John P Papay
Biographic Data
| ID | 2512004 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John P Papay |
| GIVEN NAMES | John P |
| FAMILY NAME | Papay |
| SIGNATURE | PAPAY J P |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brown University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 62 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Understanding High Schools’ Effects on Longer‐Term Outcomes
Improving education and labor market outcomes for low‐income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We use longitudinal data on five cohorts of ninth‐grade students to explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer term outcomes of students, with a special focus on students from low‐income families. Using detailed administrative and student survey data, we estimate school value‐added impac…
Navigating a Fractured Landscape: Teachers’ Engagement with Professional Learning Across Multiple Forms and Formats
Purpose: Coherent systems of teacher professional learning (PL) hold great promise for supporting teacher practice. Yet little research systematically examines characteristics of PL systems or how teachers are engaging with PL within and across schools and districts. Research Methods: We use statewide teacher survey and administrative data from Tennessee to examine variation in the reported quantity and instructional helpfulness of PL activities.…
Introducing a High School Exit Exam in Science: Consequences in Massachusetts
Preparing students for science, technology, and engineering careers is an urgent state policy challenge. We examined the design and roll-out of a science testing requirement for high school graduation in Massachusetts. While science test performance improved over time for all demographic subgroups, we observed rising inequality in failure rates and retest success. English learners, almost 8% of all test takers, accounted for 53% of students who n…
Teacher Preparation Programs and Graduates’ Growth in Instructional Effectiveness
Many prior studies have explored average differences in initial levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs) and the features of preparation that predict these differences. We focus on another important dimension of effectiveness—how graduates from different TPPs improve over time. Examining all graduates from Tennessee TPPs from 2010 to 2018, we find meaningful differences between TPPs in bo…
Teacher Skill Development: Evidence from Performance Ratings by Principals
We examine the dynamic nature of teacher skill development using panel data on principals’ subjective performance ratings of teachers. Past research on teacher productivity improvement has focused primarily on one important but narrow measure of performance: teachers’ value‐added to student achievement on standardized tests. Unlike value‐added, subjective performance ratings provide detailed information about specific skill dimensions and are ava…
Gauging Goodness of Fit: Teachers’ Responses to Their Instructional Teams in High-Poverty Schools
Teacher teams are increasingly common in urban schools. In this study, we analyze teachers’ responses to teams in six high-poverty schools. Teachers used two criteria to assess teams’ goodness of fit in meeting the demands of their work: whether their teams helped them teach better and whether the team contributed to a better school. Their responses differed notably by school, depending largely on the principal’s approach to implementation. In th…
The Challenge of Teacher Retention in Urban Schools: Evidence of Variation From a Cross-Site Analysis
Substantial teacher turnover poses a challenge to staffing public schools with effective teachers. The scope of the teacher retention challenge across school districts, however, remains poorly defined. Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, we document substantial cross-district variation in teacher retention rates. Observable characteristics do not easily explain this cro…
The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring
We use matched employee-employer records from the teacher labor market to explore the effects of late teacher hiring on student achievement. Hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement by 0.042SD in mathematics and 0.026SD in reading. This reflects, in part, a temporary disruption effect in the first year. In mathematics, but not in reading, late-hired teachers remain persistently less effective, evidence of negative …
Productivity returns to experience in the teacher labor market: Methodological challenges and new evidence on long-term career improvement
An Idea Whose Time Had Come: Negotiating Teacher Evaluation Reform in New Haven, Connecticut
This article examines New Haven (Connecticut) Public Schools’ efforts to create a new teacher evaluation model in a collaborative manner. Based on semistructured interviews with nearly 100 educators, we develop a case study charting the progress of the new system, TEVAL, from an initial concept through early implementation. We find that John Kingdon’s three streams—problems, politics, and policies—all aligned in the years preceding TEVAL’s adopti…
Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience
