Dan Goldhaber, John Krieg, & Roddy Theobald

PDF Version

Every year there are more than 125,000 student teachers who complete apprenticeships in K-12 public schools. These apprenticeships occur in the classrooms of inservice teachers, known as mentor or cooperating teachers. Does hosting teacher candidates affect student test performance, either during the apprenticeship or in the classrooms of mentor teachers after they host a student teacher?  There is a good deal of speculation about this, but no published quantitative exploration of the impacts on students in the classrooms where student teaching has taken place.

Kristin Rogde, Monica Melby-Lervåg, & Arne Lervåg

PDF Version.

There are increasing numbers of children whose first language differs from the predominant language of instruction in their school. Entering school where the language of instruction is a student’s second language is associated with undesirable social, educational, and economic outcomes. This study investigates the efficacy of an intervention aimed at improving second-language skills of kindergarteners.

How did we test the intervention?

Chris van Klaveren, Karen Kooiman, Ilja Cornelisz & Martijn Meeter

PDF Version

Secondary school students tend to be overly optimistic about how well they will perform in college. This overconfidence leads to suboptimal decision making. But what if secondary school students were told their likelihood of succeeding in the college program they applied to prior to their decision to enroll?  Would this influence their decision to enroll?

This study presents the results of a field experiment in which a random half of 313 secondary-school students applying to higher education received personalized predictions on study success (the other half did not receive such predictions). A comparison of the enrolment rates of the two groups of students helps us understand the effect of receiving these personalized predictions. We find that:

Sharon Wolf, J. Lawrence Aber, Jere Behrman & Edward Tsinigo

PDF Version

Preschool teacher training program improves classroom quality and child outcomes in Ghana

Children around the world are attending preschool more than ever before. But many preschools are poor quality and children are not learning. Ghana, a lower-middle income country in West Africa, has been at the forefront of expanding access to preschool and adopting a progressive- child-centered curriculum.

Yet, preschool quality remains poor and most teachers have not been trained in the national curriculum.