoming. “New Destinations, New Trajectories? The Educational Progress of Hispanic Youth in North Carolina,” Child Development

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L.Vigdor. 2008. “School Segregation under Color-Blind Jurisprudence: The Case of North Carolina.” Working Paper Series. SAN08-02.

Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2008. “The Academic Achievement Gap in Grades 3 to 8.” Review of Economics and Statistics 91(2): 398-419.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2005. “Classroom-level Segregation and Resegregation in North Carolina.” In J.C. Boger and G. Orfield (Eds.), School Resegregation: Must the South Turn Back? Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.

Clotfelter, Charles T. Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2003. “Racial Segregation in Modern- Day Public Schools.” Paper presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research Education Group Meeting.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2003. “Segregation and Resegregation in North Carolina’s Public School Classrooms.” North Carolina Law Review. 81:4, 1463-1512.

Cooley, Jane. 2007. “Desegregation and the Achievement Gap: Do Diverse Peers Help.” Paper presented at the American Educational Finance Meetings, Baltimore, MD.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Diette, Timothy M. 2003. “Choosing a Course; Race and the Academic Achievement Gap.” Paper presented at the American Economic Association Annual Meeting, Washington, DC. An earlier version of this work was presented at the Southern Economic Association Annual Meetings, New Orleans, LA (2002).

Jackson, C. Kirabo. 2009. “Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence From the End of School Desegregation” The Journal of Labor Economics. 27(2): 213-256.

Killeya-Jones, A. Ley, P. Costanzo, and P. Malone. 2007. “Peer Evaluation in a Racially- balanced Sample of Early Adolescents: The Role of Aggression and Academics.”

Miranda, Marie Lynn, Dohyeong Kim, Jerome Reiter, M. Alicia Overstreet Galeano, and Pamela Maxson. 2009. “Environmental Contributors to the Achievement Gap” Neurotoxicology 30(6): 1019–1024.

Miranda, Marie Lynn, Pamela Maxson and Dohyeong Kim. 2010. “Early Childhood Lead Exposure and Exceptionality Designations for Students.” International Journal of Child and Adolescent Health (Forthcoming)

Southworth, Stephanie. 2010. “Examining the Effects of School Composition on North Carolina Student Achievement Over Time”. EPAA (Forthcoming)

Tyson, Karolyn, William Darity Jr., and Domini Castellino. 2005. “It’s Not ‘a Black Thing’: Understanding the Burden of Acting White and Other Dilemmas of High Achievement.” American Sociological Review. 70(4): 582-605.

Tyson, Karolyn. 2005. “This is the House that Jim Crow Built: Placement and Course-Taking Patterns among Black and White Students.” Paper presented at the American Sociological Association annual meetings, Philadelphia, PA.

Xu, Zeyu, Jane Hannaway, and Stephanie D’Souza. 2009. “Student Transience in North Carolina: The Effect of School Mobility on Student Outcomes Using Longitudinal Data.” CALDER Working Paper No. 22.

Teacher Quality and Student Outcomes

* Ahn, Thomas. 2011. “Optimal Matching of Teachers and Schools under Accountability Pressure.” (University of Kentucky, working paper)

**Carruthers, Celeste. “The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools.” 2012. (University of Florida Lockhart Endowment andWalter-Lanzillotti Award)

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

*Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor. In press. “Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field. Education, Finance and Policy, Summer issue (Volume 6, Number 3).

Clotfelter, Charles T., Elizabeth J. Glennie, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L.Vigdor. 2008. “Teacher Bonuses and Teacher Retention in Low-Performing Schools: Evidence from the North Carolina $1,800 Teacher Bonus Program.” Public Finance Review 36 (1): 63-87.

Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2008. "Would Higher Salaries Keep Teachers in High-Poverty Schools? Evidence from a Policy Intervention in North Carolina". Journal of Public Economics 92(5-6): 1352-1370.

*Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2010. “Teacher Credentials and Student Achievement in High School: A Cross-Subject Analysis with Student Fixed Effects.” Journal of Human Resources 45.3: 655-681.

Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2009. “Are Teacher Absences Worth Worrying about in the U.S.?” Education Finance and Policy 4(2): 115-149.

Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor, and Justin Wheeler. 2007. “High Poverty Schools and the Distribution of Teachers and Principals.” CALDER Working Paper 1

Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2007. “Teacher Credentials and Student Achievement: Longitudinal Analysis with Student Fixed Effects.” Economics of Education Review, 26 (6): 673-682.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L.Vigdor, 2007. “How and Why Do Teacher Credentials Matter for Student Achievement?” NBER Working Paper 12828.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2006. “Teacher-Student Matching and the Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness.” NBER Working Paper #11936. Journal of Human Resources 41(4): 778-820.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2005. “Who Teaches Whom? The Assignment of Novice Teachers in Schools.” Economics of Education Review, 24(2), 377-392.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L. Vigdor, and Roger A. Alagia. 2004. “Do School Accountability Systems Make it More Difficult for Low Performing Schools to Attract and Retain High Quality Teachers?” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. Vol 23,(Spring) pp. 251-272. Reprinted in Modern Classics in the Economics of Education. C. Beldfield (Ed.) Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing Limited.

Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, Jacob L.Vigdor, and Justin Wheeler. 2007. “High Poverty Schools and the Distribution of Teachers and Principals.” North Carolina Law Review 85.5: 1345-1380. The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Glennie, Elizabeth. 2003. “Teacher Perceptions of the Work Environment in Hard-to-Staff Schools.” Report for the Education Commission of the States.

Glennie, Elizabeth and Charles Coble. 2004. “Teacher Perceptions of the Work Environment in Hard to Staff Schools.” Paper presented at the National Center for Education Statistics Summer Data Conference, Washington, DC.

Goldhaber, Dan. 2007. “Analysis of the Distribution & Career Path of NBPTS-Certified Teachers.” Presented at the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards National Conference and Exposition.

Goldhaber, Dan. 2007. “Everyone’s Doing It, But What Does Teacher Testing Tell Us About Teacher Effectiveness?” Journal of Human Resources 42(4): 765-794.

Goldhaber, Dan. 2006. “Teacher Licensure Tests and Student Achievement: Is Teacher Testing an Effective Policy?” Paper presented at the American Educational Finance Association Annual Conference, Denver, CO; and the American Education Research Association Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA.

Goldhaber, Dan. 2006. “National Board Teachers are More Effective, but are they in the Classrooms Where They’re Needed the Most?” Education Finance and Policy 1(3): 372-383.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2010. “Using Performance on the Job to Inform Teacher Tenure Decisions.” American Economic Review 100(2): 250-255.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2010. “Race, Gender, and Teacher Testing: How Informative a Tool Is Teacher Licensure Testing?” American Educational Research Journal, 47(1): 218-251

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2010. “Assessing the Potential of Using Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making High-Stakes Personnel Decisions.” CALDER Working Paper 31.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2009. “National Board Certification and Teachers’ Career Paths: Does NBPTS Certification Influence How Long Teachers Remain in the Profession and Where They Teach?” Education Finance and Policy 4(3): 229-262.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2008. “Is It Just a Bad Class? Assessing the Stability of Measured Teacher Performance.” CRPE working paper # 2008_5.

Goldhaber, Dan, Betheny Gross, and Daniel Player. 2010. “Teacher Career Paths, Teacher Quality, and Persistence in the Classroom: Are Schools Keeping their Best?” CALDER Working Paper 29.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Goldhaber, Dan, Betheny Gross, and Daniel Player. 2007. “Are Public Schools Really Losing Their ‘Best’? Assessing the Career Transitions of Teachers and Their Implications for the Quality of the Teacher Workforce.” CRPE Working Paper.

Goldhaber, Dan and Emily Anthony. 2007. “Can Teacher Quality be Effectively Assessed? National Board Certification as a Signal of Effective Teaching” Review of Economics and Statistics 89(1): 134-150.

Goldhaber, Dan, Hyung-Jai Choi, and Lauren Cramer. 2007. “A Descriptive Analysis of the Distribution of NBPTS Certified Teachers in North Carolina” Economics of Education Review 26(2): 160-172.

Goldhaber, Dan, David Perry and Emily Anthony. “The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) Process: Who Applies and What Factors Are Associated with NBPTS Certification?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 26(4): 259-280.

Hansen, Michael. 2009. “How Career Concerns Influence Public Workers’ Effort: Evidence from the Teacher Labor Market”. CALDER Working Paper 40

Jackson, C. Kirabo and Elias Bruegmann. 2009. “Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1(4): 85–108

*Ladd, Helen, Charles Clotfelter, and Jacob Vigdor. 2010. “Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field.” Education Finance and Policy.

