Weston Et Al A Culture of Improvement

Working paper: A culture of improvement
Reviewing the research on teacher working conditions

David W eston
Bethan H indley
Maria C
unningham
February 2021

Weston, Hindley & Cunningham (2021), A culture of improvement - working paper
Contents
Contents 2
Executive Summary 3
A Culture of Improvement 4
Introduction 4
Approach 5
Key findings 6
Guiding Principles & Conclusions 14
Appendix - The research in detail 15

Methodology 15
Key papers 16
Working condition studies 16
School Leadership Reviews 23
Teacher assignment and partnering research 28
School Turnaround Literature 34
Working conditions and teacher retention 35
Some other relevant papers 37
References 42

Please note: this is currently a working paper and we are inviting your
feedback while we refine and improve it.

This is a Teacher Development Trust working paper. That is, it is currently a work in progress,
offered on this site by the authors, in the interests of scholarship. Working Papers are not
refereed.

We are very grateful to a number of colleagues for their advice and critique, including Rob
Coe (Evidence Based Education), Matthew Kraft (Brown University), Emily Perry (Sheffield
Hallam University), Cat Scutt (Chartered College of Teaching) and Sam Sims (UCL Institute of
Education).

This originated as a discussion paper for the event ‘School Improvement Through
Professional Development’ hosted by the Teacher Development Trust for The Wellcome
Trust in November 2020. While funding from Wellcome has made it possible, it does not
necessarily reflect Wellcome’s views or position.

Suggested citation: Weston, D., Hindley, B., & Cunningham, M. (2021). A culture of improvement:
reviewing the research on teacher working conditions. Working paper version 1.1, February 2021.
Teacher Development Trust.
2
Executive Summary
Most existing reviews of professional development literature focus on the content and
process of teacher development. They also tend to draw upon experimental studies based on
large interventions. This potentially neglects important findings about how or whether
teachers’ working conditions affect teachers’ improvement, measured in terms of impact
upon students’ academic attainment, over time.

We reviewed 30 papers on teacher working conditions and school leadership in order to
explore the impact of teacher working conditions on student attainment. We find evidence
that:

● The quality of teachers’ working conditions has a clear, consistent relationship with
student attainment that tentatively suggests a causal impact;
● The role of the school leader in fostering these conditions appears to be crucial;
● There are five aspects of teachers’ working conditions that appear most closely
associated with increased student attainment:
○ Creating opportunities for effective teacher collaboration to explore student
data, plan and review lessons and curricula, and plan and moderate
assessments,
○ Involving teachers in whole school planning, decision-making and
improvement,
○ Creating a culture of mutual trust, respect, enthusiasm in which
communication is open and honest,
○ Build a sense of shared mission, with shared goals, clear priorities and high
expectations of professional behaviours and of students’ learning, and
○ Facilitating classroom safety and behaviour, where disruption and bullying are
very rare and teachers feel strongly supported by senior leaders in their efforts
to maintain this classroom environment.
● Allocating teachers to the certain partners, mentors, subjects and classes and keeping
this stable over time is associated with a positive impact on student attainment;
● The same working conditions appear to be associated with successful, sustainable
school turnaround...
● … and with successful retention of teachers in the profession…
● … and with successfully navigating the complexities and uncertainties of COVID-19.

We also identified four guiding principles for training leaders around the required skills, the
necessity to focus on use of time including meetings, the importance of mentoring and
coaching and the importance of an open and communicative culture.

3
A Culture of Improvement
Introduction
The research behind improving teachers is often focused on processes and structures: what
types of courses should be delivered, how are they presented, what follow-up is required
and how do the experts or facilitators work with the teachers to embed the ideas?

However, as any professional will know, learning does not only happen in formal training or
in structured processes. A lot of learning happens informally and through collaboration. The
amount of learning that takes place depends significantly on the teacher’s working
conditions - the organisational team culture, the approach to leadership, the types of
collaboration, the effectiveness of communication, the sharing (or not) of goals and values. In
this paper, whilst there is much debate about terminology elsewhere, no distinctions are
drawn between “teacher professional development” or “teacher learning” (or indeed any
other common term), as we recognise the ways in which teachers improve are complex and
not always attributed to specific events or processes.

In this paper we demonstrate that the context or conditions for professional development are
at least as important to consider as the content and process. To put it another way, it is not
enough to consider what teachers need to learn. We need to make schools places where
teachers thrive and grow so that children can succeed.

Multiple teams of researchers have made significant efforts to summarise the research on
the process and content of teacher professional development. In general, these papers
review evidence from randomised controlled trials, exploring common characteristics from
medium and large scale professional development interventions.

However, these reviews tend to put less emphasis on the many studies that now exist that
explore how teachers’ reports of their working conditions relate to their professional growth
and ability to raise student outcomes.

In this paper we attempt to find, review and summarise findings from some of the major
studies in this space. This is not intended to be exhaustive nor systematic, but rather a
scoping review which could serve to lay the groundwork for a future more systematic review.
We look in particular depth at fourteen studies of teacher working conditions - twelve from
the USA, one from Australia and one from a range of International Schools across Cambodia,
Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand & Vietnam - which use survey data to identify what is
happening in teachers’ professional environments and how this correlates with student
achievement. Some papers look across multiple years and are able to get closer to causal
conclusions, while others are briefer snapshots that can only find correlations.

4
We also review some additional experimental and observational evidence on teacher
allocation as well as a number of reviews of literature on school leadership, school
turnaround, collaboration, self-efficacy and response to COVID-19.

Approach
A systematic literature search was not viable with the time and capacity available. Instead,
we used experts in the field to highlight relevant and high-quality studies and reviews and
then sought additional relevant papers in the references of these studies.

For our initial working definition of teacher working conditions we began with the six elements
identified by Kraft & Papay (2014) and looked for studies where some or all of these same
elements appeared.

In particular, we sought studies and reviews that compared large-scale data of these teacher
working conditions (primarily through survey data and in some cases with additional
observations) to either school growth (variation in student test scores at school level or
change in these levels over time) or student attainment (matching individual teacher survey
data to their students’ test data, either exploring variation among these or change over time).
We found fourteen studies that matched this definition.

We then looked across all fourteen studies for commonly identified elements of teacher
working conditions, seeking both full and partial matches.

We supplemented this by exploring recent reviews of how teacher working conditions impact
teacher morale, how school leadership impacts student attainment and, following expert
advice, how teacher allocation to classes, subjects and peers impacts student attainment.

5
Key findings
There are some important findings from the reviews and studies that we summarise here.

One: t he quality of teachers’ working conditions is strongly
associated with student attainment and there are tentative signs
of a causal link. We find a consistent, statistically significant link
between teachers’ working conditions and student attainment. Five
core aspects of this are explored in more depth in Finding Three.

One study (Kraft & Papay, 2014) suggests that working conditions are
associated with the difference between teachers plateauing in
effectiveness or improving continually.

“On average, teachers working in schools at the 75th percentile of professional
environment ratings improved 38% more than teachers in schools at the 25th percentile
after ten years”

These studies mainly focus on English/reading and/or mathematics as these are the most
commonly assessed at state or national level. However some studies do cross other subjects.
For example, Eells’ (2011) meta-analysis of the impact of teacher collective efficacy found
similar associations across maths, reading, writing, science and social studies.

The studies consistently show a positive correlation between working conditions and
students’ academic outcomes and this is consistent across years and areas.

Three of the studies come closer to finding causality:

● Helal & Coeli (2016) find an “important and large causal effect of individual principals on
student achievement” a nd “that principals have a significant impact on a range of factors
related to teaching and professional collaboration. Our estimates imply that principals
who effectively raise student achievement are those who enhance their teaching staff’s
sense of goal congruence as well as their level of professional interaction and professional
growth”;

● Kraft & Papay (2014) find that “teachers working in more supportive professional
environments improve their effectiveness more over time than teachers working in less
supportive contexts”. They confirm that “a prior measure of the work environment
predicts large and statistically significant differential returns to experience in future years”
and find no evidence that the teacher growth causes the improvement in
environment, although they stop short of claiming direct causality the other way;

● Sebastian, Allensworth & Huang (2016) find that “Fostering a strong school climate
through teacher leadership appears to be the key mediating mechanism through which
leadership is related to student achievement, and a second mediating process through
which elementary school principals influence student achievement is through the quality
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and coherence of programs offered in the school—professional development, curriculum,

and instruction” although “A final limitation is that these analyses do not allow for strong
causal inference. This analysis has provided insight into the strongest paths through which
principals are likely to influence instruction and student achievement; these could
subsequently inform the structure of training programs for leadership development.
However, it does not provide evidence that principals will be more effective if they receive
such training”

The challenge in finding definitive causality in this field is that there is no reliable, controlled
way of ‘switching on and off’ either aspects of the working conditions or the way that leaders
lead.

The claim we make in this paper is therefore that there is a consistent and robust association
between teachers’ working conditions and student attainment, as well as emerging evidence
that leaders who successfully take action to improve these conditions have a causal impact
upon student attainment.

To ignore this vital aspect of school leadership as a core mechanism through which schools
and teachers improve until we have stronger experimental proof would seem to be illogical
and counterproductive.

Two: t he extent to which leaders actively foster these working
conditions is associated with school improvement. Liebowitz and
Porter’s major 2019 systematic review of 42 high quality studies of
school leadership concluded that there is

“direct evidence of the relationship between principal behaviors and
student achievement (0.09-0.17 standard deviations), teacher
well-being (0.34 SD), teacher instructional practices (0.34 SD), and
school organizational health (0.69 SD)”

Helal and Coelli’s decade-long study of 1500 schools in Victoria (2016), Australia found that
four aspects of principals’ leadership of working conditions were associated with student
attainment, including fostering and communicating shared goals, professional development,
and (more tentatively) building morale and creating effective teacher collaboration.

Johnson, Kraft and Papay (2012) find that:

“providing a supportive context in which teachers can work appears to contribute to
improved student achievement”

Sebastian, Allensworth and Huang (2016) find that:

“in elementary schools, principals’ influence on school climate comes almost entirely
through teacher influence in decision making. The results [...] suggest that empowering
teachers to wield greater influence over school policy matters concerning the school
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learning climate may be the most effective strategy for school principals to improve
student achievement”

While Grissom, Loeb and Master (2011) nuance this finding by suggesting that it is not
necessarily the time that is spent, but upon what and how it is perceived that is important.
For example, when it comes to walkthroughs, or learning walks:

“In schools where walkthroughs are not viewed as professional development, walkthroughs
are particularly negative; while in schools where they are viewed as professional
development, coaching is particularly positive. In other words, different use of
walkthroughs seems to be associated with different results”

Three: t here are some core aspects of teachers’ working
conditions that seem to be most clearly associated with
improving student attainment.

