The Teacher Evaluation Landscape in Missouri (TEL-MO)
A landscape analysis of teacher evaluation models used across Missouri school districts from 2022–23 through 2024–25.
What the ERRE Center Does
The Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Effectiveness (ERRE) Center, supported by the Walton Family Foundation and the University of Missouri, conducts research on the educator workforce to inform state and district policy. Working in partnership with Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) and the Department of Higher Education and Workforce Development (DHEWD), the ERRE Center collects and analyzes educator data, studies educator labor market dynamics, and develops tools to assess teacher working conditions.
The Center’s work spans three main areas: examining teacher evaluation systems across districts, researching teacher shortages and mobility, and designing a statewide educator survey to capture teacher working conditions and retention intentions. Findings are translated into reports, briefs, and policy recommendations aimed at improving teacher recruitment, retention, and effectiveness across Missouri and the nation.
Meet Our Team
Research that shapes teacher policy in Missouri
Our team brings expertise in education policy, labor economics, and rigorous quantitative methods.
Leadership
Tuan D. Nguyen, Ph.D.
Principal Investigator
University of Missouri
Tuan D. Nguyen, Ph.D., is a Mizzou Forward Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at the University of Missouri. He serves as Principal Investigator of the Educator Recruitment, Retention, and Effectiveness Center. His research focuses on education policy, the economics of education, teacher labor markets, rural education as well as STEM and special education, with particular expertise in causal inference and meta-analysis. Tuan has secured over $8.6 million in extramural funding as PI or co-PI, including an NSF CAREER Award examining the supply, qualifications, and career paths of STEM teachers. He has published widely in leading journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Educational Researcher, Review of Educational Research, AERA Open, and Economics of Education Review, including highly cited work on teacher shortages, turnover, and the rural teacher workforce. His scholarship has shaped national policy conversations, with contributions to the Economic Report of the President, testimony before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and frequent media coverage in outlets including the New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, and Education Week. He also maintains widely used public resources, including www.teachershortages.com and the Community Assets and Relative Rurality (CARR) index, www.ruralityindex.com.
Education policy
Economics of education
Teacher labor markets
Yujia Liu, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Missouri
Yujia Liu, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Missouri, where she contributes quantitative and policy-analytic expertise to ERRE. She earned her Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Education Policy and Social Context from the University of California, Irvine, and holds an M.Ed. in International Education Policy and Management from Vanderbilt University's Peabody College. Her research interests span education policy, teacher labor markets, causal inference, and rural education, with a portfolio of publications in leading outlets such as the Journal of Research in Science Teaching, The Internet and Higher Education, and Computers & Education. Her recent work examines STEM teacher characteristics and mobility in the American Midwest, the rural teacher workforce using a novel rurality measure, teacher mentoring and retention, and the effects of base salary increases on teacher labor supply. Yujia brings strong methodological skills in quantitative research and causal inference, along with experience analyzing large-scale administrative data on educators, positioning her to play a central role in ERRE's labor market research and statewide educator survey work.
Education policy
Teacher labor markets
Causal inference
Cory Koedel, Ph.D.
Co-Principal Investigator
University of Missouri
Cory Koedel, Ph.D., is the Middlebush Chair in Economics and Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Missouri. He is a Co-PI on the ERRE Center. His research focuses on teacher labor markets, teacher evaluation, and educator compensation, with a strong methodological grounding in applied econometrics and causal inference. Cory has served on numerous influential technical advisory bodies, including the Growth Model Technical Advisory Committee for MO DESE, the Technical Advisory Group for the National Council on Teacher Quality, and the REL Central Governing Board. He has held editorial leadership roles at multiple top journals, including as former Coeditor of Economics of Education Review and current editorial board member at Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, Education Finance and Policy, Research in Higher Education, and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness. As PI or Co-PI on grants from the IES, NSF, and several foundations, Cory has supported a broad research agenda on teacher evaluations and labor markets. He has an extensive publication record in leading journals such as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, American Educational Research Journal, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, and Educational Researcher.
Teacher labor markets
Teacher evaluation
Educator compensation
Recent Reports
Recent ERRE reports.
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