School Improvement and Student Success
Updated: Jul 9
This line of research examines the school and instructional factors that shape student achievement and long-term success, with particular attention to how advantages accumulate over a student's educational career. A central strand focuses on teacher quality, moving beyond single-year measures to ask how cumulative exposure to effective and highly qualified teachers shapes student outcomes over time. My work shows that sustained access to high-performing teachers has lasting effects on students' educational outcomes (Lee, 2018), that cumulative exposure to highly qualified science teachers shapes students' longer-term academic pathways (Lee & Mamerow, 2019), and that teacher qualification, measured cumulatively, is associated with students' eventual educational attainment (Lee & Lee, 2020; Lee & Choi, 2024). Viewed this way, teacher quality becomes a sustained condition of schooling rather than a one-year effect, with direct implications for how districts assign and retain their strongest teachers.
A second strand examines course access and academic tracking, particularly early access to gateway coursework. My work on Algebra I demonstrates how taking the course by eighth grade is associated with stronger academic outcomes (Lee & Mao, 2021) and how early exposure shapes students' entry into postsecondary STEM fields (Mao, Yang, & Lee, in press). A related line considers how school reforms take hold, showing that teacher buy-in is central to whether comprehensive reform translates into student academic growth (Lee & Min, 2017). Across these projects, a common theme emerges: the opportunities students are afforded—effective teachers, rigorous coursework, and well-implemented reforms—compound over time, and understanding how they accumulate is central to improving schools and expanding student success.