Although wide variation in teacher effectiveness is well established, much less is known about differences in teacher improvement over time. We document that average returns to teaching experience mask large variation across individual teachers and across groups of teachers working in different schools. We examine the role of school context in explaining these differences using a measure of the professional environment constructed from teachers r…
How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement
Background/Context Educational policy makers have begun to recognize the challenges posed by teacher turnover. Schools and students pay a price when new teachers leave the profession after only 2 or 3 years, just when they have acquired valuable teaching experience. Persistent turnover also disrupts efforts to build a strong organizational culture and to sustain coordinated instructional programs throughout the school. Retaining effective teacher…
Different Tests, Different Answers: The Stability of Teacher Value-Added Estimates Across Outcome Measures
Recently, educational researchers and practitioners have turned to value-added models to evaluate teacher performance. Although value-added estimates depend on the assessment used to measure student achievement, the importance of outcome selection has received scant attention in the literature. Using data from a large, urban school district, I examine whether value-added estimates from three separate reading achievement tests provide similar answ…
Teachers' Views on No Child Left Behind: Support for the Principles, Concerns about the Practices
In this article, we describe teachers' views of the behavioral responses the No Child Left Behind legislation has elicited and the extent to which research reveals evidence of these responses and their effects on the distribution of student achievement. We focus on teachers' reactions to three aspects of NCLB that are particularly relevant to them: 1) the testing requirements and the rules determining "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) under NCLB; …
Leading the Local: Teachers Union Presidents Chart Their Own Course
Teachers unions are among the most powerful, yet least studied, actors in public education today. Although public attention focuses on the influence of national unions, the policies that most affect teachers and schooling are bargained by local unions and school boards. Interviews with 30 recently elected local union presidents reveal that these leaders balance competing interests and obligations, from the concerns and priorities of their members…
The Challenge of Teacher Retention in Urban Schools: Evidence of Variation From a Cross-Site Analysis
Substantial teacher turnover poses a challenge to staffing public schools with effective teachers. The scope of the teacher retention challenge across school districts, however, remains poorly defined. Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, we document substantial cross-district variation in teacher retention rates. Observable characteristics do not easily explain this cro…
Different Tests, Different Answers: The Stability of Teacher Value-Added Estimates Across Outcome Measures
Recently, educational researchers and practitioners have turned to value-added models to evaluate teacher performance. Although value-added estimates depend on the assessment used to measure student achievement, the importance of outcome selection has received scant attention in the literature. Using data from a large, urban school district, I examine whether value-added estimates from three separate reading achievement tests provide similar answ…
Teacher Skill Development: Evidence from Performance Ratings by Principals
We examine the dynamic nature of teacher skill development using panel data on principals’ subjective performance ratings of teachers. Past research on teacher productivity improvement has focused primarily on one important but narrow measure of performance: teachers’ value‐added to student achievement on standardized tests. Unlike value‐added, subjective performance ratings provide detailed information about specific skill dimensions and are ava…
Gauging Goodness of Fit: Teachers’ Responses to Their Instructional Teams in High-Poverty Schools
Teacher teams are increasingly common in urban schools. In this study, we analyze teachers’ responses to teams in six high-poverty schools. Teachers used two criteria to assess teams’ goodness of fit in meeting the demands of their work: whether their teams helped them teach better and whether the team contributed to a better school. Their responses differed notably by school, depending largely on the principal’s approach to implementation. In th…
Leading the Local: Teachers Union Presidents Chart Their Own Course
Teachers unions are among the most powerful, yet least studied, actors in public education today. Although public attention focuses on the influence of national unions, the policies that most affect teachers and schooling are bargained by local unions and school boards. Interviews with 30 recently elected local union presidents reveal that these leaders balance competing interests and obligations, from the concerns and priorities of their members…
The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring
