Publications
Bleiberg, J., & Kraft, M., (2022) Changes in the K-12 Education Labor Market During COVID-19: What Jobs Were Lost, Recovered and Why? https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00391
The COVID-19 pandemic upended the U.S. education system in ways that dramatically affected the jobs of K–12 employees. However, there remains considerable uncertainty about the nature and degree of staffing challenges during the pandemic. We draw on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) and State Education Agencies (SEA) to describe patterns in K–12 education employment and to highlight the limitations of available data. Data from the BLS suggest overall employment in the K–12 labor market declined by 9 percent at the onset of the pandemic and remained well below pre-pandemic levels more than two years later. SEA data suggest that teachers did not leave the profession en masse as many predicted, with turnover decreasing in the summer of 2020 and then increasing modestly in 2021 back to pre-pandemic levels. We explore possible explanations for these patterns including weak hiring through the summer of 2020 and high attrition among K–12 instructional support and non-instructional staff. State vacancy data also suggest that schools faced substantial challenges filling open positions during the 2021–22 academic year. Our analyses illustrate the imperative to build nationally representative, detailed, and timely data systems on the K–12 education labor market to better inform policy.
Bleiberg, J., Lyon, M., & Schueler, B., (2022). Estimating the Effect of State Takeover of School Districts on School Funding Equity. Journal of Education Human Resources. https://doi.org/10.3138/jehr-2021-0059
State takeovers of school districts typically involve dramatic changes to the workforce in the targeted school system and are often undertaken for the express purpose of improving a school system’s finances. However, little is known about how takeover affects education spending, particularly the distribution of funds across schools within districts. This has important implications for human resources because inequitable spending exacerbates teacher quality shortages for schools that serve marginalized students. We capitalize on a novel source of school-level education spending data for 2018–2019 to examine how takeover influences overall spending, equality of spending across schools within districts, and race-, ethnicity-, and class-based gaps in spending across schools. We do this for a national sample of 24 districts taken over between 2013 and 2019 matched to a set of untreated comparison districts with a high propensity for takeover. We find that state takeover is associated with higher levels of education spending, and that the greater funding promotes racial and ethnic fiscal equity but does not increase income-based school finance equity. Importantly, average increases in school spending are likely too small to substantially affect educational inequality. Therefore, takeover does not seem to be a sufficient mechanism for meaningfully mitigating within-district finance inequity.
Kraft, M., & Bleiberg, J. (2022). The Inequitable Effects of Teacher Layoffs: What We Know and Can Do. Education Finance and Policy, 17(2), 367-377. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00369
Economic downturns can cause major funding shortfalls for U.S. public schools, often forcing districts to make difficult budget cuts, including teacher layoffs. In this brief, we synthesize the empirical literature on the widespread teacher layoffs caused by the Great Recession. Studies find that teacher layoffs harmed student achievement and were inequitably distributed across schools, teachers, and students. Research suggests that specific elements of the layoff process can exacerbate these negative effects. Seniority-based policies disproportionately concentrate layoffs among teachers of color, who are more likely to be early career teachers. These “last-in first-out” policies also disproportionately affect disadvantaged students because these students are more likely to be taught by early career teachers. The common practice of widely distributing pink slips warning about a potential job loss also appears to increase teacher churn and negatively impacts teacher performance. Drawing on this evidence, we outline a set of policy recommendations to minimize the need for teacher layoffs during economic downturns and ensure that the burden of any unavoidable job cuts does not continue to be borne by students of color and students from low-income backgrounds.
Schueler, B., Bleiberg, J. (2021). A Shock to the System: The Effects of State Takeover of School Districts on Student and Teacher Outcomes. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management. https://doi.org/10.1002/pam.22338
Local school boards have primary authority for running educational systems in the U.S. but little is known empirically about the merits of this arrangement. State takeovers of struggling districts represent a rare alternative form of educational governance and have become an increasingly common response to low performance. However, limited research explores whether this effectively improves student outcomes. We track all takeovers nationwide from the late 1980s, when the first takeovers occurred, through 2016 and describe takeover districts. While these districts are low performing, we find academic performance plays less of a role in predicting takeover for districts serving larger concentrations of African American students. We then use a new data source allowing for cross-state comparisons of student outcomes to estimate the effect of takeovers that occurred between 2011 and 2016. On average, we find no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits. Takeover appears to be disruptive in the early years of takeover, particularly to English Language Arts achievement, although the longer-term effects are less clear. We also observe considerable heterogeneity of effects across districts. Takeovers were least effective in districts with higher baseline achievement and least harmful in majority Latinx communities. Leaders should be cautious about using takeover without considering local context and a better understanding of why some takeovers are more effective than others.