Ladd Helen F. 2011. “Teachers’ Perceptions of their Working Conditions: How Predictive of Planned and Actual Teacher Movement?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis June 2011 33: 235-261.

**Mahler, P. (January 2013), “Retaining a High Quality Teaching Workforce: The Effects of Pension Design” Allied Social Sciences Association, San Diego, CA. (Presentation at professional meeting)

**Mahler, P. (March 2012), “Retaining a High Quality Teaching Workforce: The Effects of Pension Design” Association for Education Finance and Policy, Boston, MA. (Presentation at professional meeting)

**Mahler, P. (November 2011), “Retaining a High Quality Teaching Workforce: The Effects of Pension Design” Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, Washington, DC. (Presentation at professional meeting)

**Mahler, P. (March 2011), “Do Teacher Responses to Retirement Incentives Vary with Teacher Quality?” Association for Education Finance and Policy, Seattle, WA. (Presentation at professional meeting) The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Natkin, Jerry and Stephen Jurs. 2005. “The Effect of a Professional Learning Team on Middle School Reading Achievement: An Impact Assessment.” Report for SERVE.

Ost, Ben. 2009. “How Do Teachers Improve? The Relative Importance of Specific and General Human Capital.” Paper Presented at 35th conference of American Education Finance Association, Richmond, Virginia.

Rothstein, Jesse. 2010. “Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(1): 175-214.

Vigdor, Jacob L. 2008. “Teacher Salary Bonuses in North Carolina.” CALDER Working Paper 15.

School Accountability and Choice

Ahn, Thomas and Jacob Vigdor. 2009. “Does No Child Left Behind Have Teeth? Examining the Impact of Federal Accountability Sanctions in North Carolina”. Paper presented at Institute for Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations (IFIR) and Martin School Workshop, Lexington, KY.

Bifulco, Robert, Helen F. Ladd, and Stephen Ross. 2008. “Public School Choice and Integration. Evidence from Durham, North Carolina.” Working Papers 2007-41, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics.

Bifulco, Robert, Helen F. Ladd, and Stephen Ross. 2007. “The Effects of Public School Choice on Those Left Behind: Evidence from Durham, NC.” Paper prepared for American Education Finance Association Annual Conference, Baltimore, MD.

Bifulco, Robert and Helen F. Ladd. 2007. “School Choice, Residential Segregation and Test- score Gaps: Evidence from North Carolina's Charter School Program.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 26(1): 31-56.

Bifulco, Robert and Helen F. Ladd. 2006. “The Impact of Charter Schools on Student Achievement: Evidence from North Carolina.” Journal of Education Finance and Policy, Vol 1, Winter.

Bifulco, Robert and Helen F. Ladd. 2005. “Results [about Charter Schools] from the Tar Heel State.” Education Next, Fall, 60-66.

Carruthers, Celeste K. 2009. “New Schools, New Students, New Teachers: Evaluating the Performance of Charter Schools.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the American Education Finance Association, Nashville, TN.

Carruthers, Celeste K. 2009. “The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools.” CALDER Working Paper 27. Paper presented at School Choice & School Improvement Conference at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Fiske, Edward B. and Helen F. Ladd. 2002. “The Voucher Debate after Zelman v. Simmons- Harris: The Need to Focus on Core Education Issues.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 2(1).

Glennie, Elizabeth J. and Helen F. Ladd. 2002. “The No Child Left Behind Act and School- Based Accountability: Lessons from North Carolina.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 2(2).

Godwin, Kenneth, Suzanne Leland, David Wilson, and Andrew Baxter. 2008. “Testing Tiebout: Intra-District Public School Choice as a Quasi-Market.” Prepared for the annual meetings of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL.

Jones-Sanpei, Hinckley A. 2006. “Racial and Socioeconomic Segregation in a District with Controlled School Choice.” Paper presented at the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Fall Research Conference, Madison, WI.

Ladd, Helen F. 2003. “School Vouchers and Student Achievement: What We Know So Far.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 3(1).

Ladd, Helen F. and Glennie, Elizabeth J. 2001. “Claims for School Voucher Success in Florida not Justified.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 1(1).

Ladd Helen F. and Douglas L. Lauen. 2010. “Status versus Growth: The Distributional Effects of School Accountability Policies.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29(3): 426-450.

Ladd, Helen F. and Arnaldo Zelli. 2001. “School-Based Accountability in North Carolina: The Response of School Principals.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 1(2).

**Lauen, Douglas L, and Gaddis, Michael S. 2012. “Shining a Light or Fumbling in the Dark? The Effects of NCLB’s Subgroup-Specific Accountability on Student Achievement.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Vol. 34, No. 2, pp. 185–208.

Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin, and Bobbie J. Everett. 2007. “Neotracking in North Carolina: How High School Courses of Study Reproduce Race and Class-based Stratification.” Teachers College Record, 110(3): 535-570.

Mickelson, Roslyn Arlin and Stephanie Southworth. 2005. “When Opting Out is not a Choice: Implications for NCLB’s Transfer Option from Charlotte, North Carolina.” Equity & Excellence in Education, 38: 1–15.

Stearns, Elizabeth. 2002. “No Child Left Behind and the Education Achievement Gap.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 2(5).

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Southworth, Stephanie. 2006. “Segregation in Post-unitary Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management Research Conference, Madison, WI.

Southworth, Stephanie and John Barnshaw. 2005. “No Child Left Behind: Critical Intersections in Choice, Segregation and Equity in American Public Education.” Paper presented at the Annual Meetings of the Society for the Study of Social Problems, Philadelphia, PA.

The Academic Performance of At-Risk Children

Glennie, Elizabeth, Kara Bonneau, Michelle Sherrill, Kenneth Dodge. 2007. “Addition by Subtraction: The Relation between Dropout Rates and School-Level Accountability.” Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, Atlanta, GA.

Glennie, Elizabeth J., and Elizabeth Stearns. 2002. “The Relationship between Ethnicity and Early Dropout: Evidence from North Carolina’s Public Schools.” Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, Baltimore, MD.

Glennie, Elizabeth J. and Elizabeth Stearns. 2002. “Why Hispanic Students Drop out of High School Early: Data from North Carolina.” Center for Child and Family Policy, Policy Brief, 2(6).

Jentleson, Barbara. 2005. “Improving Academic Outcomes for At-Risk Students Through Community-Based Afterschool Program.,” Versions of this work were presented at North Carolina Center for After School Programs, 2nd Annual Conference, Greensboro, NC. 2005; 16th Annual Youth-At-Risk Conference, Savannah, GA, 2005; Improving Minority and At-Risk Student Achievement Conference VIII, Greensboro, NC, March 2004; International Child & Adolescent Conference XII, Minneapolis, MN, 2004.

Miranda, Marie Lynn, Dohyeong Kim, M. Alicia Overstreet Galeano, Christopher J. Paul, Andrew P. Hull, and S. Philip Morgan. 2007. “The Relationship between Early Childhood Blood Lead Levels and Performance on End of Grade Tests.” Environmental Health Perspectives 115(8) 1242-1247.

Stearns, M. Elizabeth and Elizabeth Glennie. 2006. “When and Why Dropouts Leave School.” Youth and Society. 38(1): 29-57.

Problem Behavior in Schools

Cook, Philip, Robert MacCoun, Clara Muschkin and Jacob Vigdor. 2005. “Does the Timing of the Transition to Middle School Affect Substance Abuse Trajectories?” Paper presented at the Society for Prevention Research Meeting, Washington DC.

Cook, Philip, Robert MacCoun, Clara Muschkin and Jacob Vigdor. 2008. “The Negative Impact of Starting Middle School in Sixth Grade.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 27(1): 104–121.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

MacCoun, Robert, Philip Cook, Clara Muschkin and Jacob Vigdor. 2008. “Distinguishing Spurious and Real Peer Effects: Evidence from Artificial Societies, Small-Group Experiments, and Real Schoolyard.” Review of Law & Economics 4(3):695-714.

Muschkin, Clara G. and Audrey N. Beck. 2007. “Race Differences in Student Behavior and Academic Achievement: A Decomposition Analysis of Student, Peer, and School Effects.” Paper presented at the Population Association of America annual meeting, New York, NY.

Muschkin, Clara G. and Audrey N. Beck. 2006. Explaining Race Differences in Student Behavior: The Relative Contribution of Student, Peer, and School Characteristics.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the Southern Demographic Association., Durham, NC.

