Project Activities
The postdoctoral training program provided training to 4 postdoctoral fellows for 2 years each. During their postdoctoral fellowships, the fellows worked with Stanford faculty mentors to develop research proposals and plans and conducted research on a number of issues in education policy and practice. These topics included the following:
- Studies of the effects of various teacher hiring and staffing policies (including teacher recruitment and retention and the use of substitute teachers and alternatively certified teachers) on the teaching force
- Methods of measuring and improving teacher effectiveness
- Teachers' preparation to promote equitable educational outcomes, and factors that reduce or prevent teacher biases
- The effects of ethnic studies curricula on minority student's academic success
- The effects of California's algebra-for-all initiative
- The effects of the federal School Improvement Grant Program
- Programs and policies to improve early childhood education and school readiness
- Studies of recent trends in school readiness and racial/socioeconomic gaps in school readiness
- Studies of school district leadership, including school board membership and superintendent preparation.
The postdoctoral fellowship program also provided the fellows with professional development in grant-writing skills, academic publishing, and communicating their results to stakeholders. They also received training in skills needed to work effectively in research practice partnerships. For example, two fellows actively worked with the Stanford-SFUSD (San Francisco Unified School District) research partnership: http://collaborate.caedpartners.org/display/stanfordsfusd. Through that partnership, they collaborated with a number of school district officials in their research.
During their fellowships the fellows collaborated on grant-writing with Stanford Faculty, presented their research at numerous conferences, and published 16 scholarly papers and numerous working papers.
Key outcomes
Following their postdoctoral fellowships, each of the fellows took a faculty or university research position focused on educational research. As of 2020, Jane Rochmes is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Christopher Newport University. Emily Penner is an Assistant Professor of Education at the University of California, Irvine. Scott Latham is an Associate Research Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. And Ying Shi is an Assistant Professor of Public Administration and International Affairs at Syracuse University.
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Completed fellows
Products and publications
Book chapter
Latham, S. (2018). Changes in School Readiness of America's Entering Kindergarteners (1998–2010). In A.J. Mashburn, J. LoCasale-Crouch, and K. Pears (Eds) Kindergarten Transition and Readiness (pp. 111–138). NY: Springer.
Journal article, monograph, or newsletter
Bassok, D. and Latham, S. (2017). Kids Today: The Rise in Children's Academic Skills at Kindergarten Entry. Educational Researcher, 46 (1), 7–20. Full text
Bassok, D., Dee, T., and Latham, S. (2019). The Effects of Accountability Incentives in Early Childhood Education. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 38(4): 838–866.
Bassok, D., Gibbs, C. and Latham, S. (2018). Preschool and Children's Outcomes in the Early Grades: Are There Differences Across Two National Cohorts of Kindergarten Entrants? Child Development. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13067.
Bitler, M.P., Domina, T., Penner, E.K., and Hoynes, H. (2015). Distributional Effects of a School Voucher Program: Evidence from New York City. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 8(3), 419–450. DOI: 10.1080/19345747.2014.921259. Full text
Dee, T.S. and Penner, E. K. (2017). The Causal Effects of Cultural Relevance: Evidence from an Ethnic Studies Curriculum. American Educational Research Journal, 54(1): 127–166. doi:10.3102/0002831216677002
Domina, T., McEachin, A.J., Penner, A.M., Penner, E.K., and Conley, A.M. (2015). Aiming High and Falling Short: California's Eighth-Grade Algebra-For-All Effort. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37(3): 275–295. doi:10.3102/0162373714543685
Domina, T., Penner, A.M., and Penner, E.K. (2017). Membership has its Privileges: Student Incentives and Stigmatized Identities in the Accountability Era. Sociological Science. doi:10.15195/v3.a13 Full text
Penner, A.M., Domina, T., Penner, E.K., and Conley, A.M. (2015). Curricular Policy as a Collective Effects Problem: A Distributional Approach. Social Science Research, 52: 627–641. doi:10.1016/j.ssresearch.2015.03.008
Penner, E.K. (2018). Early Parenting and the Reduction of Educational Inequality in Childhood and Adolescence. The Journal of Educational Research, 111(2), 213–231. DOI: 10.1080/00220671.2016.1246407.
Penner, E.K. (2016). Teaching for all? Teach for America's Effects on the Distribution of Student Achievement. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 9(3), 259–282.
Penner, E.K., Rochmes, J., Liu, J., Solanki, S., and Loeb, S. (2019). Differing Views of Equity: How Prospective Educators Perceive Their Role in Closing Achievement Gaps. RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 5(3), 103–127. doi:10.7758/rsf.2019.5.3.06.
Shi, Y. (2018). The Puzzle of Missing Female Engineers: Academic Preparation, Ability Beliefs, and Preferences. Economics of Education Review, 64, 129–143.
Shi, Y. (2020). Who Benefits from Selective Schools? Evidence from Elite Boarding School Admissions. Economics of Education Review, 74,, 10917.
Streib, J. and Rochmes, J. (2019). Writing in Race: Evidence Against Employers' Assumptions about Race and Soft Skills. Social Problems, 1–21. doi: 10.1093/socpro/spz034
Sun, M., Penner, E.K., and Loeb, S. (2017). Resource- and Approach-Driven Multi-Dimensional Change: Three-Year Effects of School Improvement Grants. American Educational Research Journal, 54(4): 607–643. DOI: 10.3102/0002831217695790. Full text
Proceeding
Rangel, M. A. and Shi, Y. (2019) Early Patterns of Skill Acquisition and Immigrants' Specialization in STEM Careers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 116(2): 484–489.
Working paper
Bassok, D., Dee, T., and Latham, S. (2017) The Effects of Accountability Incentives in Early Childhood Education. CEPA Working Paper No. 17–10. Full text
Dee, T. and Penner, E. (2016) The Causal Effects of Cultural Relevance: Evidence from an Ethnic Studies Curriculum. CEPA Working Paper No. 16–01. Full text
Questions about this project?
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