Bleiberg, J. (2021). Does the Common Core Have a Common Effect?: An Exploration of Effects on At-Risk Groups. AERA Open, (7), 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211010727
Policymakers have sought to increase the rigor of content standards since the 1990s. However, the literature examining the effects of reforms to content standards on student outcomes is still developing. This study examines the extent to which the Common Core State Content Standards (CC) affected student achievement and the size of achievement gaps. To identify the effect of CC I compare early implementors of the CC to late implementors of the CC in a Difference-in-Differences framework. I conducted a document analysis to measure preparation for and implementation of the CC standards, which I merge together with the National Assessment of Educational Progress student-level data. I then exploit variation in the timing of state implementation of the CC to identify its effect on students overall and academically vulnerable groups. I find that the CC has a positive effect on math scores in 4th and 8th grade, but not in reading. The CC had a large positive effect on economically advantaged students, but a null effect for economically disadvantaged students. Demanding better results without addressing the structural issues burdening economically disadvantaged students may result in unintended consequences.
Grissom, J. A., Redding, C., & Bleiberg, J. (2019). Money over merit? Socioeconomic gaps in receipt of gifted services. Harvard Educational Review, 89(3), 337-369. https://doi.org/10.17763/1943-5045-89.3.337
We investigate receipt of gifted services by the socioeconomic status (SES) of elementary school students and their families. Using nationally representative longitudinal data, we show that gaps in the receipt of gifted services between the highest- and lowest-SES students are profound; a student in the top SES quintile is more than six times more likely to receive gifted services than a student in the bottom quintile. The SES gap is especially large for White and Asian students. Moreover, the gap remains substantial even after taking students’ achievement levels and other background factors into account and using school fixed effects to account for school sorting. Even among students within the same school, we estimate that a high-SES student is about twice as likely to receive gifted services as an observationally similar low-SES student. We discuss several potential approaches schools and districts can use to ameliorate the apparent advantages students from high-SES families enjoy in processes surrounding receipt of gifted services.
Bleiberg, J. (2019). An exploration of spillover effects: evidence from threat-induced education reform. Journal of Education Policy, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2019.1704065
This study explores spillover effects between national security and education issues. I examine whether the rise of new foreign threats is correlated with education issues rising onto the congressional agenda and with the passage of education laws. To answer this question several data sources on military conflicts and congressional activity from 1947-2015 were combined. I estimate the relationship between changes in deployed troops, the presence of education issues on the congressional agenda, and the passage of education laws. I find that total troop changes were a significant predictor of the passage of education legislation. This relationship is partially mediated by education issues rising onto the congressional agenda. The arrival of a foreign threat appears to create a shock that raises national security issues and subsequently education onto the congressional agenda. These findings help to explain delays to policy maintenance and the focus on short term goals in education reform.
Murphy, J., & Bleiberg, J. (2019). School Turnaround Policies and Practices in the US – Learning from Failed School Reform. Springer International Publishing. doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01434-6
This volume provides an analysis of what we know about turning around “failing” schools in the United States. It starts with an in-depth examination of the barriers that hinder action on turnaround work. The book analyses the reasons why some schools that find themselves in serious academic trouble fail in their efforts to turn themselves around. Beginning with a discussion of what may best be described as “lethal” reasons or the most powerful explanation for failed reform initiatives, which include an absence of attention to student care and support; a near absence of attention to curriculum and instruction; the firing of the wrong people. Covered in this volume are “critical” explanations for failed turnaround efforts such as failure to attend to issues of sustainability, and “significant” explanations for failed turnaround efforts such as the misuse of test data.
Bleiberg, J., & Harbatkin, E. (2018). Teacher evaluation reform: A convergence of federal and local forces. Educational Policy, 34(6), 918-952. doi.org/10.1177/0895904818802105
This article employs event history analysis to explore the factors that were associated with the rapid uptake of teacher evaluation reform. We investigate three hypotheses for this rapid adoption: (a) downward diffusion from the federal government through Race to the Top (RTTT), (b) upward diffusion from large school district policies, and (c) the influence of intermediary organizations. Although RTTT clearly played a role in state adoption, our analysis suggests that having a large district implement teacher evaluation reform is the most consistent predictor of state adoption. Intermediary organizations appeared to play a role in the process as well.
Bleiberg, J., & West, D. (2014). In defense of the Common Core standards. Center for Technology Innovation. Brookings Institution: Washington, DC. Brookings.edu
The Common Core State Standards (CCSS) are under attack from the right and the left. Liberals fear that policy makers will use the standards to punish teachers. Conservatives believe the Common Core is an attempt by the federal government to take over schools. Supporters of the Core have their own bipartisan alliance that argues standards will help eliminate achievement gaps. Standards can increase coordination between diverse sets of stakeholders which aids in school reform. Well implemented education standards increase innovation, simplify the transfer of ideas, and improve personalized learning systems.