Muschkin, Clara G. and Elizabeth Glennie. 2005. “Peer Effects of Retention and Old for Grade Students on Adolescent Problem Behaviors.” Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, Charlotte, NC.

Linking Data and Policy

Berry, Barnett, Gary Barnes, and Elizabeth J. Glennie. 2003. “Using Data to Make Good Teaching Quality Decisions.” Paper presented at No Child Left Behind: Implications for Teacher and Teaching Quality. Sponsored by the National Governors Association, the Education Commission of the States, the Southeast Center for Teaching Quality, and the Southern Regional Education Board. Atlanta, GA.

Glennie, Elizabeth. 2004. “Integrating Data for Innovative Analysis: The North Carolina Education Research Data Center.” Paper presented at the International Sociological Association Research Committee on Logic and Methodology, Annual Conference on Social Science Methodology, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Glennie, Elizabeth J. 2003. “Overcoming Barriers to Education Policy Research: The North Carolina Education Research Data Center.” Paper presented at the National Center for Education Statistics Summer Data Conference, Washington, DC.

Ladd, Helen F. and C.G. Muschkin. 2008. Research access to state education administrative data: the North Carolina Education Research Data Center (Paper prepared for Protecting Students' Records and Facilitating Education Research: A Workshop, sponsored by the National Academies, National Research Council, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, April 24-25, Keck Center of the National Academies in Washington, D.C.

Impact of Specific Policies on Student Outcomes

Alfeld, Corinne, Yan Li, Rebecca Prince, and Martha Putallaz. 2008. “Effects of Summer Academic Programs in Middle School on High School Test Scores, Coursetaking, and College Major.” Submitted to the Journal of Advanced Academics.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

*Edmunds, J.A., Bernstein, L., Glennie, E., Willse, J., Arshavsky, N., Unlu, F., & et al. 2010. “Preparing students for college: The implementation and impact of the early college high school model.” Peabody Journal of Education , 85 (3):348-364.

Edmunds, Julie, Elizabeth Glennie, and Larry Bernstein. 2008. Symposium: “Early Results and Methodological Issues from an Experimental Study of Early College High Schools.” Prepared for the meetings of the American Educational Research Association, New York, NY.

**Edmunds, Julie. “Early Colleges: A New Model of Schooling Focusing on College Readiness.” 2012. New Directions for Higher Education, no. 158, 81-89.

*Muschkin, Clara G, Kara Bonneau, and Spencer Hawkins. 2011. “Easing the Transition to High School: Effects of a Freshman Academy on Student Success.” Annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, April 8-12.

Wasilewski, Yvonne, Beth Gifford, and Kara Bonneau. 2008. “Evaluation of the School-wide Positive Behavior Support Program in Eight North Carolina Elementary Schools.” Evaluation Report, Center for Child and Family Policy, Duke University.

Other Studies

**Anthopolos, Rebecca, Miranda, Marie Lynn, Osgood, Claire, and Coakley, Benjamin. “Assessing the effect of Big Brothers Big Sisters (BBBS) programs on academic achievement and school absenteeism in North Carolina.” Children’s Environmental Health Initiative, University of Michigan. Evaluation report of BBBS programs in North Carolina submitted to The Duke Endowment on June 4, 2012.

Bowen, Gary, Roderick Rose, Joelle Powers, and Elizabeth Glennie. 2008. “The Joint Effects of Neighborhoods, Schools, Peers, and Families on Changes in the School Success of Middle School Students.” Family Relations 57(4): 504-516.

**Bosworth, Ryan. 2011. “Class Size, Class Composition, and the Distribution of Student Achievement.” Education Economics, 2011, 1-25, iFirst Article.

**Bosworth, Ryan. 2011. “What sort of school sorts students.” Int. J. Quantitative Research in Education, Vol. X, No. Y, pp.000–000.

Bowen, William G. 2007. “Extending Opportunity in Higher Education: Starting and Finishing at Public Universities.” Panel Discussion, New York University.

**Corn, Jeni., Faber, Malinda, Howard, Eric, Lauen, Doug, and Gaddis, Michael. “Golden LEAF STEM Evaluation Baseline Report.” Consortium for Educational Research and Evaluation – North Carolina. 2012.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Fletcher, J. (2010), Spillover effects of inclusion of classmates with emotional problems on test scores in early elementary school. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 29: 69– 83.

**Gershenson, Seth, and Langbein, Laura. Panel-data Evidence on the Effect of School Size on Academic Performance (Powerpoint Presentation). School of Public Affairs, American University, Washington, DC.

Glennie, Elizabeth and M. Elizabeth Stearns. 2007. “Academic, Arts and Service Clubs.” In Gender and Education, An Encyclopedia. Barbara Banks (ed). Greenwood Press.

Glennie, Elizabeth, M. Elizabeth Stearns, and Domini Castellino. 2005. “Girls and Clubs: The Influence of Individual and School Attributes on Types of Extracurricular Activity Participation.” Paper presented at the American Sociological Association Meetings, Philadelphia, PA.

Glennie, Elizabeth J., Elizabeth Stearns, Domini Castellino, Robert Bifulco. 2003. “Extracurricular Activity Participation in High Schools by African American, Asian, Latino, Native American, and White Teens.” Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, New Orleans, LA.

**Glennie, Elizabeth J., and Stearns, Elizabeth. 2012. “Opportunities to Play the Game: The Effect of Individual and School Attributes on Participation in Sports.” Sociological Spectrum: Mid-South Sociological Association, 32:6, 532-557.

**Gregory, Simon G., Anthopolos, Rebecca, Osgood, Claire, Grotegut, Chad A., and Miranda, Marie Lynn. Association of autism with augmented or induced childbirth. Planned submission to Pediatrics in August 2012.

**Gregory, Simon G., Anthopolos, Rebecca, Osgood, Claire, Grotegut, Chad A., and Miranda, Marie Lynn. Association of augmented childbirth and the incidence of autism. Submitted to Biological Psychiatry on April 9, 2012.

**Graves, Jennifer, McMullen, Steven C., and Rouse, Kathryn E. 2013. “Year Round Schooling as Cost Savings Reform: Not just a matter of time.” Accepted at Education Finance and Policy.

Guidry, Virginia Thompson and Lewis H. Margolis. 2005. “Unequal GIS to explore hurricane- related flooding of schools in Eastern North Carolina.” Environmental Research 98:383-89.

**Lauen, Douglas. “Jumping at the Chance: The Effects of Accountability Incentives on Student Achievement.” Presented at the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Spring 2011 Conference. Funded by the Spencer Foundation and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

**Lauen, Douglas L, and Gaddis, Michael S. 2013. “Exposure to Classroom Poverty and Test Score Achievement: Contextual Effects or Selection?” American Journal of Sociology, 118(4):1-37.

Matthews, Michael S. 2006. “Gifted Students Dropping Out: Recent Findings from a Southeastern State.” Roeper Review, 28(4): 216-223.

**Makel, Matthew C., Li, Yan, Putallaz, Martha, and Wai, Jonathan. 2011. “High-Ability Students’ Time Spent Outside the Classroom”. Journal of Advanced Academics, 22(5):740- 749.

**McMullen, Steven C., Rouse, Kathryn E. 2012. “School Crowding, Year-Round Schooling, and Mobile Classroom Use: Evidence from North Carolina.” Economics of Education Review, 31:812– 823

**McMullen, Steven C., Rouse, Kathryn E. 2012.“The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 4(4): 230–252

**McMullen, Steven C., Kathryn E. Rouse and Justin Haan. “Year Round Schooling and Achievement Inequalities: Evidence from North Carolina Calendar Conversions”, Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Boston, MA March 2012. (Presentation on Year-Round Schooling)

**McMullen, Steven C. and Rouse, Kathryn E. “School Crowding, Year-Round Schooling and Mobile Classroom Use: Evidence from North Carolina”, Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Seattle, WA, March 2011. (Presentation on Year-Round Schooling)

**McMullen, Steven C. and Rouse, Kathryn E. “The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions”. Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP), Seattle, WA, March 2011. (Presentations on Year-Round Schooling)

**McMullen, Steven C. and Rouse, Kathryn E. “The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions”. Eastern Economics Association (EEA) Conference, New York, NY, February 2011. (Presentations on Year-Round Schooling)

**McMullen, Steven C. and Rouse, Kathryn E. “The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions”. Allied Social Science Associations Annual Conference (ASSA), Denver, CO, January 2011. (Presentations on Year-Round Schooling) The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

**McMullen, Steven C. and Rouse, Kathryn E. “The Impact of Year-Round Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence from Mandatory School Calendar Conversions”. University of North Carolina at Greensboro Economics Department Seminar Series, October 2010 (invited seminar). (Presentations on Year-Round Schooling)

**Miller, Luke C. and Mittleman, Joel. 2012. “High Schools that Work and College Preparedness: Measuring the Model’s Impact on Mathematics and Science Pipeline Progression.” Economics of Education Review, 31 (2012) 1116– 1135.

