Tom Swiderski

@tswid.bsky.social

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Researcher at the Education Policy Initiative at Carolina (EPIC) at UNC studying how to improve high school to college & career transitions. Current work: COVID recovery, absenteeism, CTE/career skills, & teacher prep. Web: tswiderski.web.unc.edu

Title: Access and relationships: Investigating what predicts student teaching with a highly effective teacher. Abstract: We link student teaching placement and K-12 administrative data from North Carolina to better understand the contexts in which educator preparation programs (EPPs) and K-12 districts make placements and the factors that predict whether EPPs and districts make placements with a highly effective teacher. Our work builds on two key findings from prior literature—cooperating teachers (CTs) are critically important to the development of preservice teachers (PSTs) and information asymmetries between EPPs and districts complicate the placement process. We find that there is significant variation across EPPs in their access to highly effective teachers and that there are opportunities to place many more PSTs with a highly effective teacher. Multiple measures of prior relationships, such as the EPP having recently placed with the CT and the CT being an alumnus of the EPP, predict the likelihood of EPPs and districts placing with a highly effective teacher.
Figure 4: Coefficient plot of first-differences estimates of effect of absenteeism on achievement. The chart depicts the point estimates and 95% confidence intervals of the estimated effect of days absent on achievement in 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, 2022-23, and 2023-24. The chart highlights that the three pre-pandemic estimates are all about 0.0055 SDs. In 2022-23, the estimate is only 0.0032 SDs. In 2023-24, the estimate is 0.0057 SDs. The confidence intervals for 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19, and 2023-24 all overlap with each other. The confidence interval for 2022-23 does not overlap with any other estimate.
Picture of abstract, which reads: "Twenty-nine states require or allow all 11th graders to take the ACT or SAT in school, for free, eliminating access to testing as a barrier to college entry. I examine whether this affects postsecondary outcomes using state-aggregated panel data and time-varying difference-in-differences methods. I find policy adoption led to 2% increases in selective 4-year enrollments by students from treated states. However, adoption had no effect on enrollments within adopting states' selective institutions, in part because institutions enrolled fewer students from out-of-state after adoption. I also find null but directionally negative effects on the number of graduates from state institutions. Therefore, impacts are small but positive for students from adopting states, but null or negative for adopting states' institutions."