Thread by @MatthewAKraft

New @AnnenbergInst WP

🎆Second Time’s the Charm? How Sustained Relationships from Repeat Student-Teacher Matches Build Academic & Behavioral Skills🎇

We show the potential of leveraging class assignment policies such as #looping to support students

edworkingpapers.com/ai22-590

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We often pay little attention to the dynamics of how schools assign teachers & students to classes. However, these decisions matter on multiple levels because relationships are at the core of education.

Our study unpacks the multidimensional effects of having a teacher twice.
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Having a repeat teacher is more common than we might think.

In TN, the context of our study, we find that 44% of students in grades 3-11 were taught by a teacher more than once during our eight year panel.

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The vast majority of repeat student-teacher matches appear unintentional rather than formal policies such as looping teachers w/ entire classes across multiple grades.

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Elementary school students often have the same teacher twice when a teacher makes a permanent change to a higher grade.

Secondary school students have repeat teachers primarily because MS and HS teachers teach classes across multiple grades.

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Understanding the effects of having the same teacher multiple times is critical b/c:

1) It is happening now, largely unintentionally

2) Intentional looping has been proposed as a potential approach to better support students in the wake of COVID-19

kqed.org/mindshift/5627…

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This presents a challenge because student & teacher assignments are not random. We leverage panel data methods to isolate plausibly exogenous variation in exposure to repeat teachers using a range of high-dimensional fixed effects & complement these w/ sorting tests.

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We find that repeat teachers increase students’ test scores across all grade levels. Effects on tests scores are 0.02 (SD), equivalent to a 0.10/0.15 SD improvement in the distribution of teacher quality.

This is relatively small, but encouraging given the minimal $ costs.

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We also find that these repeat interactions decrease absences and disciplinary infractions for students across grade levels.

Absences ⬇️ by 0.5% overall
Suspensions ⬇️ by 1 percentage point (a 10% reduction)

Again, not large but certainly consequential.

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We also find substantial heterogeneity in the effect of repeat teachers.

Test score gains are most pronounced among higher-performing & white female students, while gains in attendance and discipline are largest for lower-performing students and male students of color.

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Our results may even **understate** the potential benefits of intentional looping. We find evidence that the effects of having a repeat teacher are larger when there are more students in a class who have the teacher for a second time - consistent with positive peer effects.

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Looping is not costless. It requires teachers to master new pedagogical content & skills.

Teachers gain grade-specific skills w/ experience @david_blazar

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.310…

Within school churn can have negative effects @AcmAtteberry

journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.31…

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But the benefits we find suggest there are also important returns to increased experience working w/ the same students.

Repeat students & teachers have more time to get to know each other’s teaching styles & learning needs, as well as to develop stronger relationships.

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There is now evidence from TN as well IN (@nayoung_edu @BrianKisida Koedel), NC (Hill @daniel_b_jones), and even Chile (Albornoz, Contreras & Upward) suggesting that the positive returns to additional teaching experience w/ the same students is a widely generalizable pattern.
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This paper by @LeighWedenoja, John Papay (@BrownEduDept) and me has been a long time in the making, and we are thrilled to share this updated version.

Comments welcome!

rockinst.org/blog/teacher-l…

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Postscript on #looping. Nice @educationweek piece on the pros and cons teachers have experienced with looping.

Teachers - I'd love to hear your perspectives.

➡️What do you need to make looping work well?

edweek.org/teaching-learn…