**Marie Lynn Miranda, Rebecca Anthopolos, Sharon Edwards, Dohyeong Kim. Educational test performance according to birth weight, gestation, and prenatal smoking status. Abstract submitted to The 2012 Science of Eliminating Health Disparities Summit on June 29, 2012. October 31, 2012-November 2, 2012. Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, National Harbor, Maryland.

**Miranda, Marie Lynn, Rebecca Anthopolos, Sharon Edwards, Dohyeong Kim. Educational test performance accordingto birth weight, gestation, and prenatal smoking status. Planned submission to International Journal of Epidemiology in August 2012.

**Miranda, Marie Lynn, Rebecca Anthopolos, Sharon Edwards, Dohyeong Kim. Educational test performance according to birth weight, gestation, and prenatal smoking status. Submitted to Pediatrics on April 1, 2012.

**Miranda, Marie Lynn, Rebecca Anthopolos, Sharon Edwards, Dohyeong Kim. Educational test performance accordingto birth weight, gestation, and prenatal smoking status. Submitted to Journal of American Medical Association on February 20, 2012.

**Marie Lynn Miranda, Rebecca Anthopolos, Sharon Edwards, Dohyeong Kim. Effect of maternal smoking during pregnancy on children's educational test performance. Oral presentation during the 139th APHA Annual Meeting in Washington, DC. Session title Maternal Influences on Child Health and Development. October 31, 2011.

**Miranda, Marie Lynn, Rebecca Anthopolos, Sharon Edwards, Dohyeong Kim. Educational test performance accordingto birth weight, gestation, and prenatal smoking status. Submitted to New England Journal of Medicine on September 30, 2011.

Muschkin, Clara G. 2009. Research Support for Evidence-Based Education Policy: The North Carolina Education Research Data Center. Paper presented in the symposium session “Evidence-Informed Education: The Role of Collaborations in Leveraging SEA Accountability and Compliance Data.” Annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, San Diego, CA, April 13-17.

Muschkin, Clara G. and Audrey N. Beck. 2010. “Changing Contours of the North Carolina Public Schools: the Influence of Immigration on Enrollments of Non-Hispanic White Students.” Paper presented at the annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, Denver, CO, April 20-May 4. The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Nechyba, Thomas and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2004. “Peer Effects in North Carolina Public Schools.” Paper presented at the American Economic Association Annual Meeting and at Kennedy School/CESifo Conference on the Economics of Education, Munich, Germany.

**Rauschenberg, Sam. “How consistent are course grades? An examination of differential grading.” (Duke University)

Rose, Rod R., and Gary L. Bowen. 2005. “Power for Sample Size in the Development of a Longitudinal Study of a Cluster Randomized Trial.” Paper presented at the Annual Conference of the Society for Social Work and Research, Miami, FL.

Rothstein, Jesse. 2007. “Do Value-Added Models Add Value? Tracking, Fixed Effects, and Causal Inference.” Working Paper, Center for Economic Policy Studies, Princeton University.

Rothstein, Jesse. 2009. “Student Sorting and Bias in Value-Added Estimation: Selection on Observables and Unobservables.” Education Finance and Policy 4(4): 537-571.

Stearns, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth. J. Glennie. 2010. “Opportunities to Participate: Extracurricular Activities’ Distribution Across and Academic Correlates in High Schools.” Social Science Research. 39(2): 296-309

Stearns, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Glennie. 2005. “Opportunities to Join Clubs: Modeling Extracurricular Activity Participation.” Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Annual Meeting, Charlotte, NC.

Stearns, Elizabeth and Elizabeth Glennie, and Domini Castellino. 2003. “Contextualizing Extracurricular Activity Participation Decisions.” Paper presented at the Southern Sociological Society Meetings, Atlanta, GA.

Swartz, C. W., & G.L. Williamson. 2006. “Using Lexiles to Support Instruction and Improvement in North Carolina Schools.” Paper presented at the North Carolina Accountability Conference, Greensboro, NC.

Vigdor, Jacob and Thomas Nechyba. 2004. “Peer Effects in Elementary School: Learning from “Apparent” Random Assignment.” Paper presented at the APPAM Meetings, Atlanta, GA, and at the Harvard University Economics Dept.

Vigdor, Jacob and Thomas Nechyba. 2007. “Peer Effects in North Carolina Public Schools.” In Schools and the Equal Opportunity Problem, P.E. Peterson and L. Wößmann, (Eds). MIT Press.

Williamson, G. L., C. L. Thompson, and R.F. Baker. 2006. “North Carolina's Growth in Reading and Mathematics.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the North Carolina Association for Research in Education (NCARE), Hickory, NC.

Xu, Zeyu, Jane Hannaway and Colin Taylor. 2008. “Making a Difference: The Effect of Teach for America on Student Performance in High School.” Research Report, The Urban Institute. The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Abstracts of Most Recent Papers and Publications

*Ahn, Thomas. 2011. “Optimal Matching of Teachers and Schools under Accountability Pressure.” (University of Kentucky, working paper)

Accountability systems are designed to introduce market pressures to increase efficiency in education. One potential channel by which schools may increase efficiency is to recruit effective teachers in the transfer market. I use a maximum score estimator model, North Carolina public school data, and the state’s unique accountability system to analyze how schools respond to accountability pressure in the teacher transfer market. Results show that schools under a high degree of accountability pressure will match with teachers who are proven to be effective in raising test scores, while ignoring teachers with observable measures of ‘expertise,’ such as certification. Accountability pressure seems to motivate schools to compete against high achieving schools for effective teachers (and succeed).

Ahn, Thomas and Jacob Vigdor. 2009. “Does No Child Left Behind Have Teeth? Examining the Impact of Federal Accountability Sanctions in North Carolina.” Paper presented at Institute for Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations and Martin School Workshop, Lexington, KY.

We use the public school administrative dataset from North Carolina and a regression- discontinuity framework to examine the effect of No Child Left Behind sanctions on raising the academic performance of students. In particular, we focus on whether schools that barely miss AYP in a given year exhibit improvements relative to those schools that barely make AYP, due to the threat or implementation of sanctions. We also distinguish schools around the discontinuity by the type of sanction for which they are at risk, and analyze the distributional impact across specific groups of students. If schools operate efficiently, improvement for one sub-group in the wake of a sanction must come at the expense of other sub-groups. If schools were inefficient, it is possible for all sub-groups to improve academically. Results show that the threat of sanctions are mostly ineffective.

**Bosworth, Ryan. 2011. “Class Size, Class Composition, and the Distribution of Student Achievement.” Education Economics, 2011, 1-25, iFirst Article.

Using richly detailed data on fourth- and fifth-grade students in the North Carolina public school system, I find evidence that students are assigned to classrooms in a non-random manner based on observable characteristics for a substantial portion of classrooms. Moreover, I find that this non-random assignment is statistically related to class size for a number of student characteristics and that failure to control for classroom composition can severely bias traditionally estimated class size effects. Teacher-fixed effects and classroom composition controls appear to be effective at addressing selection related to classroom composition. I find heterogeneity in class size effects by student characteristics – students who struggle in school appear to benefit more from class size reductions than students in the top of the achievement distribution. I find that smaller classes have smaller achievement gaps on average and that class size reductions may be relatively more effective at closing achievement gaps than raising average achievement; however, class size effects on both average achievement and achievement gaps are small. The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

**Bosworth, Ryan. 2011. “What sort of school sorts students.” Int. J. Quantitative Research in Education, Vol. X, No. Y, pp.000–000.

Richly detailed data from the North Carolina public school system is used to investigate the extent to which student assignment to 4th and 5th grade classrooms appear unbalanced with respect to race, gender, socioeconomic status, and academic achievement in the years 2001– 2004. Analysis reveals that classrooms are rarely unbalanced with respect to racial and gender characteristics. However, classrooms that are unbalanced with respect to socio-economic status, academic achievement, and parental education levels are relatively more common. The relationship between unbalanced classroom assignment and school financial, administrative, socio-economic, and geographic characteristics is also analysed. Analysis shows that unbalanced classrooms are statistically more common in school districts with higher levels of federal funding, urban schools that are predominantly African-American, and in magnet schools. However, unbalanced classrooms are less common in academically successful schools with few black students, in rural schools that are predominantly white, and in Wake County.

