Aaron Sojourner

The importance of teachers to student success is hard to overstate. Improving school's ability to select more effective teachers is an obvious avenue for improving their workforce. This exploration study will contribute to a small but promising recent body of research on teacher selection, which shows that districts have choice amongst applicants, and can obtain information during the application process that is predictive of both teacher effectiveness and retention. One widely used selectio...

In this project, researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and St. Catherine's University will partner with the Minneapolis Public Schools (MPS) to examine MPS teacher effectiveness measurement and teacher hiring practices. Improving teacher selection (either through improvements in recruiting and screening or through selective retention after a period of observation and performance measurement) could lead to improved performance in the teaching workforce. Researchers, however...

Northwestern University's School of Education and Social Policy established the Multidisciplinary Program in the Education Sciences (MPES) to support interdisciplinary doctoral training.