PennGSE Faculty Research
The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education partners with schools, universities, and communities to expand educational access – especially for those underserved by society. Through rigorous research and innovative programs, we develop new knowledge, and transformational teachers and leaders in pursuit of educational opportunity..
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Publication Turnover Among Mathematics and Science Teachers in the U.S.(2000-02-01) Ingersoll, RichardFor some time educational policy analysts have been predicting that shortfalls of teachers resulting primarily from increases in student enrollment and teacher retirements will make it very difficult for schools to find qualified teachers and, in turn, will hurt school performance. Moreover, analysts have argued that shortages will be worse for particular fields, such as math and science, because of difficulties in recruiting qualified candidates. This paper summarizes what the best available nationally representative data reveal about the rates of, and reasons for, teacher turnover for both math/science and other teachers. The data show that, contrary to conventional wisdom, the problems schools have adequately staffing classrooms with qualified teachers are not primarily due to teacher shortfalls, stemming from either increases in student enrollment or increases in teacher retirement. Rather, the data show that school staffing difficulties are primarily a result of a "revolving door" where large numbers of teachers depart teaching for other reasons, such as job dissatisfaction and in order to pursue better jobs or other careers. These findings have important implications for educational policy. Teacher recruitment programs - the dominant policy approach to addressing school staffing inadequacies - will not solve the staffing problems of schools, if they do not also address the problem of teacher retention. In short, the data indicate that recruiting more teachers will not solve teacher shortages if large numbers of such teachers then prematurely leave.Publication Teacher Turnover and Teacher Shortages: An Organizational Analysis(2001-09-01) Ingersoll, RichardContemporary educational theory holds that one of the pivotal causes of inadequate school performance is the inability of schools to adequately staff classrooms with qualified teachers. This theory also holds that these school staffing problems are primarily due to shortages of teachers, which, in turn, are primarily due to recent increases in teacher retirements and student enrollments. This analysis investigates the possibility that there are other factors - those tied to the organizational characteristics and conditions of schools - that are driving teacher turnover and, in turn, school staffing problems. The data utilized in this investigation are from the Schools and Staffing Survey and its supplement, the Teacher Followup Survey conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics. The results of the analysis indicate that school staffing problems are not primarily due to teacher shortages, in the technical sense of an insufficient supply of qualified teachers. Rather, the data indicate that school staffing problems are primarily due to excess demand resulting from a "revolving door" - where large numbers of qualified teachers depart their jobs for reasons other than retirement. Moreover, the data show that the amount of turnover accounted for by retirement is relatively minor when compared to that associated with other factors, such as teacher job dissatisfaction and teachers pursuing other jobs. The article concludes that popular education initiatives, such as teacher recruitment programs, will not solve the staffing problems of such schools if they do not also address the organizational sources of low teacher retention.Publication Holding Schools Accountable: Is It Working?(2001-09-01) Elmore, Richard F.; Fuhrman, Susan H.The authors share findings from a body of research on emerging accountability systems conducted by the Consortium for Policy Research in Education.Publication Redefining Government Roles In an Era of Standards-Based Reform(2001-09-01) Goertz, Margaret E.States and districts have embraced the goals of standards-based reform, but they have interpreted the rather broad objectives in their own unique ways. Merely setting the mark may not be enough to ensure adequate progress in our nation’s schools, Ms. Goertz warns.Publication The District Role in Instructional Improvement(2001-09-01) Corcoran, Thomas B.; Fuhrman, Susan H.; Belcher, Catherine L.Are changing conditions affecting the capacity of districts to provide focus, to coordinate support, and to scale up successful reforms? From a study of the roles played by central office staff members in shaping and supporting instructional reforms in three large urban districts, the authors derive an answer.Publication Household food insecurity and early childhood development: Longitudinal evidence from Ghana(2020-04-03) Aurino, Elisabetta; Wolf, Sharon; Tsinigo, EdwardThe burden of food insecurity is large in Sub-Saharan Africa, yet the evidence-base on the relation between household food insecurity and early child development is extremely limited. Furthermore, available research mostly relies on cross-sectional data, limiting the quality of existing evidence. We use longitudinal data on preschool-aged children and their households in Ghana to investigate how being in a food insecure household was associated with early child development outcomes across three years. Household food insecurity was measured over three years using the Household Hunger Score. Households were first classified as “ever food insecure” if they were food insecure at any round. We also assessed persistence of household food insecurity by classifying households into three categories: (i) never food insecure; (ii) transitory food insecurity, if the household was food insecure only in one wave; and (iii) persistent food insecurity, if the household was food insecure in two or all waves. Child development was assessed across literacy, numeracy, social-emotional, short-term memory, and self-regulation domains. Controlling for baseline values of each respective outcome and child and household characteristics, children from ever food insecure households had lower literacy, numeracy and short-term memory. When we distinguished between transitory and persistent food insecurity, transitory spells of food insecurity predicted decreased numeracy (β = -0.176, 95% CI: -0.317; -0.035), short-term memory (β = -0.237, 95% CI: -0.382; -0.092), and self-regulation (β = -0.154, 95% CI: -0.326; 0.017) compared with children from never food insecure households. By contrast, children residing in persistently food insecure households had lower literacy scores (β = -0.243, 95% CI: -0.496; 0.009). No gender differences were detected. Results were broadly robust to the inclusion of additional controls. This novel evidence from a Sub-Saharan African country highlights the need for multi-sectoral approaches including social protection and nutrition to support early child development.Publication Are Private Kindergartens Really Better? Examining Preschool Choices, Parental Resources, and Children’s School Readiness in Ghana(2020-01-16) Pesando, Luca; Wolf, Sharon; Behrman, Jere H.; Tsinigo, EdwardLow-cost private schools are expanding across sub-Saharan Africa and are often perceived by parents to be of better quality than public schools. This article assesses the interplay between kindergarten (or preschool) choice, household resources, and children’s school readiness in Ghana. We examine how child, household, and school characteristics predict private versus public kindergarten attendance and whether household characteristics are associated with school readiness beyond preschool selection. Using a geospatial-identification strategy to account for observed and unobserved determinants of preschool choice, we find that parental investments—including number of books at home and caregiver help with homework—predict both private-preschool selection and start-of-year child outcomes beyond their influence on preschool choice. We take this evidence as suggesting that investments in children support learning beyond simply selecting the presumed best preschool type. We also find independent associations between attending private preschool and one-year changes in early literacy scores. The findings contribute knowledge to the literature on the recent expansion of preschool education in sub-Saharan Africa and globally and shed new light on the role of private-preschool attendance in early academic skill development.Publication Changing trajectories of learning and development: experimental evidence from the Quality Preschool for Ghana interventions(2020-03-25) Wolf, Sharon; Peele, MorganWe examined how exposure to two intervention programmes designed to improve the quality of pre-primary education in Ghana—the Quality Preschool for Ghana project—impacted children’s rate of growth in academic (literacy and numeracy) and non-academic skills (social–emotional and executive function) across two school years. This cluster-randomised trial included 240 schools (N = 3,345 children, Mage = 5.2 at baseline) randomly assigned to one of three conditions: teacher training (TT), teacher training plus parental-awareness meetings (TTPA), and control. We found some evidence that the interventions altered children’s rate of growth in academic and non-academic skills for the full sample, and one unexpected finding: TTPA had negative impacts on growth in numeracy skills. When examined by grade level and gender, TT improved trajectories of younger children, and the negative effects of TTPA on numeracy were driven by boys. Implications are discussed in the context of global early childhood education policy, and teacher professional development and parental engagement programmes.Publication Year 3 Follow-up of the ‘Quality Preschool for Ghana’ Interventions on Child Development(2019-10-28) Wolf, SharonGovernments around the world are increasing investments in early childhood education as a way to promote children’s learning and development. As research grows on the longer-term effects of early educational programs, some have hypothesized that sustained impacts may depend on the quality of children’s subsequent classroom environments and may be more likely to occur in certain nonacademic domains. This study is the first to examine these questions in sub-Saharan Africa, using longitudinal data from a school-randomized trial in Ghana. A 1-year teacher-training and coaching program, delivered with (TTPA) and without (TT) parental-awareness meetings, was implemented when children were enrolled in 1 of 2 grades of preprimary school. Previous studies showed that in Year 1, the implementation year, the TT treatment had positive impacts on children’s literacy, numeracy, and social-emotional development, while the TTPA treatment yielded no positive impacts for children in both grades. In this study, I examine impacts in Year 3, at the end of children’s 1st or 2nd year of primary school. I find persistent positive impacts of TT on literacy, and new negative impacts of TTPA on numeracy, but these depend on levels of classroom emotional support and teacher burnout in primary school. In addition, there were small persistent impacts of both treatments on children’s executive function, and these were not conditional on subsequent classroom environments.Publication Measuring and predicting process quality in Ghanaian pre-primary classrooms using the Teacher Instructional Practices and Processes System (TIPPS)(2018-06-28) Wolf, Sharon; Raza, Mahjabeen; Kim, Sharon; Aber, J. Lawrence; Behrman, Jere R; Seidman, EdwardIn recent years, there has been an increase in the demand for and supply of early childhood education (ECE) in low- and middle-income countries. There is also growing awareness that unless ECE is of high quality, children may attend school but not learn. There is a large literature on the conceptualization and measurement of ECE quality in the United States that focuses on the nature of teacher-child interactions. Efforts to expand access to high quality ECE in low- and middle-income countries will require similar measurement efforts that are theoretically-grounded and culturally-adapted. This paper assesses the factor structure and concurrent validity of an observational classroom quality tool to assess teacher-child interactions—the Teacher Instructional Practices and Processes System© (TIPPS; Author, 2013b; 2017)—in Ghanaian pre-primary classrooms. We find evidence of three conceptually distinct, but empirically correlated, domains of quality: Facilitating Deeper Learning (FDL), Supporting Student Expression (SSE), and Emotional Support and Behavior Management (ESBM). Teachers’ schooling level, training in early childhood development, and professional well-being positively predict the three quality domains in different ways. SSE and ESBM predict classroom end-of-the-school-year academic outcomes, and SSE predicts classroom end-of-the-school-year social-emotional outcomes. Implications for the field of international education and global ECE policy and research are discussed.