Charter schools, particularly new ones, are staffed by high rates of new teachers, and this may help to explain why their students struggle to meet expectations. Inexperienced charter faculties are widely acknowledged, but to date, no study has linked teacher experience to student performance in charter schools. I examine whether inexperienced faculties affected student achievement in North Carolina charters, using a twelve-year panel of student test data. The share of new teachers in the state’s charter faculties was quite high in new schools, but fell sharply as the schools aged. Consistent with earlier research, I find significant returns to charter school age, but this maturation cannot be attributed to declining rates of new teachers. Rather, charter students benefited from having relatively fresh faculties in recently-new schools, more so in math than reading. This counterintuitive relationship held until the schools were in their sixth or seventh year of operation, after which, relatively inexperienced faculties yielded lower student achievement.

Carruthers, Celeste K. 2009. “The Qualifications and Classroom Performance of Teachers Moving to Charter Schools.” CALDER Working Paper 27.

Do charter schools draw good teachers from traditional, mainstream public schools? I use a 1997-2007 panel of all North Carolina public school teachers to examine the qualifications and classroom performance of mainstream teachers moving to the charter sector. High rates of inexperienced and uncertified teachers moved to charter schools, but among certified teachers changing schools, the on-paper qualifications of charter movers were better or not statistically different from the qualifications of teachers moving between comparable mainstream schools. Grade 3-5 teachers moving to charter schools had lower estimated fixed effects on end-of-grade math exams, but I find statistically weak evidence that charter movers had relatively high fixed effects within the schools they were leaving. Taken together, these findings reveal nuanced patterns of teacher quality flowing into charter schools. Charters drew certified, highly qualified, The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

and perhaps locally effective teachers from mainstream schools, but they also attracted uncertified and less qualified teachers. The distribution of persistent teacher quality among charter participants was significantly lower than, but largely overlapped with, the quality distribution of exclusively mainstream teachers.

* Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2010. “Teacher Credentials and Student Achievement in High School: A Cross-Subject Analysis with Student Fixed Effects.” Journal of Human Resources 45.3: 655-681.

We use data on statewide end-of-course tests in North Carolina to examine the relationship between teacher credentials and student achievement at the high school level. The availability of test scores in multiple subjects for each student permits us to estimate a model with student fixed effects, which helps minimize any bias associated with the non-random distribution of teachers and students among classrooms within schools. We find compelling evidence that teacher credentials affect student achievement in systematic ways and that the magnitudes are large enough to be policy relevant. As a result, the uneven distribution of teacher credentials by race and socio-economic status of high school students--a pattern we also document--contributes to achievement gaps in high school.

Clotfelter, Charles, Helen Ladd, and Jacob Vigdor. 2009. “Are Teacher Absences Worth Worrying about in the U.S.?” Education Finance and Policy 4(2): 115-149.

Using detailed data from North Carolina, this paper examines 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 lunch, schools in the poorest quartile averaged almost one extra sick day per teacher than schools in the highest income quartile, and schools with persistently high rates of teacher absence were much more likely to serve low- income than high-income students. In regression models incorporating teacher fixed effects, absences are associated with lower student achievement in elementary grades. There is evidence that the demand for discretionary absences is price-elastic. Our estimates suggest that a policy intervention that simultaneously raised teacher base salaries and broadened financial penalties for absences could both raise teachers' expected income and lower districts' expected costs.

*Charles T. Clotfelter, Helen F. Ladd and Jacob L. Vigdor. Forthcoming. "New Destinations, New Trajectories? The Educational Progress of Hispanic Youth in North Carolina," Child Development.

Since 1990, Latin American immigrants to the United States have dispersed beyond traditional gateway regions to a number of “new destinations.” Both theory and past empirical evidence provide mixed guidance as to whether the children of these immigrants are adversely affected by residing in a non-traditional destination. We use administrative public school data to study Hispanic youth in one new destination, North Carolina. Conditional on third grade socioeconomic indicators, we find that Hispanic youth who arrive by age 9 and remain enrolled in North Carolina public schools close achievement gaps with socioeconomically similar white students by sixth grade and exhibit a significantly lower high school dropout rate. Their The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

performance closely resembles that of first-generation youth in more established immigration gateways.

Fletcher, Jason. 2010. “Achievement Effects of the Inclusion of Students with Special Needs: Evidence from North Carolina.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of American Education Finance Association, Richmond, VA.

This paper examines the potential spillover effects of inclusion of classmates with emotional-behavioral disorders (EBD) on own-test score performance. Current research suggests non-trivial reduction in achievement on the order of 5% of a standard deviation, which summed over 20 students in each classroom becomes substantial in the aggregate. However, no studies have examined these potential effects after 1st grade. This paper uses administrative data from North Carolina that includes the census of public school children in grades 3-5 during the years 2000-2007 in order to fully characterize classroom exposure to students with EBD. Using a variety of empirical specifications, including school-level, teacher-level, and student-level fixed effects, the results suggest small or no effects of inclusion in these grades for students in North Carolina public schools. Initial discussion of reconciling these findings with previous research is also provided.

Student success in the core content areas of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) is essential for the development of an American workforce that can compete in the global economy. In response to this critical need states across the country, including North Carolina, have developed K–12 initiatives designed to inspire and prepare the next generation of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers.

In North Carolina, the Golden LEAF Foundation (Golden LEAF) is a leader in the effort to promote and sustain high quality STEM education in public schools. A key component of the Golden LEAF grants program provides strategic funding for innovative K-12 education projects. In 2010 the Foundation launched a STEM Initiative to support “successful models that increase STEM education for students in grades four through nine in rural, economically distressed and/or tobacco-dependent counties of North Carolina.

As implemented in North Carolina, Early College High Schools are small, autonomous schools designed to increase the number of students who graduate from high school and are prepared for postsecondary education. Targeted at students who are underrepresented in college, these schools The North Carolina Education Research Data Center are most frequently located on college campuses and are intended to provide students with 2 years of college credit upon graduation from high school. This article reports on preliminary 9th- grade results from 285 students in 2 sites participating in a longitudinal experimental study of the impact of the model. These early results show that significantly more Early College High School students are enrolling and progressing in a college preparatory course of study. This expanded access, however, is associated with somewhat lower pass rates for some courses, suggesting the need for strong academic support to accompany increased enrollment in more rigorous courses. Implementation data collected on one school indicate that it is successfully implementing the model's components.

**Edmunds, Julie. “Early Colleges: A New Model of Schooling Focusing on College Readiness.” 2012. New Directions for Higher Education, no. 158, 81-89.

This chapter provides an overview of recent literature on college readiness and the emergence of the early college model. Using quantitative and qualitative data from an experimental study of early colleges in North Carolina, researchers describe the positive effects found on various indicators of college readiness.

Historically, African Americans and white girls have not had the same access to playing sports as white boys have had. Changes in laws led to racial integration of sports teams and equal athletic opportunities for girls. Yet, racial and gender gaps in playing sports persist, and intersections between race and gender, as well as different contexts of participation, may contribute to the gaps. This article uses structural resource and racial competition theories to examine the interactions among race, gender, and school environment to determine whether racial gaps persist for boys and girls and whether individual and school-level factors account for gender-specific racial gaps in sports participation. We combine data on every ninth-grade student in North Carolina public schools with data from school yearbooks and find that racial gaps in playing sports differ by gender, and that school factors—including opportunities schools provide to play sports—have unique influences on racial gaps for boys and girls.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2010. “Using Performance on the Job to Inform Teacher Tenure Decisions.” American Economic Review 100(2): 250-255.

The notion that some high stakes need to be attached to direct measures of teachers’ classroom performance as a control for quality in the workforce is an idea gaining traction in public education. One such proposal prescribes lowering the barriers to entry into teaching while simultaneously being more selective about which teachers are retained when they become eligible for tenure (Robert Gordon, Thomas J. Kane, and Douglas O. Staiger 2006; Eric A. Hanushek 2009). The focus on teacher performance in general, and tenure in particular, is supported by three important findings from teacher quality research. First, teacher quality (measured by estimated teacher impacts on student test score achievement) is the most important schooling factor when it comes to improving student achievement.2 Second, teacher quality is a The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

highly variable commodity (Kane, Rockoff, and Staiger 2008). Third, a strikingly small percentage of tenured teachers are ever dismissed for poor performance (Daniel Weisberg et al. 2009). In this paper we explore the potential for using value-added model (VAM) estimates as the primary criteria for rewarding teachers with tenure; a policy reform currently under consideration.3 Specifically, we describe selected findings from a larger study examining the stability of VAM estimates and their value in predicting student achievement (Goldhaber and Michael Hansen 2009). This line of research has important implications for many policies relying on VAM estimates to control teacher quality in the workforce, since a degree of stability of teacher performance over time is implicitly assumed.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2010. “Race, Gender, and Teacher Testing: How Informative a Tool Is Teacher Licensure Testing?” American Educational Research Journal 47(1): 218-251.