Across the studies these aspects vary and different aspects appear
statistically significant in some studies, but not others. However,
looking across the studies, the common emerging aspects of teachers’
working conditions that are associated with improved student attainment appear to be:
1. Creating opportunities for effective teacher collaboration to explore student data,
plan and review lessons and curricula, and plan and moderate assessments,
2. Involving teachers in whole school planning, decision-making and improvement,
3. Creating a culture of mutual trust, respect, enthusiasm in which communication is
open and honest,
4. Building a sense of shared mission, with shared goals, clear priorities and high
expectations of professional behaviours and of students’ learning,
5. Facilitating classroom safety and behaviour, where disruption and bullying are very
rare and teachers feel strongly supported by senior leaders in their efforts to
maintain this classroom environment.

Aspect of teacher working conditions
Study 1 2 3 4 5
Burns et al (2017) (✔) (✔)
Goddard et al (2015) ✔ (✔) (✔) (✔)
Grissom, Loeb & Master (2011)1
Helal & Coelli (2016) (✔) ✔ ✔ ✔ (✔)
Hoy et al (1998) (✔) (✔)
Johnson, Kraft & Papay (2012) (✔) ✔ (✔)
Kraft & Papay (2014) (✔) (✔) (✔) ✔
Kraft, Marinell & Yee (2016) (✔) ✔ ✔
8
Ladd (2011)2 (⚪)1 (⚪) (⚪) (✔)
Lee & Louis (2019) (✔) ✔
Lee, Walker & Bryant (2019) ⚪ ⚪
Ronfeldt et al (2015) ✔ (✔)
Sebastian, Allensworth & Huang (✔) (✔) (✔) (✔)

(2016)
TNTP (2012) (✔) (✔)

Key:
✔ - this aspect is specifically shown to have a positive correlation with student attainment or school growth
(✔) - this aspect emerges as part of a wider construct that is shown to have a positive correlation with student
attainment or school growth
<blank> - this aspect is not mentioned
⚪ - this aspect is specifically shown to have no statistically significant correlation with student attainment or
school growth
(⚪) - this aspect emerges as part of a wider construct that is shown to have no statistically significant correlation
with student attainment or school growth
✖ - this aspect is specifically shown to have a statistically significant negative correlation with student attainment
or school growth
(✖) - this aspect emerges as part of a wider construct that is shown to have a negative correlation with student
attainment or school growth

Notes:
1. Grissom et al (2011) find the only standalone statistically significant aspects of working conditions to be
the negative impact of ‘classroom walkthroughs’ (albeit positive, where seen as developmental) and
positive impacts of principal time spent on ‘teacher evaluation’ and ‘developing the educational program’
- i.e. no real overlap with other studies.
2. Ladd (2011) includes general teacher collaboration under ‘empowerment’ which has no statistically
significant relationship with student attainment. However time on planning, including collaborative
planning, is statistically significantly related.

Despite identifying some statistically significant relationships, it remains generally true that
pulling out individual characteristics of the working conditions is somewhat fraught in these
types of studies:
● In some cases an element (such as provision of professional development
opportunities) may be a statistically contributory factor to an overall measure of
working condition, but may not, by itself, be statistically significantly related to
attainment.
● In other cases, researchers ‘bunch together’ a larger number of survey responses to a
much broader concept in which so many items contribute, it becomes hard to pick
out individual elements.
● This is particularly challenging around the concept of ‘professional development’ (PD)
where, for example, Ladd (2011) identifies external PD as part of components that she
finds correlated negatively with student attainment, however this is combined with
elements such as funding for PD and access to technology PD. In other studies,
researchers are not always clear on their specific definition of PD; are teachers
including learning from each other through collaboration or only thinking about
external training when they answer the survey questions?
● Researchers take different approaches, combining ideas in different ways. For
example, in two papers the concepts of behaviour and discipline are explicitly
separated out (Kraft & Papay, 2014 and Kraft et al, 2016) but in other papers they are
9
combined with different ideas (e.g. Ronfeldt et al 2015 includes collaboration around
improving student discipline as part of a wider collaboration around students concept)

The challenges can be seen in the table above, with most matches between the definitions of
our five elements being only partial with different papers’ definitions of concepts.

Nevertheless, the ubiquity of certain concepts, not only in the 14 working conditions studies
but also appearing in other key leadership and teacher retention literature, suggests that
these are highly plausibly important areas for leaders and policymakers to explore, even if
they are hard to disentangle.

Four, t he allocation of teachers to teams, classes and subjects and
the provision of experienced and effective colleagues appears to
be another crucial working condition associated with improved
student attainment.

Four papers independently find evidence that students’ learning
improves while their teacher is paired with a more effective colleague
with whom they have opportunities to work together and give/receive
feedback. This appears to be consistent with the finding from Kraft, Blazar and Hogan’s 2018
review into instructional (or sometimes known as ‘pedagogical’)
coaching where pairing teachers to work together in a coaching
relationship with chances for observation and feedback appears
beneficial, as well as other activities such as co-planning.

The effect is substantial. Jackson and Bruegmann (2009) note that
“for both math and reading, the quality of a teacher’s peers the year
before, and even two years before, affect her current students’
achievement. For both subjects, the importance of a teacher’s
previous peers is as great as, or greater than, that of her current peers.”

Furthermore, Kini et al’s 2016 review suggests that teachers also accumulate effectiveness if
allowed to spend multiple years working on similar topics/subjects and year-groups.

The major implication of this finding is that consideration of teachers’ working conditions
needs to include thinking about the way in which teachers are allocated to teams, to classes
and to subjects.

Five: teachers’ working conditions appear to be associated with
turnaround of less successful schools.

Two reviews of school turnaround identify that successful school
improvement is associated with a culture that focuses on teacher
development. For example, Meyers & Hitt (2017) note that:

“Not only do turnaround principals ensure that professional-development opportunities
are available (Jacobson et al., 2007), they strategically ensure them through establishing
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common planning periods, providing professional-development or additional release time,

and disseminating research materials to staff, as necessary (Aladjem et al., 2010).”

And that

“In another turnaround initiative, the principal had worked tirelessly to build a culture of
high-powered professional growth in which administrator and teacher leadership growth
were assumed to such an extent that the loss of numerous staff members to leadership
openings in other schools was assumed. The school’s distributed leadership structure
anticipated turnover and continued to build the strengths and improve the weaknesses of
administrators and teachers to consistently generate new leaders within the school to take
the place of those exiting. This had the additional benefit of creating new belief within the
school that people cared about advancement and growth of adults, which increasingly
became visible to students.”

While Le Floch (2015) notes that:

“Research also suggests that principals influence teacher working conditions, which often
contribute greatly to teacher retention or churn. By virtue of their position, principals’
practice can directly influence school conditions, teacher quality and placement, and
instructional quality (Clifford, Behrstock-Sherratt, & Fetters, 2012). Positive teacher working
conditions include fostering a collegial and trusting, team-based, and supportive school
culture; promoting ethical behavior; encouraging data use; and creating strong lines of
communication.”

Overall, the literature on school turnaround aligns very closely with the previous literature on
more general teacher working conditions and leadership, identifying that elements such as
culture, collegiality, shared goals and classroom behaviour are associated with improvement
in such schools.

Six: teacher working conditions appear to play a major role in
retaining teachers.

Working conditions are seen to be strongly associated with
teachers’ decisions to stay in, or leave a school, and even the
profession. Podolsky et al (2019) find that working conditions
impact on teachers’ decisions to stay in a school:

“Research has long shown that teachers’ working conditions affect their ability to teach
well. At least four interdependent factors consistently rise to the top as among the most
important teaching and learning conditions for teachers and most highly related to their
decisions to remain teaching in a given school:
● (1) school leadership and administrative support;
● (2) opportunities for professional collaboration and shared decision-making;
● (3) high-stakes accountability systems; and
● (4) resources for teaching and learning”

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In a large study of schools in England, Sims & Jerrim (2020) find that:

“Teachers who report higher Leadership/Management scores for their school also tend to have
higher retention. For an experienced teacher with otherwise average characteristics, a one
standard deviation increase in the Leadership/Management score is associated with a reduction in
the probability of leaving the school by the next academic year from 4.1% to 2.3% and a reduction
in the probability of leaving the profession altogether from 1% to 0.5%”

In a separate review, Nguyen et al (2019) find that working conditions can impact retention in
the profession more widely:

“various measures of school characteristics as an organization, namely student disciplinary
problems, administrative support, and professional development, strongly influence
whether teachers stay or leave teaching.”

These same conditions that have been shown to be positively associated with student
attainment are also, therefore, crucial in cultivating workplaces where teachers not only
improve, but also stay.

Seven: t he quality of teacher working conditions of schools is
associated with how successfully schools have been responding
to COVID-19 closures, remote-schooling and moving to online
teaching.

The ability to collaborate with colleagues seems crucial to enable
teachers and leaders to respond and adapt rapidly to the new,
stressful and unpredictable challenges of the pandemic. A sufficient sense of shared mission
and understanding, effective approaches to team-work and sufficient opportunities to learn
with and from colleagues, have been important during these difficult times.

As Kraft et al (2020) note:

“Although teachers in every career phase, life stage, geographic region, and school-type
were challenged by the transition to emergency remote teaching, hardships differed in type
and in magnitude. Consistent with prior research, however, our findings highlight the
critical importance of school organizational practices to teachers’ work. A schools’ working
conditions during the pandemic mattered greatly for sustaining teachers’ sense of success.
We find that teachers who could depend on strong communication, fair expectations, and
a recognition of effort from the top, along with targeted professional development and
facilitated, meaningful collaboration with colleagues, were least likely to experience a dip
in their sense of success.”

Final Thoughts

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It is worth reflecting on a few cautions and caveats. Twelve of the key papers are from the
USA, one from Australia and one from a range of International Schools across Cambodia,
Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand & Vietnam. There are very few papers on the working
conditions of teachers which originate in England although Sims & Jerrim (2020) do find
relationships between working conditions and both retention and morale in England.

While we did not attempt to conduct a full systematic search, we searched a number of
related reviews and consulted some key academics for further recommendations of papers
in this field. It is possible that there are significant and yet relatively unknown papers that
show different findings to those shown here.

While we have pulled out the statistically significant positive findings from these papers,
there are other papers in which the same aspect of teachers’ working conditions are not
found to have a statistically significant impact on student attainment. Only a full
meta-analysis of the original data from all of the papers could effectively attempt to pull
together these findings in a meaningful way and that is beyond the scope of this scoping
review. In addition, there may be concerns about common source bias - a number of studies
using similar datasets or similar survey instruments. There are disagreements about the
significance of this issue, for example between Favero & Bullock (2014) and George & Pandey
(2017).

