Allison F Gilmour
Biographic Data
| ID | 5742050 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Allison F Gilmour |
| GIVEN NAMES | Allison F |
| FAMILY NAME | Gilmour |
| SIGNATURE | GILMOUR A F |
| AFFILIATIONS | American Institutes for Research, Arlington, VA, USA |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6189-7099 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 12 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 12 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Leveraging Administrative Data to Study the Special Education Teacher Workforce
Special educator shortages have threatened the provision of services U.S. to students with disabilities since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, since reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We conducted a systematic review of studies that used administrative data to study the special educator workforce. We identified 12 studies addressing policies or practices related to the compositio…
Examining the Supply of New Special Educators
U.S. schools have long experienced shortages of special education teachers (SETs), challenging the nation’s capacity to ensure qualified SETs for students eligible for special education services. Addressing SET shortages requires preparation programs to supply sufficient numbers of new SETs to meet demand, yet prior research provides few insights into trends in the supply of new SETs. Thus, we examined how the supply of new SETs changed over time…
Leveraging Large Administrative Data for Special Education Policy Analysis
The purpose of this special issue is to explain the advantages of using administrative data generated by U.S. states and school districts for research in special education, illustrate their use in special education policy studies, and encourage more such analyses. In this introduction to the special issue, we define and distinguish large administrative data sets, discuss types of special education policy questions that are appropriate for address…
Reframing the Most Important Special Education Policy Debate in 50 Years
For decades, there have been competing visions of how and where to educate students with disabilities (SWDs) in America’s K-12 schools. One conception is that general classrooms can accommodate the learning needs of virtually all children. A second approach calls for multiple placement options. Over the years, the context in which this disagreement has played out has changed as educators have shifted from a reliance on special classes to trust in…
No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Drawing on eight waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey, we used a difference-in-differences research design to examine special education teachers’ (SETs) responses to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the subsequent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA was associated with decreases in the proportion of SETs with special education as a field of study and grad…
Response to Intervention and Specific Learning Disability Identification
Response to intervention (RTI) is a method for providing academic support to students and for identifying specific learning disabilities (SLDs). Using interrupted time series and hazard models, we examined if statewide RTI adoption in the U.S. state of Tennessee was associated with changes in rates of SLD and first-time SLD identification in elementary schools, and if these associations varied across student groups. Response to intervention was a…
Choice, Mobility, and Classification
Growing numbers of students are educated in charter schools, including students with disabilities (SWD). Prior research suggests that charter schools educate a smaller percentage of SWD than traditional public schools, leading to a special education gap between sectors. We used data from a large urban district to examine how choice, mobility, and special education classification influenced the special education gap with descriptive statistics, ga…
The Shifting Context of Special Education Teachers’ Work
We used five waves of nationally representative data over 16 years from the Schools and Staffing Survey, National Teacher Principal Survey, and Teacher Follow-up Survey to descriptively examine how the roles, responsibilities, preparation, and supports for special educators have changed over time. We then used regression to investigate how these variables were associated with special educator attrition. This information is essential to ensure tea…
The ups and downs of reading across content areas
A major component of reading in subject areas is motivation to engage with text in different and specific ways. Yet, scant research captures fluctuations in adolescents’ daily reading motivation in subject areas or across diverse reading activities: important information for supporting discipline-specific reading performance. Thus, this study captures adolescents’ fluctuations in reading motivation within and across classroom environments and exp…
The association between teaching students with disabilities and teacher turnover
More students with disabilities (SWDs) are being educated in general education classrooms than ever before, resulting in higher expectations for the abilities of general education teachers to meet SWDs’ educational needs. Yet few recent, quantitative studies have examined if teaching SWDs influences general education certified or special education certified teachers’ decisions to leave their school. We fit multilevel logistic regression models to…
Policies That Define Instruction
Educational policies addressing instruction may fail to acknowledge that effective instruction is not the same for all learners. We reviewed teacher evaluation systems across all states and the 25 largest districts to determine how states and districts approach the evaluation of special education teachers, a policy aimed at improving teaching effectiveness. We found that most states and districts did not provide guidance to schools for adapting e…
Revisiting The Widget Effect
In 2009, the New Teacher Project’s The Widget Effect documented the failure of U.S. public school districts to recognize and act on differences in teacher effectiveness. We revisit these findings by compiling teacher performance ratings across 24 states that adopted major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. In the vast majority of these states, the percentage of teachers rated unsatisfactory remains less than 1%. However, the full distri…
Revisiting The Widget Effect