Virtually all states require teachers to undergo licensure testing before participation in the public school labor market. This article analyzes the information these tests provide about teacher effectiveness. The authors find that licensure tests have different predictive validity for student achievement by teacher race. They also find that student achievement is impacted by the race/ethnicity match between teachers and their students, with Black students significantly benefitting from being matched with a Black teacher. As a consequence of these matching effects, the uniform application of licensure standards is likely to have differential impacts on the achievement of White and minority students.

Goldhaber, Dan and Michael Hansen. 2010. “Assessing the Potential of Using Value-Added Estimates of Teacher Job Performance for Making High-Stakes Personnel Decisions.” CALDER Working Paper 31.

Whether early-career estimates of teacher effectiveness accurately predict later performance is of interest to those who advocate allowing more individuals to initially enter the teaching profession, and then being more selective about who is allowed to remain. This paper explores the potential for using value-added measures (VAM) to estimate teacher performance. There is little evidence that variation of teacher effects change over teacher careers, but good evidence that prior year VAM estimates of teacher job performance predict student achievement, even when there is a multi-year lag between the estimated teacher performance and the estimate of student achievement. VAM teacher effect estimates provide valuable information to consider as a factor in making substantive personnel decisions.

Investment in the certification of teachers by the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) represents a significant policy initiative for the nation’s public school teachers. This article investigates the potential impact of NBPTS certification on teachers’ career paths. Using a competing risks model on data from North Carolina public schools, we find evidence that those teachers who apply to NBPTS are more likely to be mobile than are The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

nonapplicants, particularly after they have gone through the certification process. Regression discontinuity estimates suggest that National Board–certified teachers are more likely than unsuccessful applicants to leave the North Carolina public school system and that this appears to result from certified teachers exiting high-minority schools, particularly Charlotte-Mecklenburg schools.

Goldhaber, Dan, Betheny Gross, and Daniel Player. 2010. “Teacher Career Paths, Teacher Quality, and Persistence in the Classroom: Are Schools Keeping their Best?” CALDER Working Paper 29.

Most studies that have fueled alarm over the attrition and mobility rates of teachers have relied on proxy indicators of teacher quality, even though these proxies correlate only weakly with student performance. This paper examines the attrition and mobility of early-career teachers of varying quality using value-added measures of teacher performance. Unlike previous studies, this paper focuses on the variation in these effects across the effectiveness distribution. On average, more effective teachers tend to stay in their initial schools and in teaching. But the lowest performing teachers, who are generally the most likely to transfer between schools, appear to “churn” within the system, and teacher mobility appears significantly affected by student demographics and achievement levels.

What’s known on this subject: Autism spectrum disorders and induced/augmented labor rates have concomitantly increased over the past several decades. Previous studies have investigated association between events at birth and autism, including the use of exogenous oxytocin, but results have been contradictory.

What this paper adds: To our knowledge, this is the first population-level study addressing the relationships among birth induction/augmentation and autism. We find that induction/augmentation is associated with increased odds of autism diagnosis in childhood, even after controlling for other known risk factors for autism.

Hansen, Michael. 2009. “How Career Concerns Influence Public Workers’ Effort: Evidence from the Teacher Labor Market.” CALDER Working Paper 40.

This study presents a generalization to the standard career concerns model and applies it to the public teacher labor market. The model predicts optimal teacher effort levels decline with both tenure at a school and experience, all things being equal. Using administrative data from North Carolina spanning 14 school years through 2008, the author finds significant changes in teacher sick leave consistent with the generalized career concerns model. By exploiting exogenous variation in career concerns in the form of principal turnover, the author shows the observed behaviors cannot be due to the endogeneity of teacher mobility decisions alone. Also examined are the effects of career concerns incentives breaking down. There is evidence suggestive of teacher shirking, and evidence on an unobservable measure of effort taken from the Schools and The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Staffing Survey that corroborates findings from observable teacher absence behavior. In sum, teachers exert considerable discretion over their own effort levels in response to these incentives. This has important policy implications.

Jackson, C. Kirabo. 2009. “Student Demographics, Teacher Sorting, and Teacher Quality: Evidence From the End of School Desegregation.” Journal of Labor Economics 27(2): 213- 256.

The reshuffling of students due to the end of student busing in Charlotte- Mecklenburg provides a unique opportunity to investigate the relationship between changes in student attributes and changes in teacher quality that are not confounded with changes in school or neighborhood characteristics. Comparisons of OLS and IV results suggest that spatial correlation between teachers’ residences, students’ residences, and schools could lead to spurious correlation between student attributes and teacher characteristics. Schools that experienced a repatriation of black students experienced a decrease in various measures of teacher quality. I provide evidence that this was primarily due to changes in labor supply.

Jackson, C. Kirabo, and Elias Bruegmann. 2009. “Teaching Students and Teaching Each Other: The Importance of Peer Learning for Teachers.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 1(4): 85–108.

Using longitudinal elementary school teacher and student data, we document that students have larger test score gains when their teachers experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues. Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we further show that a teacher’s students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when she has more effective colleagues (based on estimated value-added from an out-of-sample preperiod). Spillovers are strongest for less-experienced teachers and persist over time, and historical peer quality explains away about twenty percent of the own-teacher effect, results that suggest peer learning.

Ladd Helen F. 2011. “Teachers’ Perceptions of their Working Conditions: How Predictive of Planned and Actual Teacher Movement?” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis June 2011 33: 235-261.

This study uses data from North Carolina to examine the extent to which survey based perceptions of working conditions are predictive of policy-relevant outcomes, independent of other school characteristics such as the demographic mix of the school’s students. Working conditions emerge as highly predictive of teachers’ stated intentions to remain in or leave their schools, with leadership emerging as the most salient dimension. Teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions are also predictive of one-year actual departure rates and student achievement, but the predictive power is far lower. These weaker findings for actual outcome measures help to highlight both the strengths and weaknesses of using teacher survey data for understanding outcomes of policy interest.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

*Ladd, Helen, Charles Clotfelter, and Jacob Vigdor. 2010. “Teacher Mobility, School Segregation, and Pay-Based Policies to Level the Playing Field.” Education Finance and Policy.

Research has consistently shown that teacher quality is distributed very unevenly among schools, to the clear disadvantage of minority students and those from low-income families. Using North Carolina data on the length of time individual teachers remain in their schools, we examine the potential for using salary differentials to overcome this pattern. We conclude that salary differentials are a far less effective tool for retaining teachers with strong preservice qualifications than for retaining other teachers in schools with high proportions of minority students. Consequently large salary differences would be needed to level the playing field when schools are segregated. This conclusion reflects our finding that teachers with stronger qualifications are both more responsive to the racial and socioeconomic mix of a school's students and less responsive to salary than are their less-qualified counterparts when making decisions about remaining in their current school, moving to another school or district, or leaving the teaching profession.

Ladd Helen F. and Douglas L. Lauen. 2010. “Status versus Growth: The Distributional Effects of School Accountability Policies.” Journal of Policy Analysis and Management 29(3): 426-450.

Although the federal No Child Left Behind program judges the effectiveness of schools based on their students’ achievement status, many policy analysts argue that schools should be measured, instead, by their students’ achievement growth. Using a ten-year student-level panel dataset from North Carolina, we examine how school-specific pressure associated with the two approaches to school accountability affects student achievement at different points in the prior-year achievement distribution. Achievement gains for students below the proficiency cut point emerge in response to both types of accountability systems. In contrast to prior research highlighting the possibility of educational triage, we find little or no evidence that schools in North Carolina ignore the students far below proficiency under either approach. Importantly, we find that the status, but not the growth, approach reduces the reading achievement of higher performing students, with the losses in the aggregate exceeding the gains at the bottom. Our analysis suggests that the distributional effects of accountability pressure depend not only on the type of pressure for which schools are held accountable (status or growth), but also the tested subject.