Also, while there are headline similarities across studies, definitions of terms such as
interpersonal trust, collaboration, professional development and collective efficacy may vary
from study to study, with underlying survey items differing. Therefore, while we can identify
trends and commonalities across papers, we cannot always be sure that the underlying
concepts are defined in exactly the same way.

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Guiding Principles & Conclusions

There is now a significant research base that we interpret to say that we need to not only
think about the content and process of teacher development and put far greater effort
into creating supportive professional environments for teachers.

This leads us to suggest a number of guiding principles for the way that we train school
leaders for our schools and our system.

1. Leadership matters: fostering school leaders’ knowledge and skill in developing
others will be vital to future efforts for school and system improvement. As Liebowitz
& Porter (2019) note, this is not about narrowing down school leaders’ roles to one of
only ‘instructional leadership’ but about ensuring that all efforts are aligned to
produce the most effective collaboration, teamwork and learning for adults alongside
well-communicated, shared and aligned goals. This also requires the creation of
between- and cross-school networks through which schools share and discuss the art,
craft and science of people development.

2. Time matters: ensuring that we think much more creatively about staff timetables
and work demands so that there is significantly more safeguarded time available for
the highest quality team dialogue, planning and reflection. This involves reflecting on
how we can improve the quality of every in-service training day, every staff and team
meeting, every one-to-one meeting, every coaching session, while removing
competing pressures and managing workload. The Wellcome Trust’s CPD Challenge
project has demonstrated that every school in England is capable of ensuring at least
35 hours of the highest quality professional development time per teacher per year,
and in many cases this can be significantly higher.

3. Mentoring and coaching matter: ensuring that every teacher has the opportunity to
work with a skilled coach and a more effective practitioner, and later to progress to
take on these roles. This involves a significant investment in the skills and knowledge
of pedagogical (or instructional) coaching as well as ensuring that staff timetables and
structures allow for paired discussion and peer observation.

4. Culture and communication matter: ensuring that every school leader has the
skills, knowledge and disposition to foster a culture where the highest quality
conversation happens, where colleagues trust and respect each other, where difficult
issues are aired and resolved, where every voice is valued and heard and where staff
feel safe, supported and engaged.

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Appendix - The research in detail
Methodology
A systematic literature search was not viable with the time and capacity available. Instead,
we used our own knowledge of the literature in the field along with that of key experts to
highlight relevant and high-quality studies and reviews and then sought additional relevant
papers in the references of these studies.

For our initial working definition of teacher working conditions we began with the six elements
identified by Kraft & Papay (2014) and looked for studies where some or all of these same
elements appeared, expanding the definition where several other studies identified a
common element not shown in Kraft & Papay (2014).

In particular, we sought studies and reviews that compared large-scale data of these teacher
working conditions (primarily through survey data and in some cases with additional
observations) to either school growth (variation in student test scores at school level or
change in these levels over time) or student attainment (matching individual teacher survey
data to their students’ test data, either exploring variation among these or change over time).
We found fourteen studies that matched this definition. Aside from these conditions, we did
not delve into the detailed methodology of each paper to evaluate its quality. Most core
studies, apart from Helal & Coelli (2016), were found to be cited frequently in a number of
other peer reviewed papers, albeit this could be because the great majority of the rest of the
literature was from the USA while Helal & Coelli (2016) is from Australia and Lee, Walker and
Bryan (2019) was from a group of International Schools in East Asia.

We then looked across all fourteen studies for commonly identified elements of teacher
working conditions, seeking both full and partial matches.

We supplemented this by exploring recent reviews of how teacher working conditions impact
teacher morale, of how school leadership impacts student attainment and, following expert
advice, how teacher allocation to classes, subjects and peers impacts student attainment.

15
Key papers
We summarise key findings from the papers that form the basis of this review.
Working condition studies

Helal, Mike & Coelli, Michael , 2016. "How Principals Affect Schools," Melbourne Institute
Working Paper Series wp2016n18, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social
Research, The University of Melbourne
● Approach: Using data from staff surveys and principal employment data
between 1997 and 2007 across 1500 schools in Victoria, Australia, and
exploring the impact on mathematics and reading scores of school principals
and what they were perceived to be doing by staff.
● Results: Two aspects of Principal leadership had a strongly statistically
significant (p < 0.01) and causal impact on both mathematics and reading
scores. These were:
○ a) Goal congruence - the extent to which teachers felt personally
aligned & committed to the school’s values and that the goals were
easily understandable and clear.
○ b) Professional growth - the extent to which teachers felt encouraged to
pursue development & new skills and had access to the training to
achieve it, that their colleagues were actively interested in their growth,
and that the school’s PD offer took accounts of their needs and
interests.
● Two additional aspects were found to have statistically significant impact on
mathematics achievement:
○ c) School morale - the extent to which the school had good team spirit,
enthusiasm, morale and pride.
○ d) Professional interaction - the extent to which staff feel involved,
accepted, supported by colleagues and the amount & quality of
collaboration, communication and pedagogical discussion.

Johnson SM, Kraft MA, Papay JP. How context matters in high-need schools: The effects of
teachers’ working conditions on their professional satisfaction and their students’
achievement. Teachers College Record [Internet]. 2012;114 (10) :1-39.
● Approach: u sing 2008 data from Massachusetts schools, the authors find
correlation (not causal data) between teachers’ views of their working
conditions and student achievement growth.
● Results: “ it is the social conditions—the school‘s culture, the principal‘s
leadership, and relationships among colleagues—that predominate in
predicting teachers‘ job satisfaction and career plans. More importantly,
providing a supportive context in which teachers can work appears to
contribute to improved student achievement. We find that favorable
conditions of work predict higher rates of student academic growth, even
when we compare schools serving demographically similar groups of
students”.
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● “we find that a one standard deviation improvement in the context of teachers‘
work is associated with improvements in student achievement growth of 0.15
standard deviations in mathematics (p=0.053) and 0.20 standard deviations in
English language arts (p=0.004) in a single year”
● Four aspects of the professional environment are found to be statistically
significantly correlated with student achievement in English language arts
(although not mathematics):
○ a) Colleagues (the extent to which teachers have time to collaborate
with colleagues to solve problems, learn from each other and hold each
other to high expectations for practice)
○ b) Governance (teachers are meaningfully involved in decision-making
about school issues, including use of the school day, budget priorities,
behaviour policies, professional development and hiring decisions).
○ c) Principal (leaders shield teachers from disruptions and distractions,
support the enforcement of behavioural policies, give teachers
feedback that is seen as helpful and take time to address teachers’
concerns)
○ d) School Culture (teachers feel comfortable raising issues, there is
mutual trust and respect, there is shared commitment to helping
children succeed, there are clear shared expectations)

Kraft MA, Papay JP. Can Professional Environments in Schools Promote Teacher
Development? Explaining Heterogeneity in Returns to Teaching Experience. Educational
Effectiveness and Policy Analysis [Internet]. 2014;36 (4) :476-500.
○ Approach: using teacher survey data and standardised test achievement data
from across 174 schools in North Carolina, exploring how individual teachers’
perceptions of their working conditions impact on each teachers’ pupils’
attainment, between 2001 and 2009.
17

○ Results: “Our analyses show that teachers working in more supportive
professional environments improve their effectiveness more over time than
teachers working in less supportive contexts. On average, teachers working in
schools at the 75th percentile of professional environment ratings improved
38% more than teachers in schools at the 25th percentile after ten years”
○ Three components of working conditions are individually statistically
significantly (p < 0.05) correlated to student achievement:
■ a) Order and Discipline (the extent to which the school is a safe
environment where rules are consistently enforced and administrators
assist teachers in their efforts to maintain an orderly classroom;)
■ b) Peer Collaboration (the extent to which teachers are able to
collaborate to refine their teaching practices and work together to solve
problems in the school;)
■ c) School Culture (the extent to which the school environment is
characterized by mutual trust, respect, openness, and commitment to
student achievement;)
○ In addition, three additional components appear to identify better the working
environment quality, while not individually statistically significantly correlated
to achievement, and these are:
■ d) Principal Leadership (the extent to which school leaders support
teachers and address their concerns about school issues;)
■ e) Professional Development (the extent to which the school provides
sufficient time and resources for professional development and uses
them in ways that enhance teachers’ instructional abilities;)
■ f) Teacher Evaluation (the extent to which teacher evaluation provides
meaningful feedback that helps teachers improve their instruction, and
is conducted in an objective and consistent manner)
18

Kraft MA, Marinell WM, Yee D. School organizational contexts, teacher turnover, and student
achievement: Evidence from panel data. American Educational Research Journal [Internet].
2016;53 (5) :1411-1499.
● Approach: Using teacher survey data of professional environment in 278 New
York Middle Schools, between 2008 and 2012, and correlating each school’s
mean scores with student achievement over time.
● Results: “we replicate and extend previous research findings that schools with
higher quality school contexts have students who experience larger
achievement gains, 2) we show that improvements in the school context within
a school over time are associated with corresponding increases in student
achievement gains, meaningful, positive associations between Safety,
Expectations, and Leadership with student achievement gains in both subjects.
We find that Safety has the strongest relationship with student gains 24 across
both subjects”
● Three components correlate positive and statistically significantly with
attainment in one or both of maths and English language arts tests:
○ a) Academic Expectations (high expectations and standards for all
pupils, clear measures of academic progress)
○ b) Safety and Order (maintenance of discipline, feeling of safety,
behaviour support from school leaders, lack of crime & bullying, levels
of adult respect to students).
○ c) Leadership and Professional Development (clarity of Principal’s
vision, perception of Principal as a supportive and effective leader,
extent that Principal fosters teacher collaboration, perceived usefulness
of feedback from Principal to teachers, relevance/usefulness of
professional development)

J Sebastian, E Allensworth, H Huang (2016) The role of teacher leadership in how principals
influence classroom instruction and student learning American Journal of Education, DOI:
10.1086/688169 - The Role of Teacher Leadership in How Principals Influence Classroom
Instruction and Student Learning
● Approach: using teacher survey data across over 450 elementary schools in
Chicago, between 2007 and 2013, exploring how schools’ mean teacher
perceptions of the environment correlated with achievement over time.
● Results: “Our results suggest that effective principals use teacher leadership to
improve the school learning climate while they work directly on professional
development and school program coherence”
● “by fostering a school climate where students and teachers feel safe to do their
work of teaching and learning, all classrooms benefit”
● “in elementary schools, principals’ influence on school climate comes almost
entirely through teacher influence in decision making. The results of the SEM
models suggest that empowering teachers to wield greater influence over
school policy matters concerning the school learning climate may be the most
effective strategy for school principals to improve student achievement”
● “Fostering a strong school climate through teacher leadership appears to be
the key mediating mechanism through which leadership is related to student
19
achievement, and a second mediating process through which elementary

school principals influence student achievement is through the quality and
coherence of programs offered in the school—professional development,
curriculum, and instruction. It appears that principals’ direct involvement in
these areas, rather than indirect influence via teachers, translates to benefits
for student learning”

