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Preliminary Findings on the Effects of the Leading Educators Fellowship Program Are Mixed

• Among fellows, there are both some statistically significant positive and negative program effects on student achievement, with results that vary across states, subject areas, and model specifications. The estimates of student achievement effect for fellows are based on very small samples and do not point to any clear positive or negative impacts, so we recommend caution in interpreting these results.
• Among mentee teachers, for whom sample sizes are larger, there are some suggestive evidence of impacts on student achievement — in particular, marginally significant and significant positive program effects among mentees who teach math and social studies, respectively, in Louisiana.
• The impact of the program on teacher retention is unclear, with no consistent pattern of retention impacts across cohorts or states.
• Future analyses with larger samples of both fellows and mentees will provide greater statistical power for more reliably detecting any true program effects.

The Leading Educators Fellowship program selects promising mid-career teachers through a competitive application process and develops their skills as leaders of school improvement efforts. The specific objectives of the program are to (1) increase the leadership skills and capacity of teacher leaders in order to improve student achievement in high-need schools and (2) retain highly effective teachers in high-need schools by encouraging commitment to the schools and improving the school leadership pipeline. This report presents findings from preliminary analyses of the program's impacts on student achievement and teacher retention in both Louisiana and Missouri in the 2011–2012 through 2013–2014 school years for teachers who are program fellows and for the teachers mentored by fellows.

The findings from this early analysis of the program impacts of fellows are promising but mixed, and overall do not conclusively demonstrate that the program has affected student achievement. For mentees, the findings show some positive effects on student achievement among mentees who teach math and social studies in Louisiana. The findings do not point to a consistent pattern of retention impacts across cohorts or states. Future analyses with larger samples of both fellows and mentees will provide greater statistical power for more reliably detecting any true program effects.

• Chapter One

  Introduction

• Chapter Two

  Background

• Chapter Three

  Description of the Leading Educators Fellowship Program

• Chapter Four

  Data

• Chapter Five

  Analytic Methods

• Chapter Six

  Results

• Chapter Seven

  Conclusions and Discussion

• Appendix A

  Propensity Score Matching and Power Analyses