**Lauen, Douglas L, and Gaddis, Michael S. 2013. “Exposure to Classroom Poverty and Test Score Achievement: Contextual Effects or Selection?” American Journal of Sociology, 118(4):1-37.

It is widely believed that impoverished contexts harm children. Disentangling the effects of family background from the effects of other social contexts, however, is complex, making causal claims difficult to verify. This study examines the effect of exposure to classroom poverty on student test achievement using data on a cohort of children followed from third through eighth grade. Cross-sectional methods reveal a substantial negative association between exposure to high-poverty classrooms and test scores; this association grows with grade level, becoming The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

especially large for middle school students. Growth models, however, produce much smaller effects of classroom poverty exposure on academic achievement. Even smaller effects emerge from student fixed effects models that control for time-invariant unobservables and from marginal structural models that adjust for observable time-dependent confounding. These findings suggest that causal claims about the effects of classroom poverty exposure on achievement may be unwarranted.

The theory of action behind the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 is that “shining a light” on subgroup performance will increase reading and math test scores for minority and disadvantaged students. Using a panel of all students in Grades 3 through 8 in North Carolina from 2000 to 2008 (N = 1.7 million students in 1,800 schools), the authors estimate double- and triple- differenced models with school fixed effects to examine whether subgroup-specific accountability threats increase high-stakes test scores. These sanctions are found to have positive effects for minority and disadvantaged students. Larger positive effects emerge for the lowest achieving schools rather than schools near the margin of passing. Some evidence of adverse effects is also found for low and high achievers in math, but not in reading, a finding attributed to the combination of increases in the rigor of state standards in math and responses to an accountability metric based on test score status rather than growth. The implications of the findings for the design of educational accountability systems are discussed.

Pay for performance plans are spreading across the country due to the Obama administration’s $4 billion Race to the Top initiative, which places a high priority on merit pay. Through a program that involved public accountability and bonuses, the state of North Carolina awarded over one billion dollars in school-based performance bonuses for meeting test score growth targets between 1997 and 2009. Using statewide student-level data from North Carolina, I examine the effects of accountability incentives on test scores in 2008, a year in which math and reading scores were “high-stakes,” and science tests were “low stakes.” Results from non- parametric discontinuity models show that at the margin accountability incentives cause higher reading gains and have no adverse effects on science scores or on low achieving students. Incentive effects on science are positive rather than null or negative, which suggests that interventions implemented to increase math and reading scores did not substitute for, but rather complemented, science instruction.

**Makel, Matthew C., Li, Yan, Putallaz, Martha, and Wai, Jonathan. 2011. “High-Ability Students’ Time Spent Outside the Classroom”. Journal of Advanced Academics, 22(5):740- 749.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

This study considered how three groups of academically talented high school students—those who attended an academic summer program (TIP), those who qualified for the program but chose not to attend (QNA), and those who did not qualify (DNQ)—spent time outside the classroom. These groupings differentiated students by ability (QNA vs. DNQ) and attendance (TIP vs. QNA). Male–female comparisons were also conducted. By comparing participation rates across a variety of activities and by sex, the current study helps explain the lives of high- ability students outside the arena by which they are defined: their academic ability. Results reveal numerous group and sex differences based on how high-ability students spend their time outside the classroom. Females tended to participate more than males in activities that were generally positively associated with academic achievement, while also participating in more types of activities. Males, however, reported watching more TV and were less likely to participate in any activity. QNA students reported spending more time on academic-related activities, such as homework and academic clubs, than did DNQ students, indicating a generally higher interest in academic endeavors. However, the QNA and TIP groups differed only in their service club participation rates, indicating that attending a summer program is not associated with spending time outside the classroom differently during the school year. This research underscores the heterogeneity of different groups of high-ability students and suggests some caution when generalizing from research findings based only on program participants. Knowing how students spend their time can help parents, educators, and researchers understand and foster adolescent development.

**McMullen, Steven C., Rouse, Kathryn E. 2012. “School Crowding, Year-Round Schooling, and Mobile Classroom Use: Evidence from North Carolina.” Economics of Education Review, 31:812– 823.

This study exploits a unique policy environment and a large panel dataset to evaluate the impact of school crowding on student achievement in Wake County, NC. We also estimate the effects of two education policy initiatives that are often used to address crowding: multitrack year-round calendars and mobile classrooms. We estimate a multi-level fixed effects model to identify effects that are not confounded by other school, family, and individual characteristics. Results suggest that severely crowded schools have a negative impact on reading achievement but have no discernable impact on math achievement. Both mobile classrooms and year-round calendars are found to have a small negative impact on achievement in the absence of crowding, but a positive impact in crowded schools, though these policies are only able to partially offset the negative impact of crowding.

In 2007, 22 Wake County, North Carolina traditional calendar schools were switched to year- round calendars, spreading the 180 instructional days evenly across the year. This paper presents a human capital model to illustrate the conditions under which these calendars might affect achievement. We then exploit the natural experiment to evaluate the impact of year-round schooling on student achievement using a multi-level fixed effects model. Results suggest that year-round schooling has essentially no impact on academic achievement of the average student. The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Moreover, when the data are broken out by race, we find no evidence that any racial subgroup benefits from year-round schooling

The High Schools That Work school improvement initiative is the nation’s largest comprehensive school reform model with over a thousand schools adopting its framework. The initiative’s premise is that all students can meet the demands of a college preparatory curriculum if provided the right supports. Analyzing over a decade of data on student course taking and performance, we employ a rigorous comparative interrupted time series strategy to assess the extent to which HSTW meets its goal by increasing students’ successful progression through the mathematics and science pipelines. Each pipeline consists of three college preparatory courses: algebra 1, geometry, and algebra 2 in mathematics and biology plus two physical science courses in science. The results show no effect on pipeline progression for the average student and some evidence of increased gaps in course taking between more advantaged and disadvantaged students.

Miranda Marie Lynn, Dohyeong Kim , Jerome Reiter, Alicia Overstreet Galeano and Pamela Maxson. 2009. “Environmental Contributors to the Achievement Gap” Neurotoxicology 30(6): 1019–1024.

Extensive research shows that blacks, those of low socioeconomic status, and other disadvantaged groups continue to exhibit poorer school performance compared with middle and upper-class whites in the United States’ educational system. Environmental exposures may contribute to the observed achievement gap. In particular, childhood lead exposure has been linked to a number of adverse cognitive outcomes. In previous work, we demonstrated a relationship between early childhood lead exposure and end-of-grade (EOG) test scores on a limited dataset. In this analysis, data from the North Carolina Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program surveillance registry were linked to educational outcomes available through the North Carolina Education Research Data Center for all 100 counties in NC. Our objectives were to confirm the earlier study results in a larger population-level database, determine whether there are differences in the impact of lead across the EOG distribution, and elucidate the impact of cumulative childhood social and environmental stress on educational outcomes. Multivariate and quantile regression techniques were employed. We find that early childhood lead exposure is associated with lower performance on reading EOG test scores in a clear dose-response pattern, with the effects increasingly more pronounced in moving from the high end to the low end of the test score distribution. Parental educational attainment and family poverty status also affect EOG test scores, in a similar dose-response fashion, with the effects again most pronounced at the low end of the EOG test score distribution. The effects of environmental and social stressors (especially as they stretch out the lower tail of the EOG distribution) demonstrate the particular vulnerabilities of socioeconomically and environmentally disadvantaged children. Given the higher average lead exposure experienced by African American children in the United States, lead does in fact explain part of the achievement gap.

The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

Miranda Marie Lynn, Pamela Maxson and Dohyeong Kim. 2010. “Early Childhood Lead Exposure and Exceptionality Designations for Students.” International Journal of Child and Adolescent Health, 3(1): 77–84

The achievement gap continues to be an important educational issue, with disadvantaged groups exhibiting poorer school performance. Recently, literature has shown that even very low levels of early lead exposure affect cognitive and academic performance. As individuals at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum are more likely to be exposed to lead, this exposure may be an important contributor to the achievement gap. In this paper, we explore whether early childhood blood lead levels are associated with membership in exceptionality designation groups. In addition, we examine the racial and socioeconomic composition of these exceptional groups. Data from the North Carolina Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program surveillance registry were linked at the individual child level to educational outcomes available through the North Carolina Education Research Data Center. Designation into exceptionality groups was obtained from the end-of-grade (EOG) data. Both standard bivariate and multivariate analyses were employed. Bivariate analyses indicate that blood lead levels and reading EOG scores differ by exceptionality, as well as by race and enrollment in free/reduced lunch. Logistic regression confirmed the relationship between blood lead levels and likelihood of exceptionality. Contextual factors – enrollment in the free/reduced lunch program, race, and parental education – are also significant with regard to exceptionality. This study demonstrates that early childhood lead exposure significantly influences the likelihood of being designated exceptional. These results provide additional evidence that early childhood lead exposure is a significant explanator of the achievement gap.