Goddard, R., Goddard, Y., Sook Kim, E., & Miller, R. (2015). A Theoretical and Empirical
Analysis of the Roles of Instructional Leadership, Teacher Collaboration, and Collective
Efficacy Beliefs in Support of Student Learning. American Journal of Education, 121(4),
501–530. doi:10.1086/681925
● Approach: using teacher surveys administered across 93 elementary schools in
‘a Midwestern state’ drawn from the wider School Leadership Improvement
Study, from 2009, comparing school-level averages to fourth-grade test results
in 2009 and 2010.
● Results: Collective Efficacy of teachers is shown to be statistically significantly
predictive of student achievement. They defined collective efficacy from survey
items including whether teachers believe that they can get through to difficult
students, motivate all students, that all students can learn, that all students
can be motivated to learn, and so on.
● Two factors appeared to statistically significantly predict teacher collective
efficacy:
○ a) Instructional Leadership (the Principal is knowledgeable about
effective teaching and curriculum, provides effective guidance about
practice and assessment, creates a shared vision of success, sets high
standards and supports teachers by knowing and visiting classrooms
and providing support and feedback, encourages teachers to express
opinions even if contrary to their own)
20

○ b) Teacher collaboration (leaders and staff collaborate to solve
problems, collaboration is frequent and well-structured and covers
lesson planning, data analysis, moderation, pedagogical discussion,
curriculum design and planning, professional development activity)
21

● Collective efficacy was determined through the following items:

● “Our findings also indicate that, consistent with prior research (Bandura 1993;
22
Goddard et al. 2000, 2004), perceived collective efficacy is a significant positive

predictor of differences among schools in student achievement. The more
robust the sense of collective efficacy characterizing the schools in our sample,
the greater their levels of student achievement, even after controlling for
school and student background characteristics and prior levels of student
achievement.”
● “Finally, our results demonstrate that both principals’ instructional leadership
and teacher collaboration for instructional improvement are important
indirect predictors of differences among schools in student academic
achievement. These findings are not only consistent with extant research
(Goddard et al. 2007; Louis et al. 2009; Robinson et al. 2008; Waters et al. 2003)
but also add the finding that leadership and collaboration make a difference in
part because of their influence on teachers’ beliefs.”

Ronfeldt, M., Farmer, S. O., McQueen, K., & Grissom, J. A. (2015). Teacher Collaboration in
Instructional Teams and Student Achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 52(3),
475–514. doi:10.3102/0002831215585562
● Approach: S urvey and interview data from 336 schools in the Miami-Dade
Public School System from 2011 and 2012 was individual teachers’ students’
test scores as well as their school’s overall results.
● Results: “Teachers and schools that have instructional teams engaged in better
collaboration also have higher achievement gains in both math and reading.
Moreover, teachers improve at greater rates when they work in schools with
better collaboration quality.” although “This evidence is suggestive that
instructional collaborations have positive effects on students’ achievement
gains; the design of the study, however, does not lend itself to drawing causal
conclusions”
● “Coefficients on all forms of collaboration trended positive across models and
tables, suggesting positive effects of collaboration regardless of its
instructional focus. Even so, collaboration about assessment was most often
significantly predictive of achievement gains across math and reading. In
reading, collaboration about instructional strategies and curriculum also
predicted achievement gains.”
● Types of collaboration explored were:
○ “Collaboration About Instructional Strategies and Curriculum: Variables
loading most strongly on this factor focus on collaboration about
pedagogical and curricular approaches/strategies, including
coordinating curriculum across classrooms, developing instructional
strategies, and developing aligned materials
○ Collaboration About Students: Variables loading most strongly on this
factor included collaboration about instructional topics/strategies
focused on students, including discussing the needs of specific
students, reviewing classroom work, and addressing student
discipline/classroom management issues
○ Collaboration About Assessment: Items loading on this factor focused
23
on collaboration about assessments, including reviewing state test

results and formative assessments “

TNTP (2012) - Greenhouse Schools: How Schools Can Build Cultures Where Teachers and
Students Thrive
● Approach: Teachers at 249 schools across the USA were surveyed in 2011 to find out
about organisational leadership and culture and this was compared to student
achievement at each of the schools..
● Results: “We found that positive responses to three questions on our survey had the
strongest connection with greater retention of successful teachers and higher student
achievement in reading and math. All three ask teachers how much they agree with
the following statements: “Teachers at my school share a common vision of what
effective teaching looks like.” “The expectations for effective teaching are clearly
defined at my school.” “My school is committed to improving my instructional
practice.””
● “Schools with the strongest cultures give their teachers more valuable professional
development opportunities. At greenhouse schools, 81 percent of teachers felt that
professional development opportunities are “well planned and well facilitated,”
compared to just 28 percent of teachers at bottom-quartile schools. When asked
about any specific development opportunity, teachers at greenhouse schools were
twice as likely to rate it “highly effective” than teachers at bottom-quartile schools. “I
have the right amount of time to be observed by and get feedback from colleagues.”
Greenhouse Schools Bottom-Quartile Schools 69% 39% Schools with strong cultures
also offer more opportunities for teachers to collaborate with each other. For
example, nearly seven in 10 teachers at greenhouse schools felt they had enough
time to plan with their colleagues, and nearly the same number felt they had enough
time to observe or be observed by their colleagues. At bottom-quartile schools,
however, only 5 in 10 teachers felt they had enough common planning time, and only
4 in 10 felt they had enough time to be observed by and receive feedback from
colleagues.”
● “Importantly, school leaders who create strong cultures also remove teachers who
consistently struggle— and teachers appear to agree with those decisions. Compared
to bottom-quartile schools, only half as many teachers at greenhouse schools felt that
one of their colleagues had been either wrongly retained or unfairly
dismissed—probably because teachers at greenhouse schools are much more likely
to trust the accuracy of their evaluations (71 percent, compared to only 33 percent at
bottom-quartile schools). This contradicts the conventional wisdom that dismissing
teachers will hurt a school’s culture. In fact, it’s the failure to remove ineffective
teachers that appears to weaken instructional culture.”

Burns, M. K., Naughton, M. R., Preast, J. L., Wang, Z., Gordon, R. L., Robb, V., & Smith, M. L.
(2017). Factors of Professional Learning Community Implementation and Effect on Student
Achievement. Journal of Educational and Psychological Consultation, 1–19.
doi:10.1080/10474412.2017.1385396
● Approach: Teachers were surveyed across 181 schools of all phases/age across
Missouri, all of which were in their third year of working in the Missouri PLC
(Professional Learning Community) project. School level averages were then
24
compared to data from the Missouri Assessment Program to explore impact

on student achievement.
● Results: T
he results found that the eight strands correlated with student
achievement, especially for elementary schools in mathematics, but that the
eight strands and 46 items within them were probably representations of two
broader constructs. The two factors of PLC implementation were named
Collaborative Leadership Processes and Data-Driven Systems for Learning.
○ Collaborative Leadership Processes included creating shared leadership
of the PLC, effective team communication and collaboration, clear
senior leadership to model and support the process, high levels of
shared trust, effective induction, action research and celebration of
success.
○ Data-Driven Systems for Learning included focus on assessment
purposes, methods and exploring data findings together, focusing on
student learning intentions and evidence, updating curriculum and
teaching plans and timetables in response, planning interventions and
enrichments, setting smart goals and embedding evaluation and the
seeking of evidence.

Grissom, J.A., Loeb, S & Master, B (2011) Effective Instructional Time Use for School Leaders:
Longitudinal Evidence from Observations of Principals
● Approach: L arge scale, structured observations in 2008, ‘11 and ‘12 of over 100
school principals in Miami-Dade, Florida, across Elementary, Middle and High
School level, explored what activities they carried out and how this correlated
with student achievement in those schools over time.
● Results: “We find no relationship between overall time spent on instructional
activities and schools’ effectiveness or improvement trajectories. When we
decompose instruction into its element tasks, however, a more nuanced story
emerges that has potentially important implications for school leadership
practice.”
● “Like time on the school’s educational program and teacher evaluation, time
spent directly coaching teachers is positively associated with achievement
gains and school improvement, especially in math. Yet coaching appears to be
a rare practice among observed principals, which may reflect principals
discounting the effectiveness of coaching or their own capacity to coach
effectively. “
● “In contrast, informal classroom observations or “walkthroughs” are more
common but negatively associated with achievement gains and school
improvement, at least in high schools.”
● “For a subset of schools we also had survey data indicating whether the
walkthroughs were viewed by teachers as professional development. In
schools where walkthroughs are not viewed as professional development,
walkthroughs are particularly negative; while in schools where they are viewed
as professional development, coaching is particularly positive. In other words,
different use of walkthroughs seems to be associated with different results.”
● “In short, our results suggest that time spent engaging in instruction is not
itself sufficient but rather that the effects of instructional leadership activities
25
are conditional on the type and quality of those time investments.”

Ladd, H. (2011). Teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions: How predictive of planned
and actual teacher movement? Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 33(2), 235-261.
● Approach: u sing 2006 teacher survey data from over 1000 elementary schools in
North Carolina and correlating with Grade 4 and 5 reading and mathematics test
data.
● Results: “teachers’ perceptions of their working conditions contribute modestly to
school-specific differences in student achievement across primary schools, with the
contribution somewhat larger for math achievement than for reading”
● “For math, two of the survey measures enter with statistically significant positive
coefficients: leadership and the quantitative time variable indicating that teachers
have more than three hours of time for planning. These two variables are also
positive for reading but only the latter is statistically significant, and the coefficient of
the leadership factor is less than half the size of the comparable coefficient for math”
● “For reading, teachers’ perceptions of facilities are also predictive of positive school
effects but, contrary to expectations, a higher rating for professional development
opportunities within the school is predictive of negative achievement effects. This
latter finding most likely illustrates one of the statistical problems noted earlier,
namely that policy makers do not distribute resources randomly across schools. In
this case, it appears that more professional development opportunities are provided
to schools that are performing less well in reading than other schools with the same
types of students”

Hoy, W. K., Hannum, J. and Tschannen-Moran, M. (1998) ‘Organizational Climate and Student
Achievement: A Parsimonious and Longitudinal View’, Journal of School Leadership, 8(4), pp.
336–359. doi: 10.1177/105268469800800401
● Approach: using survey data from 86 middle schools in New Jersey to construct
school-level measures of climate and correlating with school-level results of an
8th-grade reading and mathematics test both in the year of the survey and looking at
academic performance two years later.
● Results: the researchers find four components of organizational climate that
contribute, statistically significantly, to student achievement. These include:
○ “Collegial leadership captures the essence of this factor; the principal’s behavior
is supportive and egalitarian and neither directive nor restrictive.
○ teacher professionalism, which is teacher behavior characterized by
commitment to students, respect for the competence of colleagues, warm and
friendly interactions, and engagement in the teaching task
○ academic press: teachers setting high but reasonable goals, students
responding positively to the challenge of these goals, and the principal
supplying the resources and exerting influence to attain these learning goals
○ environmental press: strong pressure from parents and the community to
change school policy and influence the functioning of the school.
● Taking each component individually, only a cademic press and environmental press are
independently statistically significantly correlated with academic outcomes. However,
● “for each of the measures of achievement, about two-thirds of the variance is
explained by the independent variables. All the climate variables make a significant
26
independent contribution to one or more of the achievement measures. Although

socioeconomic status is the single best predictor of achievement, Environmental
Press and Academic Press are not far behind. Collegial Leadership and teacher
Professionalism work together to contribute to achievement; in fact, if either is
omitted from the regression equation, the other makes a significant and independent
contribution to the explanation of variance. Two years later, the relationship between
climate and achievement was very similar. A comparison of the results shows that the
zero-order and multiple correlations are either the same or vary by a few one
hun-dredths.”

