This comprehensive meta-analysis on teacher career trajectories, consisting of 34 studies of 63 attrition moderators, seeks to understand why teaching attrition occurs, or what factors moderate attrition outcomes. Personal characteristics of teachers are important predictors of turnover. Attributes of teachers’ schools, including organizational characteristics, student body composition, and resources (instructional spending and teacher salaries), are also key moderators. The evidence suggests that attrition from teaching is (a) not necessarily “healthy” turnover, (b) influenced by various personal and professional factors that change across teachers’ career paths, (c) more strongly moderated by characteristics of teachers’ work conditions than previously noted in the literature, and (d) a problem that can be addressed through policies and initiatives. Though researchers have utilized a number of national and state databases and have applied economic labor theory to questions related to teacher attrition, the authors argue that better longitudinal data on teacher career paths and more nuanced theories are needed.

This meta-analysis reviews research on the achievement effects of comprehensive school reform (CSR) and summarizes the specific effects of 29 widely implemented models. There are limitations on the overall quantity and quality of the research base, but the overall effects of CSR appear promising. The combined quantity, quality, and statistical significance of evidence from three models, in particular, set them apart. Whether evaluations are conducted by developers or by third-party evaluators and whether evaluators use one-group pre-post designs or control groups are important factors for understanding differences in CSR effects. Schools that implemented CSR models for 5 years or more showed particularly strong effects, and the benefits were consistent across schools of varying poverty levels. A long-term commitment to research-proven educational reform is needed to establish a strong marketplace of scientifically based CSR models.

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Analyzing mathematics and reading achievement outcomes from a district-level random assignment study fielded in over 500 schools within 59 school districts and seven states, the authors estimate the 1-year impacts of a data-driven reform initiative implemented by the Johns Hopkins Center for Data-Driven Reform in Education (CDDRE). CDDRE consultants work with districts to implement quarterly student benchmark assessments and provide district and school leaders with extensive training on interpreting and using the data to guide reform. Relative to a control condition, in which districts operated as usual without CDDRE services, the data-driven reform initiative caused statistically significant districtwide improvements in student mathematics achievement. The CDDRE intervention also had a positive effect on reading achievement, but the estimates fell short of conventional levels of statistical significance.

Using a cluster randomization design, schools were randomly assigned to implement Success for All, a comprehensive reading reform model, or control methods. This article reports final literacy outcomes for a 3-year longitudinal sample of children who participated in the treatment or control condition from kindergarten through second grade and a combined longitudinal and in-mover student sample, both of which were nested within 35 schools. Hierarchical linear model analyses of all three outcomes for both samples revealed statistically significant school-level effects of treatment assignment as large as one third of a standard deviation. The results correspond with the Success for All program theory, which emphasizes both comprehensive school-level reform and targeted student-level achievement effects through a multi-year sequencing of literacy instruction.

Using standards-based evaluation ratings for nearly 400 teachers, and achievement results for over 7,000 students from grades 4-6, this study investigated the distribution and achievement effects of teacher quality in Washoe County, a mid-sized school district serving Reno and Sparks, Nevada. Classrooms with higher concentrations of minority, poor, and low-achieving students were more likely to be taught by teachers with lower evaluation scores. Two-level multilevel models, nesting students within classrooms, tended to show higher mean achievement in classrooms taught by teachers of higher than lower quality, with differences of approximately one-tenth of 1 standard deviation. Findings relating teacher quality to closing within-classroom achievement gaps, though, were mixed. Implications are discussed related to teacher evaluation, teacher quality, and educational inequality. Disciplines Educational Assessment, Evaluation, and Research Comments View on the CPRE website.

Several renowned early interventions have compelling evidence of enduring achievement effects for at-risk children: Perry Preschool; the Abecedarian Project; and the Tennessee Class-Size Experiment. The costs and potential for national dissemination of such model programs, though, represent key practical concerns. This article examines the long-term outcomes and costs of another popular early intervention: Success for All. Relative to controls, Success for All students completed 8th grade at a younger age, with better achievement outcomes, fewer special education placements, fewer retentions, and at the same educational expense. Further cost-effectiveness comparisons to the three prominent interventions suggest that Success for All is deserving of similar recognition as a sound educational investment that provides strong and lasting educational benefits. None of these exemplary programs, though, can be expected to be the “great equalizer.”

Brief, targeted self-affirmation writing exercises have recently been offered as a way to reduce racial achievement gaps, but evidence about their effects in educational settings is mixed, leaving ambiguity about the likely benefits of these strategies if implemented broadly. A key limitation in interpreting these mixed results is that they come from studies conducted by different research teams with different procedures in different settings; it is therefore impossible to isolate whether different effects are the result of theorized heterogeneity, unidentified moderators, or idiosyncratic features of the different studies. We addressed this limitation by conducting a well-powered replication of self-affirmation in a setting where a previous large-scale field experiment demonstrated significant positive impacts, using the same procedures. We found no evidence of effects in this replication study and estimates were precise enough to reject benefits larger than an effect size of 0.10. These null effects were significantly different from persistent benefits in the prior study in the same setting, and extensive testing revealed that currently theorized moderators of self-affirmation effects could not explain the difference. These results highlight the potential fragility of self-affirmation in educational settings when implemented widely and the need for new theory, measures, and evidence about the necessary conditions for self-affirmation success.