Researchers, policymakers, and parents share a perception that school composition is a major influence on school quality. An important source of change in school populations is the withdrawal of white and more affluent families, in reaction to perceived reallocation of resources toward limited English speakers, and a general devaluation of social capital in schools. Our study focuses on North Carolina, which experienced an increase of over 66 percent in the school age population of Latino origin between 2000 and 2006, as well as large increases in the proportion of students from poor families, many of whom are Latino. We use longitudinal administrative data to estimate the impact of immigration on racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic composition within and across schools.

Muschkin, Clara G, Kara Bonneau, and Spencer Hawkins. 2011. “Easing the Transition to High School: Effects of a Freshman Academy on Student Success.” Annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA, April 8-12.

The ninth grade marks a critical juncture in American schooling. Issues surrounding the transition to high school are particularly salient in North Carolina, where school dropout is a topic of growing concern. This research focuses on the effects of participating in a high school The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

transition program on a number of educational outcomes for individual students. The research literature presents mixed findings on the effectiveness of ninth grade academies for student success, measured primarily in terms of test scores and grade promotion. A number of methodological factors may account for these inconsistent research findings. Our study employs some methodological innovations that may elucidate program effects, and can shed light on the processes through which the high school transition program influences student outcomes. These innovations include: use of disaggregated student-level information; an experimental design; analysis of multiple student outcomes; and a longitudinal design that tracks outcomes for individual students over time. Muschkin, Clara G. 2009. Research Support for Evidence-Based Education Policy: The North Carolina Education Research Data Center. Paper presented in the symposium session “Evidence-Informed Education: The Role of Collaborations in Leveraging SEA Accountability and Compliance Data.” Annual meetings of the American Educational Research Association

This interactive symposium included several presentations that (1) reviewed key characteristics of state education data systems and the policies and best practices governing their use and evolution, and (2) explored the types of roles SEA-IHE collaborations have played in leveraging accountability and compliance data to inform educational policies and practices at the state and local levels.

Ost, Ben. 2009. “How Do Teachers Improve? The Relative Importance of Specific and General Human Capital.” Paper Presented at American Education Finance Association Conference, Richmond, VA.

One of the most consistent findings in the literature on teacher quality is that teachers improve with experience, especially in the first several years. This study extends this research by separately identifying the effect of general teaching experience and grade-specific experience. Using within-teacher variation, I find that both general experience and grade-specific experience improve teacher performance. For math scores, the magnitude implies that teachers who always repeat grade assignments improve approximately 35% faster than teachers who never repeat grade assignments. In addition to furthering our understanding of how teachers improve with experience, this paper contributes to a literature on task-specific human capital.

**Rauschenberg, Sam. “How consistent are course grades? An examination of differential grading.” (Duke University)

Differential grading occurs when students in courses with the same content and curriculum receive inconsistent grades across teachers, schools, or districts. It may be due to many factors, including differences in teacher grading standards, district grading policies, student behavior, teacher stereotypes, teacher quality, and curriculum adherence. If it occurs systematically, certain types of students may receive higher or lower grades relative to other students, despite having similar content mastery or ability. Using three years of statewide data on Algebra I and English I courses in North Carolina public high schools, I find that schools with similar average test scores have average course grades that vary by about 1 standard deviation, or 10 points on a 100-point scale. Additionally, student characteristics are stronger predictors of differential grading than The North Carolina Education Research Data Center teacher, school, or district characteristics. Female, Limited English Proficient, and 12th grade students earn statistically significant higher grades than other students, holding test scores and student, teacher, school, and district characteristics constant. Low-income students, conversely, earn lower grades than other students, all else constant.

Rothstein, Jesse. 2010. “Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 125(1): 175-214.

Growing concerns over the inadequate achievement of U.S. students have led to proposals to reward good teachers and penalize (or fire) bad ones. The leading method for assessing teacher quality is “value added” modeling (VAM), which decomposes students’ test scores into components attributed to student heterogeneity and to teacher quality. Implicit in the VAM approach are strong assumptions about the nature of the educational production function and the assignment of students to classrooms. In this paper, I develop falsification tests for three widely used VAM specifications, based on the idea that future teachers cannot influence students’ past achievement. In data from North Carolina, each of the VAMs’ exclusion restrictions are dramatically violated. In particular, these models indicate large “effects” of 5th grade teachers on 4th grade test score gains. I also find that conventional measures of individual teachers’ value added fade out very quickly and are at best weakly related to long-run effects. I discuss implications for the use of VAMs as personnel tools.

Rothstein, Jesse. 2009. “Student Sorting and Bias in Value-Added Estimation: Selection on Observables and Unobservables.” Education Finance and Policy 4(4): 537-571.

Nonrandom assignment of students to teachers can bias value-added estimates of teachers’ causal effects. Rothstein (2008) shows that typical value-added models indicate large counterfactual effects of fifth grade teachers on students’ fourth-grade learning, indicating that classroom assignments are far from random. This article quantifies the resulting biases in estimates of fifth- grade teachers’ causal effects from several value added models, under varying assumptions about the assignment process. If assignments are assumed to depend only on observables, the most commonly used specifications are subject to important bias, but other feasible specifications are nearly free of bias. I also consider the case in which assignments depend on unobserved variables. I use the across-classroom variance of observables to calibrate several models of the sorting process. Results indicate that even the best feasible value-added models may be substantially biased, with the magnitude of the bias depending on the amount of information available for use in classroom assignments.

Southworth, Stephanie. 2010. “Examining the Effects of School Composition on North Carolina Student Achievement Over Time.” EPAA (Forthcoming)

Educational outcomes are influenced by student, family, and school factors. In this study I focus on the effects of school level inputs on North Carolina students’ reading and math achievement from fourth through eighth grade. Key amongst the school characteristics is the effect of school racial and poverty composition. I examine the composition for each school by creating race by poverty cohorts of schools. Utilizing HLM models on math and reading achievement for the same students in fourth, sixth and eighth grade, I find that the racial and poverty composition of The North Carolina Education Research Data Center

schools affect student achievement net of student, family and other school influences. I also find that increasing teacher quality and school resources reduces, but does not eliminate, the effects of school racial and poverty composition on student achievement. Based on these findings, I recommend that policies leading to reductions in racial and poverty isolation in schools and increases in teacher quality should be pursued to guarantee equality of educational opportunities to all children in North Carolina schools.

Stearns, Elizabeth, and Elizabeth J. Glennie. 2010. “Opportunities to participate: Extracurricular activities’ distribution across and academic correlates in high schools.” Social Science Research. 39:2; 296-309.

Studies suggest that students who participate in extracurricular activities benefit in a number of ways. However, schools provide different opportunities to participate in these activities. Using information from high school yearbooks and administrative data on students and schools in North Carolina, we examine whether school characteristics influence the numbers and types of extracurricular activities available, whether schools providing more and diverse activities have higher participation rates, and whether these schools have better academic outcomes. We find that school size and poverty levels significantly influence the number and types of activities available, with larger schools and those schools with more affluent student bodies offering more activities. Opportunities to participate are associated with positive academic outcomes for the school, even when controlling for school resources. For some—but not all—activities, student participation rates mediate the relationship between activity availability and the school’s academic profile. For benefits to be present, schools must provide these resources, and students must invest in them.

This paper describes the school mobility rates for elementary and middle school students in North Carolina and attempts to estimate the effect of school mobility on the performance of different groups of students using student fixed effects models. School mobility is defined as changing schools at times that are non-promotional (e.g., moving from middle to high school). We used detailed administrative data on North Carolina students and schools from 1997 to 2005 and followed four cohorts of 3rd graders for six years each. School mobility rates were highest for minority and disadvantaged students. School mobility rates for Hispanic students declined across successive cohorts, but increased for Black students. Findings on effects were most pronounced in math. School mobility hurt the math performance of Black and Hispanic students, but not the math performance of white students. School mobility improved the reading performance of white and more advantaged students, but had no effect on the reading performance of minority students. “Strategic” school moves (cross-district) benefitted or had no effect on student performance, but “reactive” moves (within district) hurt all groups of students. White and Hispanic students were more likely to move to a higher quality school while Blacks were more likely to move to a lower quality school. The negative effects of school mobility increased with the number of school moves.