Lee, M. & Louis, K.S. (2019). Mapping a strong school culture and linking it to sustainable
school improvement. Teaching and Teacher Education, 81, 84-96.
● Approach: the authors use 2008 survey data from 9 US states and 133 schools,
constructing school-level measures of climate and exploring correlations with student
achievement in English Language Arts in academic years 2005/6, 2006/7 and (in a
sub-sample of 34 schools) 2007/8.
● Results: “What are the key elements of a strong school culture in conjunction with
school improvement, which are identified in existing studies? In this study, we
identified academic press, student support, trust & respect, low negativity (or
optimism as the opposite of negativity), professional learning community (consisting
of shared responsibility, reflective dialogue, deprivatized practice, and organizational
learning). More importantly, results suggest that schools strongly equipped with those
cultural elements showed higher levels of school performance than that of their
counterparts; there were significantly positive associations between school culture
constructs and the levels of school performance.”
● The authors define their key constructs as
○ Professional Learning Community: this included four key sub-components

○ Academic Press:
27

○ Student support:

○ Trust/Respect:

○ Negativity:

● “compared to teachers in lower performing schools, their counterparts in
mid-performing schools turned out to perceive significantly stronger school cultures
in terms of professional learning community (.197***), academic press (.318***),
student support (.345***), and trust/respect (.286***)”

● “The same pattern was identified in the comparison between low- and
high-performing schools. Compared to teachers in low-performing schools (reference
group), their counterparts in high-performing schools perceived significantly stronger
school cultures”
28

● The authors also explore the sub-sample of 34 schools where there was continuous
decline or continuous improvement in student performance. They find that “there
were significantly positive associations between the cultural elements of school and
the levels of school performance. More importantly, our analysis further suggests that
there was a clear linkage between schools with a strong culture and their continuous
improvement in school-level achievement. That is, the cultural elements are critical to
sustainable school improvement, measured by academic achievement. Even
low-performing schools appeared to be able to sustain the improvement of academic
achievement, especially when they were strongly equipped with those cultural
elements. This suggests that the effect of school culture on school performance is not
short-lived. It can be an enduring effect that counters organizational inertia.”
● It is worth noting that this study draws on the same data set as an earlier report:
Karen Seashore Louis, Kenneth Leithwood, Kyla L. Wahlstrom, and Stephen E.
Anderson, Investigating the Links to Improved Student Learning: Final Report of
Research Findings, Learning from Leadership Project, 2010.

Lee, M., Walker, A., & Bryant, D. (2019). What Leadership Practices Are Associated with
International Baccalaureate (IB) Student Achievement? An Exploratory Study of IB Schools in
Southeast Asia. Peabody Journal of Education, 1–19. doi:10.1080/0161956x.2018.1515831
● Approach: the authors surveyed teachers in 18 International Baccalaureate schools
across Cambodia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam in 2013-14 and
correlated teacher responses with International Baccalaureate exam outcomes in
2013.
● The authors constructed 8 contextual factors from theory:
29
●

● Results: looking at the factors independently, only two factors are statistically
significantly correlated with student outcomes, while two more are close to statistical
significance but are not p < 0.05.

● The other four components were not found to have statistically significant
relationship with student outcomes nor to contribute positively to overall model fit.
(ensuring teachers’ cross-programme interaction, focusing on mission and goal,
shared responsibility, reflective dialogue)
School Leadership Reviews

In this section we look at two more recent reviews of school leadership research that,
themselves, build on previous well-known reviews such as Leithwood et al (2012) and
Robinson et al. (2009).

Liebowitz, D. D. and Porter, L. (2019) ‘The Effect of Principal Behaviors on Student, Teacher,
and School Outcomes: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature’,
Review of Educational Research, 89(5), pp. 785–827. doi: 10.3102/0034654319866133.
30
● Our analysis has three central findings: (1) we find direct evidence of the
relationship between principal behaviors and student achievement (0.09-0.17
standard deviations), teacher well-being (0.34 SD), teacher instructional
practices (0.34 SD), and school organizational health (0.69 SD); (2) we find that
prior literature may overstate the unique importance of instructional
management as a tool to improve student achievement outcomes;
● First, in a review of 42 empirical studies relating principal behaviors to student,
teacher and school outcomes, we find consistently positive relationships
between increased principal time or skill and student achievement, teacher
well-being, instructional practices and school organizational health. The
strength of these relationships implies that a one standard deviation
difference in principal time or skill in [our 5 leadership domains:] instructional
management, internal relations, organizational management, administration
or external relations is associated with between one-tenth and one-third of a
standard deviation difference in student achievement, teacher well-being and
instructional practices. Based on Kraft’s (2018) empirically-derived schema for
educational effect sizes, these represent moderate- to large-effect sizes
● Second, we find that previous literature may overstate the unique student
achievement effects of principals’ time spent on and skill in instructional
leadership behaviors. In fact, the effects of four other leadership behaviors are
statistically indistinguishable from the effects of instructional management.
We conclude from this that an exclusive focus on diverting time or skill
development away from other non-instructional tasks towards instructional
ones as some have suggested (e.g., Bambrick-Santoyo & Peiser, 2012) may be
misguided. Note that our findings do not imply that instructional leadership is
not important, nor that it does not merit more attention. In fact, as Grissom,
Loeb and Master (2013) document, in Miami-Dade, principals spent only 12.7
percent of their time on average on instructional management related tasks.
Thus, a more equal balance of time across the task categories may be of value.
Alternatively, instructional management may in fact have a unique role in
improving outcomes, but it must be paired with other strategies to leverage its
unique status.
● The five domains are:
○ Instructional management: principal behaviors focused on, or linked to,
schools’ instructional practices and curricular program implementation,
supporting teachers’ instructional practices through teacher evaluation,
observation, and feedback, as well as planning teachers’ professional
development, planning or developing education programs, developing
and enacting a schoolwide vision, using data related to the school’s
education program and aspects of program evaluation.
○ Internal relations: building within-school interpersonal relationships
including developing and sustaining student and family relationships
and attending school activities, as well as handling staff conflicts and
engaging informally and socially with staff, paying attention to staff
relationships and well-being.
○ Organizational management: managing the operational functions of the
school related to medium- and long-term strategic goals, including
31
budgetary tasks, facility planning and managing non-instructional staff,

developing a safe school environment, responding to staff concerns,
and engaging with other school leaders
○ Administration: operationally focused actions (as distinct from
organizational management) characterized by more routine
administrative duties and tasks such as compliance activities,
standardized assessment implementation and school schedule
management, as well as student service management, student
supervision, and managing school attendance.
○ External relations: engagement with stakeholders beyond the school
building, communication with the district office, community members,
partners, or other outside stakeholders, as well as fundraising efforts.

Hitt, D.H. and Tucker, P. D. (2016), Systematic Review of Key Leader Practices Found to
Influence Student Achievement: A Unified Framework. Review of Educational Research June
2016, Vol. 86, No. 2, pp. 531–569 DOI: 10.3102/0034654315614911
● Approach: “The specific purposes of this article are to identify and synthesize
the empirical research on how leadership influences student achievement and
to provide evidence on how school leaders should direct their efforts. During
the literature review, we consulted experts for recommendations and
searched peer-reviewed journals from 2000 to 2014. The literature review
yielded 56 empirical research studies of relevance to the topic and 3
frameworks consisting of clustered practices. We then grouped the 28
practices according to systematic criteria and found 5 overarching domains.
● Results: T here are five key domains of leadership that are associated with
improvement in student achievement:
● 1. Creating, Articulating, and Stewarding Shared Mission and Vision:
○ setting (with involvement of others) and gaining buy-in to an
appropriate vision for the school which is context-appropriate, creating
shared meaning; setting and monitoring motivating goals and
performance targets against this vision;
○ modelling, explaining and communicating the ethos of the school in
practice;
○ using assessment, data, evaluation and KPIs to build collective
monitoring of progress.
● 2. Building professional capacity:
○ recruiting teachers with strong fit to collective goals & ethos; providing
individual and differentiated support & opportunity for teachers;
○ proactively building and maintaining high levels of relational trust
between leaders, staff, pupils, parents and community; [the authors
note studies that suggest that 10% of teachers’
instructional/pedagogical effectiveness is explained by levels of peer
trust, while 57% of teachers’ levels of professionalism are explained by
peer trust]
○ providing individual, team and whole-organisation opportunities to
learn; intervening to protect their teachers’ time and energies from
32
distractions that detract from mission and then recognising and