In 2009, the New Teacher Project’s The Widget Effect documented the failure of U.S. public school districts to recognize and act on differences in teacher effectiveness. We revisit these findings by compiling teacher performance ratings across 24 states that adopted major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. In the vast majority of these states, the percentage of teachers rated unsatisfactory remains less than 1%. However, the full distri…
Revisiting The Widget Effect
In 2009, the New Teacher Project’s The Widget Effect documented the failure of U.S. public school districts to recognize and act on differences in teacher effectiveness. We revisit these findings by compiling teacher performance ratings across 24 states that adopted major reforms to their teacher evaluation systems. In the vast majority of these states, the percentage of teachers rated unsatisfactory remains less than 1%. However, the full distri…
The ups and downs of reading across content areas
A major component of reading in subject areas is motivation to engage with text in different and specific ways. Yet, scant research captures fluctuations in adolescents’ daily reading motivation in subject areas or across diverse reading activities: important information for supporting discipline-specific reading performance. Thus, this study captures adolescents’ fluctuations in reading motivation within and across classroom environments and exp…
The association between teaching students with disabilities and teacher turnover
More students with disabilities (SWDs) are being educated in general education classrooms than ever before, resulting in higher expectations for the abilities of general education teachers to meet SWDs’ educational needs. Yet few recent, quantitative studies have examined if teaching SWDs influences general education certified or special education certified teachers’ decisions to leave their school. We fit multilevel logistic regression models to…
Policies That Define Instruction
Educational policies addressing instruction may fail to acknowledge that effective instruction is not the same for all learners. We reviewed teacher evaluation systems across all states and the 25 largest districts to determine how states and districts approach the evaluation of special education teachers, a policy aimed at improving teaching effectiveness. We found that most states and districts did not provide guidance to schools for adapting e…
Choice, Mobility, and Classification
Growing numbers of students are educated in charter schools, including students with disabilities (SWD). Prior research suggests that charter schools educate a smaller percentage of SWD than traditional public schools, leading to a special education gap between sectors. We used data from a large urban district to examine how choice, mobility, and special education classification influenced the special education gap with descriptive statistics, ga…
The Shifting Context of Special Education Teachers’ Work
We used five waves of nationally representative data over 16 years from the Schools and Staffing Survey, National Teacher Principal Survey, and Teacher Follow-up Survey to descriptively examine how the roles, responsibilities, preparation, and supports for special educators have changed over time. We then used regression to investigate how these variables were associated with special educator attrition. This information is essential to ensure tea…
No Child Left Behind and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act
Drawing on eight waves of the Schools and Staffing Survey and the National Teacher and Principal Survey, we used a difference-in-differences research design to examine special education teachers’ (SETs) responses to No Child Left Behind (NCLB) and the subsequent reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). IDEA was associated with decreases in the proportion of SETs with special education as a field of study and grad…
Response to Intervention and Specific Learning Disability Identification
Response to intervention (RTI) is a method for providing academic support to students and for identifying specific learning disabilities (SLDs). Using interrupted time series and hazard models, we examined if statewide RTI adoption in the U.S. state of Tennessee was associated with changes in rates of SLD and first-time SLD identification in elementary schools, and if these associations varied across student groups. Response to intervention was a…
Leveraging Administrative Data to Study the Special Education Teacher Workforce
Special educator shortages have threatened the provision of services U.S. to students with disabilities since the passage of the Education for All Handicapped Children Act in 1975, since reauthorized as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. We conducted a systematic review of studies that used administrative data to study the special educator workforce. We identified 12 studies addressing policies or practices related to the compositio…
Examining the Supply of New Special Educators
U.S. schools have long experienced shortages of special education teachers (SETs), challenging the nation’s capacity to ensure qualified SETs for students eligible for special education services. Addressing SET shortages requires preparation programs to supply sufficient numbers of new SETs to meet demand, yet prior research provides few insights into trends in the supply of new SETs. Thus, we examined how the supply of new SETs changed over time…
Leveraging Large Administrative Data for Special Education Policy Analysis
The purpose of this special issue is to explain the advantages of using administrative data generated by U.S. states and school districts for research in special education, illustrate their use in special education policy studies, and encourage more such analyses. In this introduction to the special issue, we define and distinguish large administrative data sets, discuss types of special education policy questions that are appropriate for address…
Reframing the Most Important Special Education Policy Debate in 50 Years
For decades, there have been competing visions of how and where to educate students with disabilities (SWDs) in America’s K-12 schools. One conception is that general classrooms can accommodate the learning needs of virtually all children. A second approach calls for multiple placement options. Over the years, the context in which this disagreement has played out has changed as educators have shifted from a reliance on special classes to trust in…
Psychology (11 works) · Mathematics education (9 works) · Pedagogy (8 works) · Special education (8 works) · Disability Education and Employment (6 works) · Medicine (6 works) · Medical education (5 works) · School Choice and Performance (5 works) · Political science (4 works) · Collaborative Teaching and Inclusion (3 works)