We use matched employee-employer records from the teacher labor market to explore the effects of late teacher hiring on student achievement. Hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement by 0.042SD in mathematics and 0.026SD in reading. This reflects, in part, a temporary disruption effect in the first year. In mathematics, but not in reading, late-hired teachers remain persistently less effective, evidence of negative …
Teachers' Views on No Child Left Behind: Support for the Principles, Concerns about the Practices
In this article, we describe teachers' views of the behavioral responses the No Child Left Behind legislation has elicited and the extent to which research reveals evidence of these responses and their effects on the distribution of student achievement. We focus on teachers' reactions to three aspects of NCLB that are particularly relevant to them: 1) the testing requirements and the rules determining "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) under NCLB; …
An Idea Whose Time Had Come: Negotiating Teacher Evaluation Reform in New Haven, Connecticut
This article examines New Haven (Connecticut) Public Schools’ efforts to create a new teacher evaluation model in a collaborative manner. Based on semistructured interviews with nearly 100 educators, we develop a case study charting the progress of the new system, TEVAL, from an initial concept through early implementation. We find that John Kingdon’s three streams—problems, politics, and policies—all aligned in the years preceding TEVAL’s adopti…
Navigating a Fractured Landscape: Teachers’ Engagement with Professional Learning Across Multiple Forms and Formats
Purpose: Coherent systems of teacher professional learning (PL) hold great promise for supporting teacher practice. Yet little research systematically examines characteristics of PL systems or how teachers are engaging with PL within and across schools and districts. Research Methods: We use statewide teacher survey and administrative data from Tennessee to examine variation in the reported quantity and instructional helpfulness of PL activities.…
Teacher Preparation Programs and Graduates’ Growth in Instructional Effectiveness
Many prior studies have explored average differences in initial levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs) and the features of preparation that predict these differences. We focus on another important dimension of effectiveness—how graduates from different TPPs improve over time. Examining all graduates from Tennessee TPPs from 2010 to 2018, we find meaningful differences between TPPs in bo…
Leading the Local: Teachers Union Presidents Chart Their Own Course
Teachers unions are among the most powerful, yet least studied, actors in public education today. Although public attention focuses on the influence of national unions, the policies that most affect teachers and schooling are bargained by local unions and school boards. Interviews with 30 recently elected local union presidents reveal that these leaders balance competing interests and obligations, from the concerns and priorities of their members…
Teachers' Views on No Child Left Behind: Support for the Principles, Concerns about the Practices
In this article, we describe teachers' views of the behavioral responses the No Child Left Behind legislation has elicited and the extent to which research reveals evidence of these responses and their effects on the distribution of student achievement. We focus on teachers' reactions to three aspects of NCLB that are particularly relevant to them: 1) the testing requirements and the rules determining "Adequate Yearly Progress" (AYP) under NCLB; …
Different Tests, Different Answers: The Stability of Teacher Value-Added Estimates Across Outcome Measures
Recently, educational researchers and practitioners have turned to value-added models to evaluate teacher performance. Although value-added estimates depend on the assessment used to measure student achievement, the importance of outcome selection has received scant attention in the literature. Using data from a large, urban school district, I examine whether value-added estimates from three separate reading achievement tests provide similar answ…
How Context Matters in High-Need Schools: The Effects of Teachers’ Working Conditions on Their Professional Satisfaction and Their Students’ Achievement
Background/Context Educational policy makers have begun to recognize the challenges posed by teacher turnover. Schools and students pay a price when new teachers leave the profession after only 2 or 3 years, just when they have acquired valuable teaching experience. Persistent turnover also disrupts efforts to build a strong organizational culture and to sustain coordinated instructional programs throughout the school. Retaining effective teacher…
Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience
Although wide variation in teacher effectiveness is well established, much less is known about differences in teacher improvement over time. We document that average returns to teaching experience mask large variation across individual teachers and across groups of teachers working in different schools. We examine the role of school context in explaining these differences using a measure of the professional environment constructed from teachers r…