rewarding efforts that produce results that are mission-aligned;
○ creating effective collaboration including structuring teachers’
schedules such that job-embedded learning occurs on a regular basis
including professional dialogue and examination of student work;
○ engendering teachers’ responsibility for student learning, assume a
positive mindset for growth, invite teachers to use innovation in
meeting the goals, encourage teachers to have high self-expectations,
and promote an environment in which teachers assume responsibility
for meeting expectations
● 3. Creating a Supportive Organization for Learning:
○ acquiring and allocating resources strategically for mission and vision,
including allocating people, budget, materials, physical space;
○ considering context to maximize organizational functioning, adapting
approach to the context and strengths of the school;
○ building collaborative processes for decision-making, understanding
that the resulting decision will ultimately be enhanced in terms of
quality and benefit to students when multiple perspectives work
together, not only by intentional sharing but also by capacity building of
those who may have previously remained in a follower or stakeholder
role;
○ sharing and distributing leadership and decision making rather than
centralize these functions, develop a sense of community rather than
individuals, encourage collaborative work efforts rather than isolate
practitioners, and base authority on expertise rather than role or
position;
○ building team diversity, demonstrating their commitment to divergent
and varying through careful communication with diverse groups of
stakeholders (with diverse backgrounds and diverse perspectives,
cultures, views, and people, working from an inclusive mindset;
○ strengthening and optimising school culture, fostering authentic
professional learning communities, openness, transparency, efficacy,
trust, conflict resolution, and other such structures and characteristics,
meeting the affective needs of teachers and help to maintain their
commitment to the school organization;
○ Maintaining ambitious and high-performance expectations and
standards, positively insisting on and expecting high performance,
making those performance expectations public and transparent,
designing formative and summative assessments aligned with the
desired outcomes that hold stakeholders accountable and measure
progress in ways that advance the desired outcome - not only calling
attention to what needs improvement, but also positively reinforcing
what is being done correctly.
● 4. Facilitating a high-quality learning experience for students:
○ maintaining safety and orderliness, address this concern by insisting
agreed on codes of conduct and enforcing a fair and consistent set of
expectations, setting the tone for how members of the community will
33
interact with each other focusing on maintaining an attractive campus

that is fully functioning;
○ personalizing the environment to reflect students’ backgrounds,
assisting teachers in identifying the diverse types of social and
intellectual capital students bring with them to school and leveraging
these assets in their interaction with students;
○ developing and monitoring the curricular program, requiring rigor and
high expectations of all students, insisting that every individual student
has the opportunity to learn., monitoring and evaluating continuously
the alignment of curriculum, instruction and assessment, coordinating
vertical (within subject) and horizontal (across subject) alignment
through the allocation of time and the development of the master
schedule to support such endeavors, a prime example being the
protection of common planning time for teachers;
○ Developing and monitoring the curriculum programme, equipping
themselves with a deep knowledge of pedagogy and devoting a large
portion of the time to the advancing teaching, prohibiting the
scheduling of non-instructional school events during the instructional
day, encouraging student and teacher attendance, and limiting the time
individuals are pulled from their classrooms;
○ Developing and monitoring the assessment programme, (to include
teacher designed,school designed, and standardized) and both
formative and summative in nature, facilitating this data collection and
subsequent analysis in ways that permit disaggregation on indicators
important to the school’s improvement effort and goals and to inform
efforts toward individual student progress, teacher and departmental
effectiveness,and overall school performance, informing the iterative
process of vision and mission building and future improvement efforts,
faculty professional development, and individual teacher learning.
● 5. Connecting With External Partners:
○ Building productive relationships with families and community,
including parents in the educational process of their children, designing
welcoming and inclusive environments, developing multiple ways
(traditional and nontraditional) for parents to be involved, and fostering
teacher understanding and commitment of the importance of parent
and community participation;
○ Engaging families and community in collaborative processes, involving
parents/family members in the decision making processes regarding
school policy, budgetary issues, and the school improvement plan,
finding ways for parents and the community to perceive a sense of
influence in their school;
○ Anchoring schools in the community, serving as connectors for families
of their students, seeking to connect them to helpful community
agencies, participating in networks with other school leaders in the
broader community to share and discuss ways to meld home,
community, and school efforts
34
Teacher assignment and partnering research

The emergence, more recently, of a number of studies that explore teacher assignment to
mentors and partners is a significant contribution to the evidence base about how the
organisation of the school and working conditions contribute to teacher growth and student
achievement.

Papay, J.P., Taylor, E.S., Tyler, J.H. and Laski, M., 2016. Learning job skills from colleagues at
work: Evidence from a field experiment using teacher performance data (No. w21986).
National Bureau of Economic Research.
○ Approach: The experiment was conducted at 14 elementary and middle
schools (7 treatment, 7 control) in a medium-sized district in Tennessee.
○ We report on a field experiment designed to study on-the-job, peer learning
between teachers who work at the same school. At schools randomly assigned
to the treatment condition—known in the schools as the “Evaluation
Partnership Program”—low-performing “target” teachers were paired with a
high-performing “partner” teacher, and each pair was encouraged to work
together on improving each other’s teaching skills over the course of the
school year. Importantly, teachers were matched using micro-data from
state-mandated performance evaluations...these prior evaluations include
separate performance ratings for many specific instructional skills (e.g.,
“questioning,” “lesson structure and pacing,” “managing student behavior”).....
Pairs were approached by their school principal and asked to work together
for the year focusing on the strength-matched-to weakness skill areas, with the
goal of improving instructional skills. Thus the topics and skills teachers
worked on were specific to each pair and varied between pairs.
○ While individual teacher pairings were the focus of the intervention, treatment
was assigned at the school level. Thus the success of individual pairs may have
been influenced by the principal’s role or support, or influenced by other
teacher pairs in the school working in the same kinds of ways.
○ Results: T he relatively low-performing teachers targeted by our
intervention—and ultimately their students—benefited substantially from
partnering with a higher-performing colleague at their school. Target teachers’
performance improved 0.12 student standard deviations in the year of
treatment, and perhaps double that much in the following year. These
performance improvements were larger when teacher partnerships were
better matched on strong and weak skills, but otherwise we find little evidence
of heterogeneity
○ Particularly notable, the treatment effects for target teachers appear to hold
for both experienced and inexperienced teachers
○ One important contextual feature of the experiment is the formal teacher
evaluation system. All teachers in our study—treatment and control, target
and partner and no role—are subject to Tennessee’s new formal performance
evaluation system. Teacher pairs were identified based on prior evaluation
results, and teacher pairs were encouraged, in part, to work on improving
evaluation results. These connections to formal evaluation likely influenced
principals’ and teachers’ willingness to participate, and the nature of their
35
participation. For these reasons we think this study has contributions for the
small, still-developing literature on how evaluation affects teacher
performance (Taylor and Tyler 2012, Steinberg and Sartain 2015, Bergman and
Hill 2015). One additional result on this subject comes from a survey of
teachers at the end of the experiment. Teachers were asked a series of
questions to measure their attitude toward formal evaluation, for example, “I
have a favorable impression of the teacher evaluation system” rated on a six
point agree/disagree scale.30 Judging from survey responses, teachers in
treatment schools left with more favorable opinions of evaluation: attitudes
about evaluation were 0.23 standard deviations more positive, as measured by
a composite of the four survey questions.

● Jackson, C.K. and Bruegmann, E., 2009. Teaching students and teaching each other:
The importance of peer learning for teachers. American Economic Journal: Applied
Economics, 1(4), pp.85-108
○ Approach: We use data on all third-grade through fifth-grade students in North
Carolina between 1995 to 2006 from the North Carolina Education Research
Data Center
○ [We provide] evidence of peer learning among teachers, using a unique
longitudinal dataset of student test scores linked to teacher characteristics in
North Carolina. Specifically, we test whether changes in a teacher’s peers affect
the test score growth of her own students, and we investigate possible
mechanisms.
○ Results: Using longitudinal elementary school teacher and student data, we
document that students have larger test score gains when their teachers
experience improvements in the observable characteristics of their colleagues.
Using within-school and within-teacher variation, we further show that a
teacher’s students have larger achievement gains in math and reading when
she has more effective colleagues (based on estimated value-added from an
out-of-sample pre-period). Spillovers are strongest for less-experienced
teachers and persist over time, and historical peer quality explains away about
twenty percent of the own-teacher effect, results that suggest peer learning
○ We find that (1) less experienced teachers who are still acquiring “on-the-job”
skills are most sensitive to changes in peer quality, (2) teachers with greater
labor-market attachment are more sensitive to peer quality, (3) both current
and historical peer quality changes affect current student achievement, and (4)
historical peer quality explains away between 18 and 25 percent of the
own-teacher effect.
○ We outline three potentially important sources of spillovers between teachers
and outline a framework for thinking about learning between teachers…1. Joint
production and shared resources....2. Motivation and Effort….3. Peer Learning.
○ Students have higher test scores in both subjects [Maths and reading] when
their own teacher has a regular teaching license, has higher scores on her
license exam, is fully National Board certified, and has more years of
experience. Having a teacher with no previous experience is particularly
detrimental, and having a teacher with an advanced degree appears to be
negatively correlated with test scores, conditional on the other covariates.
36
○ We document that a teacher’s own performance is affected by the quality of

her peers. In particular, changes in the quality of a teacher’s colleagues (all
other teachers in the same school who teach students in the same grade) are
associated with changes in her students’ test score gains. Using two separate
measures of peer quality, one based on observable teacher qualifications and
the other on estimated peer effectiveness, we find that teachers perform
better when the quality of their peers improves within the same school over
time…. In our preferred model, a one–standard-deviation improvement in
observable teacher peer quality is associated with a 0.008 and 0.006 standard
deviation increase in math and reading scores respectively. Using estimated
value-added (estimated out-of-sample to avoid simultaneity bias), which is a
much better predictor of subsequent student achievement, we find that a
one-standard-deviation improvement in estimated teacher peer quality is
associated with a 0.0398 standard deviation increase in math scores and a
0.026 standard deviation increase in reading scores….We show that for both
math and reading, the quality of a teacher’s peers the year before, and even
two years before, affect her current students’ achievement. For both subjects,
the importance of a teacher’s previous peers is as great as, or greater than,
that of her current peers. The cumulative effect over three years of having
peers with one standard deviation higher effectiveness is 0.078 standard
deviations in math and 0.072 standard deviations in reading.

