Project Activities
The project team carried out three activities. First, the team examined current practices in student-teacher assignment through an analysis of statewide assignment practices in North Carolina using state administrative data and a series of focus groups and interview of leaders, teachers, and other key stakeholders tasked with classroom rostering in Wake County Public School System (WCPSS) and Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools (CMS). Second, the project team further developed the ERS including the underlying analytics used to optimize student-teacher assignment and a visual application to inform the rostering process at key decision points for use by rostering personnel. Third, the project team implemented a pilot study with 10 elementary schools in WCPSS to examine the implementation, impacts, and costs of ERS.
Structured Abstract
Setting
This project took place in North Carolina. One research activity used state administrative data while the other activities used information from an urban school district.
Sample
The analyses of administrative data and the pilot study focused on 4th and 5th grade. The research team conducted the pilot study with 4th and 5th grade teachers working in self-contained classrooms in 10 elementary schools (about 2000 students) within a North Carolina urban school district.
The Equitable Rostering Solution (ERS) is an automated student rostering system intended to increase student equity in access to effective instruction, increase the number of students matched to a teacher with an established track of record of success serving students with similar profiles (student-teacher complementarity), and augment personnel's judgement when rostering students to teachers. The ERS algorithm takes into account data on students’ prior achievement, behavior, special education needs, gender, and race/ethnicity to match students to using a variation of the Gates-Shapley Matching Algorithm (G-SSM).
Research design and methods
The research team used used multi-level models to analyze the administrative data to identify the relative contribution to classroom sorting of student-level characteristics and teacher characteristics. Semi-structured interviews with school leaders and other personnel responsible for classroom rostering in the schools and district provided additional insight on classroom rostering processes. The pilot study used a clustered-randomized design with six schools receiving ERS classroom rosters and six schools (30 teachers) using the classroom rosters produced via their normal course of practice.
Control condition
The control condition in the pilot study was the normal practice that schools use for assigning students to classroom teachers in 4th and 5th grade.
Key measures
The research team examined the operational and social feasibility of ERS using a variant of the Hexagon Discussion and Analysis Tool; the impact of ERS on student attendance, disciplinary actions, year-end test scores, and differential access to highly effective instruction; and school leaders' perceptions about the ERS.
Data analytic strategy
The research team used multi-level models to estimate for the North Carolina administrative data. They developed a coding taxonomy and completed content analysis on transcript data from the focus groups and interviews. The research team made simple conditional mean comparisons between the ERS and control group schools for the pilot study.
Cost analysis strategy
For the cost analysis, researchers used the perspective of schools and districts and accounted for opportunity costs of training personnel to use the ERS. The analysis used the ingredients method and the CostOut tool for organizing and facilitating data collection.
People and institutions involved
Project contributors
Products and publications
The project team will produce a commercially available version of the ERS along with user guides and training materials, papers on current student-teacher assignment practices in North Carolina, and a paper summarizing the implementation, impact, and cost findings from the pilot study. These findings will be directly provided to both the state and district education agencies through briefings and publicly available briefs.
Publications:
Cohen-Vogel, L. Brooks, C., Little, M., Drake, T.A., Domina, T., Springer, M., Cadilla. V. (2025.) “Is 2nd Grade a Zone of Instructional Development for Teachers? Rethinking Strategic Staffing with a Mixed Methods Study of Principals’ Elementary Assignment Decisions.” Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Available open source at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.3102/01623737251348202
Springer, M.G., Halpin, P., Springer, J.A., Stuit, D.A., Cohen-Vogel, L., Brook, C. and Powell, J. M., (2022). Disproportional Assignment: The Need for Strategic, Equity-forward Student-Teacher Classroom Rostering. In T. Downes and K.M. Killeen (Eds.). Recent Advancements in Education Finance and Policy. Information Age Publishing.
Questions about this project?
To answer additional questions about this project or provide feedback, please contact the program officer.