Productivity returns to experience in the teacher labor market: Methodological challenges and new evidence on long-term career improvement
An Idea Whose Time Had Come: Negotiating Teacher Evaluation Reform in New Haven, Connecticut
This article examines New Haven (Connecticut) Public Schools’ efforts to create a new teacher evaluation model in a collaborative manner. Based on semistructured interviews with nearly 100 educators, we develop a case study charting the progress of the new system, TEVAL, from an initial concept through early implementation. We find that John Kingdon’s three streams—problems, politics, and policies—all aligned in the years preceding TEVAL’s adopti…
The Productivity Costs of Inefficient Hiring Practices: Evidence From Late Teacher Hiring
We use matched employee-employer records from the teacher labor market to explore the effects of late teacher hiring on student achievement. Hiring teachers after the school year starts reduces student achievement by 0.042SD in mathematics and 0.026SD in reading. This reflects, in part, a temporary disruption effect in the first year. In mathematics, but not in reading, late-hired teachers remain persistently less effective, evidence of negative …
Gauging Goodness of Fit: Teachers’ Responses to Their Instructional Teams in High-Poverty Schools
Teacher teams are increasingly common in urban schools. In this study, we analyze teachers’ responses to teams in six high-poverty schools. Teachers used two criteria to assess teams’ goodness of fit in meeting the demands of their work: whether their teams helped them teach better and whether the team contributed to a better school. Their responses differed notably by school, depending largely on the principal’s approach to implementation. In th…
The Challenge of Teacher Retention in Urban Schools: Evidence of Variation From a Cross-Site Analysis
Substantial teacher turnover poses a challenge to staffing public schools with effective teachers. The scope of the teacher retention challenge across school districts, however, remains poorly defined. Applying consistent data practices and analytical techniques to administrative data sets from 16 urban districts, we document substantial cross-district variation in teacher retention rates. Observable characteristics do not easily explain this cro…
Teacher Skill Development: Evidence from Performance Ratings by Principals
We examine the dynamic nature of teacher skill development using panel data on principals’ subjective performance ratings of teachers. Past research on teacher productivity improvement has focused primarily on one important but narrow measure of performance: teachers’ value‐added to student achievement on standardized tests. Unlike value‐added, subjective performance ratings provide detailed information about specific skill dimensions and are ava…
Teacher Preparation Programs and Graduates’ Growth in Instructional Effectiveness
Many prior studies have explored average differences in initial levels of teaching effectiveness among graduates from different teacher preparation programs (TPPs) and the features of preparation that predict these differences. We focus on another important dimension of effectiveness—how graduates from different TPPs improve over time. Examining all graduates from Tennessee TPPs from 2010 to 2018, we find meaningful differences between TPPs in bo…
Navigating a Fractured Landscape: Teachers’ Engagement with Professional Learning Across Multiple Forms and Formats
Purpose: Coherent systems of teacher professional learning (PL) hold great promise for supporting teacher practice. Yet little research systematically examines characteristics of PL systems or how teachers are engaging with PL within and across schools and districts. Research Methods: We use statewide teacher survey and administrative data from Tennessee to examine variation in the reported quantity and instructional helpfulness of PL activities.…
Introducing a High School Exit Exam in Science: Consequences in Massachusetts
Preparing students for science, technology, and engineering careers is an urgent state policy challenge. We examined the design and roll-out of a science testing requirement for high school graduation in Massachusetts. While science test performance improved over time for all demographic subgroups, we observed rising inequality in failure rates and retest success. English learners, almost 8% of all test takers, accounted for 53% of students who n…
Understanding High Schools’ Effects on Longer‐Term Outcomes
Improving education and labor market outcomes for low‐income students is critical for advancing socioeconomic mobility in the United States. We use longitudinal data on five cohorts of ninth‐grade students to explore how Massachusetts public high schools affect the longer term outcomes of students, with a special focus on students from low‐income families. Using detailed administrative and student survey data, we estimate school value‐added impac…
Psychology (12 works) · School Choice and Performance (12 works) · Mathematics education (10 works) · Pedagogy (7 works) · Political science (7 works) · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies (7 works) · Academic achievement (5 works) · Professional development (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · Higher Education Research Studies (4 works)