● Sun, M., Loeb, S. and Grissom, J.A., 2017. Building teacher teams: Evidence of positive
spillovers from more effective colleagues. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis,
39(1), pp.104-125.
○ Approach: Utilizing a decade of data on teacher transfers between schools that
result in changes of peers when transfer teachers enter grade-level team in
the new school, we find evidence of strong positive spillover effects associated
with the introduction of peers who are more effective than the incumbent
teacher himself or herself. However, the incumbent teacher’s students are not
meaningfully disadvantaged by the entry of relatively ineffective peers. This
finding provides initial evidence that mixing teachers with diverse performance
levels can be a strategy for increasing student achievement in the aggregate.
These results are robust to several student sorting and teacher selection
issues
○ Our data come from M-DCPS, the fourth-largest school district in the United
States, and cover the school years from 2003-04 through 2012-13. We focus on
math teachers in grades 3–8 who can be linked to students for whom we have
state standardized test scores in math. The data cover about 1.15 million
student-year observations over the 10 years.
○ Our analysis focuses on estimation of spillover effects in math for several
reasons. First, prior studies show that teachers generally have a stronger effect
on math achievement than on reading (e.g., Nye, Konstantopoulos, & Hedges,
2004). Analysis of the data used in this study similarly suggest that the
estimated effect of a student’s classroom teacher on test scores is only about
one-third to one-half as large in reading as in math. Second, mathematics
teaching may provide a context more conducive to spillover effects than
37
teaching in other subjects. Research has documented the distributed nature of
math teaching in many schools, with teachers working together to set goals,
choose instructional activities, design assessment instruments, and interpret
evidence of learning (Cobb, de Silva Lamberg, & Dean, 2003). More so than
many other subjects, there is widespread agreement on appropriate content,
sequence, and pedagogy, which means both greater opportunities to
coordinate across classrooms and greater likelihood that teachers are
following similar curricula and routines
○ Results: The average effects of a one standard deviation change in the prior
stable effectiveness of the new transfer teacher on the achievement gains of
students taught by incumbent teachers in the same grade, are between one
percent and two percent of a standard deviation of students’ math test scores.
They are positive and mostly statistically significant at either the 0.10 or 0.05
level.
○ If a student in the class of an incumbent teacher has a new transfer teacher at
the same grade level who is one standard deviation higher in prior stable
effectiveness than that of their own teacher, this student would have a 1.9 or
2.8 percent of a standard deviation increase in math test scores. This spillover
effect is about 23 or 29 percent of the student’s own teacher effect
(0.019/0.081 or 0.028/0.095). Surprisingly, if the transfer peer teacher is about
one standard deviation lower than that of their own teacher, this student
would not be meaningfully affected by the new teacher. The “relatively
ineffective” estimate is very close to zero and not statistically different from
zero.
○ Moreover, low-performing teachers seem more responsive to the composition
of peers than high performing teachers. With one standard deviation decrease
in students’ own teachers’ prior effectiveness, the spillover effect from new
transfers would increase about 0.6 percent or 0.8 percent of one standard
deviation of student test scores. These findings imply that strategic grouping of
teachers to potentially maximize all students’ learning in aggregate is to pair
ineffective teachers with more effective colleagues.
38
○

● Goldhaber, D., Krieg, J., & Theobald, R. (2020). Effective like me? Does having a more
productive mentor improve the productivity of mentees?. Labour Economics, 63,
101792.
○ Approach: W e use a novel database of the preservice apprenticeships (“student
teaching placements”) of teachers in Washington State to investigate the
relationship between mentor effectiveness (as measured by value added) and
the future effectiveness of their mentees.
○ Results: W e find a strong, positive relationship between the effectiveness of a
teacher’s mentor and their own effectiveness in math and a more modest
relationship in English Language Arts. The relationship in math is strongest
early in a teacher’s career, and would be positive and statistically significant
even in the presence of non-random sorting on unobservables of the same
magnitude as the sorting on observables. This suggests that at least some of
this relationship reflects a causal relationship between mentor effectiveness
and the future effectiveness of their mentees in math.
○ The increase in math value added associated with a one standard deviation
increase in mentor quality is roughly equivalent to the difference in average
value added between a novice and second-year teacher; in other words, the
expected gain in teacher effectiveness from assignment to a more effective
mentor is equivalent to the well-documented returns to the first year of
teaching experience (e.g., Ladd and Sorensen, 2017; Rivkin et al., 2005; Rockoff,
2004).
○ Importantly for this study, there is both quantitative (Krieg et al., 2016, 2019)
and qualitative (Meyer, 2016; St. John et al., 2018) evidence about the factors
that influence that matching of mentees to mentors in student teaching
placements, much of it from Washington State (the setting of this study).
39
○ Central to our study is the need to obtain unbiased measures of the

productivity of both mentor teachers and their mentees. A significant literature
investigating teachers is devoted to assessing the impacts of individual
teachers on students (e.g., Aaronson et al., 2007; Chetty et al., 2014a; Rivkin et
al., 2005) as well as the extent to which value-added models (VAMs) can be
used to obtain unbiased estimates of the contribution of individual teachers to
student test score gains (Bacher-Hicks et al., 2014; Chetty et al., 2014b;
Goldhaber & Chaplin, 2015; Kane and Staiger, 2008; Kane et al., 2013;
Rothstein, 2009, 2014). While this issue is not settled,17 we argue that
appropriately specified VAMs show minimal bias (Koedel et al., 2015),
especially in estimating teacher effectiveness in math.
○ In math we see strong evidence that value-added measures of mentor
effectiveness are related to mentees’ value-added effectiveness; a one
standard deviation increase in mentor effectiveness is associated with a 18%
of a standard deviation increase of the effectiveness of their mentees; this is
roughly the half of the difference between a novice teacher and one with one
to two years of experience (see Appendix Table A3) and about three times as
large as the comparable estimate in Ronfeldt et al. (2018a)
○ Fig. 1 illustrates that first-year teachers who student-taught with a
highly-effective mentor teacher in math (i.e., 2 standard deviations above the
mean) are predicted to be just as effective as third year teachers who worked
with an average mentor. While it is certainly possible that some of these
differences reflect the non-random sorting of mentees to mentors (and thus
reflect cross-mentee differences in effectiveness), the decay in these
relationships over time and the robustness of these relationships under
extreme sorting on unobservables (in which the relationship is still significant
and positive) both suggest that assignment to higher quality mentors induces
a causal and within-mentee improvement in quality. Thus, the assignment of
student teachers to more effective mentor teachers appears to be a sensible
low-cost approach to inducing marginal improvements in beginning teacher
quality
●

40
School Turnaround Literature

Meyers Coby V. & Dallas Hambrick Hitt (2017) School Turnaround Principals: What Does
Initial Research Literature Suggest They Are Doing to Be Successful?, Journal of Education for
Students Placed at Risk (JESPAR), 22:1, 38-56, DOI: 10.1080/10824669.2016.1242070
● Approach: a systematic review resulting in 18 papers with empirical evidence of the
factors that make the difference between Principals who successfully turn around
failing schools versus those who don’t.
● Results: 12 domains were identified, split into three categories.
● Utilizing vision and strategic leadership
○ Establish, shape, and drive a vision focused on high academic expectations
○ Identify, analyze, and respond to causes of school decline and failure
○ Navigate policies that, on the surface, limit their ability to lead effectively or
their teachers’ ability to provide high-quality, differentiated instruction
○ Make unilateral decisions as necessary
● Building capacity with support and accountability
○ Secure significant, purposeful opportunities for teachers to develop and grow
○ Cultivate leadership in administration and faculty
○ Focus on improving culture and instruction specifically in literacy and
mathematics
○ Leverage data effectively to make strategic administrative and instructional
decisions
○ Focus intensively on driving instructional improvement
● Shaping of culture
○ Create or improve a climate that is safe and focused on teaching and learning
○ Generate quick wins to publicly demonstrate changing priorities and that
improvement is possible
○ Develop authentic relationships with parents and the community broadly

Le Floch, K. C., Ph.D. (2015). Supporting School Turnaround: Lessons for Texas
Policymakers.
https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Turnaround_ResearchRe
port.pdf
● Approach: a literature review of evidence about the most effective approaches to
school turnaround
● Results: “. This review highlights six practices that appear to support successful
turnaround: strong leadership, strategic staffing, professional learning opportunities,
use of data for instructional decisions, a collaborative and trusting school culture, and
program coherence”
● Strong leadership:including a clear instructional focus, quick wins, and distributed
leadership;
● Strategic Staffing:attracting, hiring, and keeping the best teachers—and, when
necessary, removing teachers who are detrimental to the success of the school
● Professional Learning Opportunities:
○ Core features: The core features of high-quality professional development
include: (1) a focus on curricular content; (2) opportunities for active learning
(e.g., observing classroom instruction, being observed while teaching a lesson,
41
or reviewing student work); and (3) consistency with other reform efforts in the
school.
○ Structural features: The structural features of high quality professional
development include: (1) the long duration of the activity, in terms of both the
number of hours and the span of time over which the activities were spread;
(2) activities more commonly described as “job-embedded”; and (3) collective
participation of teachers from the same school, grade, or subject.
● Use of Data for Instructional Decisions: Establish a clear vision for data use; Develop
and maintain a district-wide data system; Make data part of an ongoing cycle of
instructional improvement; Provide supports that foster a data-driven culture within
the school; Teach students to examine their own data and set learning goals.
● Develop a Collaborative and Trusting School Culture: promote teacher collaboration
by providing scheduled time, space, and material resources for such efforts, in an
overall environment that prioritizes time for teacher collaboration and cultivates a
sense of shared responsibility for student achievement
● A Collaborative and Trusting School Culture: ensuring a set of interrelated programs
for students and staff that are guided by a common framework for curriculum,
instruction, assessment and learning climate and that are pursued over a sustained
period;
● Additional commentary: Want to Improve Low-Performing Schools? F OCUS ON THE
ADULTS.
Working conditions and teacher retention

Podolsky, A., Kini, T., Darling-Hammond, L., & Bishop, J. (2019). Strategies for attracting and
retaining educators: What does the evidence say? Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(38).
http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3722
● Approach: “we examined studies that analyzed the effect of different
educational practices and policies on teachers’ decisions to enter, remain in,
leave, and return to the profession. In addition, we reviewed policy literature
to identify district, state, and federal policy strategies that have been effective
at addressing the factors influencing teachers’ professional decisions. We also
analyzed, using descriptive statistical techniques, a nationally representative
survey of current and former elementary, middle, and high school teachers,
the Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) and the Teacher Follow-up Survey (TFS),
conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics (U.S. Department of
Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2012 & 2013). The TFS
includes responses from approximately 4,400 current and former public
school teachers.”
● Results: “The success of recruiting and retaining teachers by raising salaries,
along with providing effective preparation, hiring, and induction can be
enhanced when teachers work in collaborative and supportive environments.
Along with salaries, teachers’ working conditions are a strong predictor of
teacher retention in educators’ decisions about where to teach and whether to
stay. For example, efforts to institute one-time bonuses to attract teachers to
hard-to-staff schools, often called “combat pay,” have proven largely
unsuccessful when they do not also address underlying poor working
conditions (Berry, 2009).”
42
● “Research has long shown that teachers’ working conditions affect their ability
to teach well. At least four interdependent factors consistently rise to the top
as among the most important teaching and learning conditions for teachers
and most highly related to their decisions to remain teaching in a given school:
○ (1) school leadership and administrative support;
○ (2) opportunities for professional collaboration and shared
decision-making; (3) high-stakes accountability systems; and
○ (4) resources for teaching and learning”

Kini, T., & Podolsky, A. Does Teaching Experience Increase Teacher Effectiveness? A Review of
the Research (Palo Alto: Learning Policy Institute, 2016).
https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/our-work/publications-resources/does-teaching-experienc
e-increase-teacher-effectiveness-review-research
● Approach: “In this review, we examined 30 studies that analyzed the effect of
teaching experience on student outcomes in K-12 public schools, as measured
by student standardized test scores and non-test metrics when available. We
reviewed studies that examined teaching experience published in
peer-reviewed journals and by organizations with established peer-review
processes since 2003, when the use of teacher fixed effects methods—which
allows researchers to compare a teacher with multiple years of experience to
that same teacher when he or she had fewer years of experience—became
more prevalent.”
● Results: “ Teaching experience is positively associated with student achievement
gains throughout much of a teacher’s career; as teachers gain experience, their
students are more likely to do better on measures of success beyond test
scores; teachers make greater gains in their effectiveness when they teach in a
supportive, collegial environment, or accumulate experience in the same
grade, subject or district; and more experienced teachers confer benefits to
their colleagues”

Nguyen, Tuan D., Lam Pham, Matthew Springer, and Michael Crouch. (2019). The Factors of
Teacher Attrition and Retention: An Updated and Expanded Meta-Analysis of the Literature.
(EdWorkingPaper: 19-149). Retrieved from Annenberg Institute at Brown University:
https://www.edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai19-149.pdf
● Approach: “Building on a previous meta-analysis of the literature on teacher attrition
and retention by leveraging studies with longitudinal data and a modern systematic
search process, this updated comprehensive meta-analysis synthesizes findings from
120 studies on the factors of teacher attrition and retention”
● Results: “We also find stronger evidence that teacher satisfaction plays an important
role in teacher decisions to leave or stay in teaching.”
● “We find that various measures of school characteristics as an organization, namely
student disciplinary problems, administrative support, and professional development,
strongly influence whether teachers stay or leave teaching. In terms of school
resources, we find that providing teaching materials reduces odds of attrition.”
● “Being evaluated, even for accountability purposes, does not necessarily increase
teacher attrition; in fact, the odds of attrition for teachers who are assessed are
somewhat smaller than those who are not. In terms of teacher effectiveness, higher
43
quality teachers are less likely to exit than lower quality teachers, and there is
evidence that teachers in the lowest quartile or quintile of value-added scores are
more likely to leave teaching. Relatedly, teachers in merit pay programs are less likely
to leave teaching than those who are not.”
● “ We find teachers are less likely to turnover when they are satisfied with the school
environment or when they report adequate support from administrators. The same is
true when there are fewer disciplinary problems in the school, when a more effective
principal leads their school or when salaries are higher. In addition to the importance
of salary, these findings suggest other effective strategies for retaining teachers are
factors that school leaders have the power to control, such as creating a consistent
approach to discipline and providing teachers with opportunities for professional
development.“

Sims, S., & Jerrim, J. (2020). TALIS 2018: teacher working conditions, turnover and attrition.
London: Department for Education.
● Approach: sampling data from England from TALIS 2018 and also from England’s
School Workforce Census, teacher survey data from their schools is linked to turnover
data.
● Results: “Teachers who report higher Leadership/Management scores for their school
also tend to have higher retention. For an experienced teacher with otherwise
average characteristics, a one standard deviation increase in the
Leadership/Management score is associated with a reduction in the probability of
leaving the school by the next academic year from 4.1% to 2.3% and a reduction in
the probability of leaving the profession altogether from 1% to 0.5%”
● “The Leadership/Management score is composed of a number of questions capturing:
whether there is a supportive culture within the school; whether managers recognise
teachers for doing a good job; whether teachers have a chance to participate in
decision-making and whether teachers are given the autonomy necessary to do their
job.”

Some other relevant papers

Vangrieken, Katrien & Dochy, Filip & Raes, Elisabeth & Kyndt, Eva. (2015). Teacher
collaboration: A systematic review. Educational Research Review. 15.
10.1016/j.edurev.2015.04.002.
● “In total, 82 studies were selected based on predefined selection criteria and reviewed
by means of a narrative review method to thematically gather information across the
studies. The first aim of this review was to provide an overview of the terminological
framework to describe teacher collaboration used in previous research. Collaboration
was perceived here as a continuum ranging from mere aggregates of individuals to
strong team collaboration. This continuum was conceptualised as the degree of team
entitativity. Second, the review investigated the focus and depth of collaboration.
These appeared to be important issues and provide different opportunities for
(collaborative) learning. Third, although realising teacher collaboration proves to be
challenging, this review listed benefits for students, teachers, and the school. Fourth
44
and fifth, various facilitating and hindering factors were explored that may serve as
valuable points of action to realise effective collaboration.”

Eells, Rachel Jean, "Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher Efficacy and
Student Achievement" (2011). Dissertations. 133.
● “The meta-analyses conducted for this sample demonstrate a strong positive effect
size for the relationship between CTE and achievement. As collective teacher efficacy
increases in a school, so does achievement. This holds true for all subject areas
measured, and regardless of timing of measurement”

Kraft, Matthew A., Nicole S. Simon, and Melissa Arnold Lyon. (2020). Sustaining a Sense of
Success: The Importance of Teacher Working Conditions During the COVID-19 Pandemic .
(EdWorkingPaper: 20-279). https://doi.org/10.26300/35nj-v890
● Approach: “We examine teachers’ experiences during emergency remote teaching in
the spring of 2020 using responses to a working conditions survey from a sample of
7,841 teachers across 206 schools and 9 states.”
● Results: “supportive working conditions in schools played a critical role in helping
teachers to sustain their sense of success. Teachers who could depend on their
district and school-based leadership for strong communication, targeted training,
meaningful collaboration, fair expectations, and recognition of their efforts were least
likely to experience declines in their sense of success”

Kraft MA, Blazar D, Hogan D. The Effect of Teacher Coaching on Instruction and Achievement:
A Meta-Analysis of the Causal Evidence. Review of Educational Research [Internet]. 2018;88
(4) :547-588
● Approach: “We review the empirical literature on teacher coaching and conduct
meta-analyses to estimate the mean effect of coaching programs on teachers’
instructional practice and students’ academic achievement”
● Results: “Combining results across 60 studies that employ causal research designs, we
find pooled effect sizes of 0.49 standard deviations (SD) on instruction and 0.18 SD on
achievement”
● “Our estimates of the effect of coaching on teachers’ instructional practice (0.49 SD)
are larger than differences in measures of instructional quality between novice and
veteran teachers’ (0.2 to 0.4 SD; Blazar & Kraft, 2015).”
● “Effects on students’ academic performance (0.18 SD) are of similar or larger
magnitude than estimates of the degree to which teachers improve their ability to
raise student achievement during the first five to ten years of their careers, with
estimates ranging from 0.05 to 0.15 SD (Atteberry, Loeb, & Wykoff 2015; Papay &
Kraft, 2015). “
● “Effects on achievement are also larger than pooled estimates from causal studies of
almost all other school-based interventions reviewed by Fryer (2017) including
student incentives, teacher pre-service training, merit-based pay, general PD,
data-driven instruction, and extended learning time. Interventions of comparable
effect sizes on achievement include comprehensive school reform (0.1 to 0.2 SD,
depending on the school reform model; Borman, Hewes, Overman, & Brown, 2003),
oversubscribed charter schools (0.04 SD to 0.08 SD per year of attendance; Chabrier,
Cohodes, & Oreopoulos, 2016), large reductions in class size (roughly 0.2 SD; Krueger,
45
1999), high dosage tutoring (0.15 to 0.25 SD; Blazar et al., 2015a; Blachman et al.,
2004), and changes in curriculum (0.05 to 0.3 SD depending on the grade level and
curriculum under investigation; Agodini et al., 2009; Koedel, Li, Springer, & Tan, 2017).”
● “we find that pairing coaching with group trainings is associated with 0.31 SD larger
effect size on instruction and 0.12 SD larger effect size on achievement. Consistent
with the theory of action outlined in Figure 1, this suggests that teachers may benefit
from building baseline skills (e.g., content knowledge) prior to engaging directly with a
coach. For instructional outcomes, pairing coaching with instructional resources and
materials (e.g., curriculum) also is associated with greater gains (0.21 SD larger), while
providing teachers with a video library is associated with more limited benefits (-0.27
SD smaller). We do not find any significant difference in effect sizes for coaching
programs that were delivered in person or virtually, though our standard errors are
too large to rule out even moderately sized differences. Finally, for both measures of
dosage – total hours of coaching, and total hours of PD when coaching is paired with
other program features – we fail to find any evidence in support of the hypothesis
that coaching must be high-dosage to be effective. We find very precisely estimate
null effects for both instruction and achievement outcomes”

46
References
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● Eells, Rachel Jean, "Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher

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productive mentor improve the productivity of mentees?. Labour Economics, 63,
101792.
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Appendix - The research in detail 15

and coherence of programs offered in the school—professional development, curriculum,

Burns et al (2017) (✔) (✔)

Goddard et al (2015) ✔ (✔) (✔) (✔)

Grissom, Loeb & Master (2011)​1

Helal & Coelli (2016) (✔) ✔ ✔ ✔ (✔)

Hoy et al (1998) (✔) (✔)

Johnson, Kraft & Papay (2012) (✔) ✔ (✔)

Kraft & Papay (2014) (✔) (✔) (✔) ✔

Kraft, Marinell & Yee (2016) (✔) ✔ ✔

Ladd (2011)​2 (⚪)​1 (⚪) (⚪) (✔)

Lee & Louis (2019) (✔) ✔

Lee, Walker & Bryant (2019) ⚪ ⚪

Ronfeldt et al (2015) ✔ (✔)

Sebastian, Allensworth & Huang (✔) (✔) (✔) (✔)

TNTP (2012) (✔) (✔)

common planning periods, providing professional-development or additional release time,

Guiding Principles & Conclusions

Appendix - The research in detail

Working condition studies

achievement, and a second mediating process through which elementary

Goddard et al. 2000, 2004), perceived collective efficacy is a significant positive

on collaboration about assessments, including reviewing state test

compared to data from the Missouri Assessment Program to explore impact

are conditional on the type and quality of those time investments.”

independent contribution to one or more of the achievement measures. Although

School Leadership Reviews

budgetary tasks, facility planning and managing non-instructional staff,

distractions that detract from mission and then recognising and

interact with each other focusing on maintaining an attractive campus

Teacher assignment and partnering research

○ We document that a teacher’s own performance is affected by the quality of

○ Central to our study is the need to obtain unbiased measures of the

School Turnaround Literature

Working conditions and teacher retention

Some other relevant papers

● Eells, Rachel Jean, "Meta-Analysis of the Relationship Between Collective Teacher

● Hoy, W. K., Hannum, J. and Tschannen-Moran, M. (1998) ‘Organizational Climate and

● Liebowitz, D. D. and Porter, L. (2019) ‘The Effect of Principal Behaviors on Student,

● J Sebastian, E Allensworth, H Huang (2016) The role of teacher leadership in how

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Grissom, Loeb & Master (2011)1

Ladd (2011)2 (⚪)1 (⚪) (⚪) (✔)