Recent evidence on teacher productivity suggests that teachers meaningfully influence non-test academic student outcomes that are commonly overlooked by narrowly focusing on test scores. Despite a large number of studies investigating the Teach For America (TFA) effect on math and English achievement, little is known about non-tested academic…

Policy makers and school leaders are perennially concerned with the capacity of the nation's public schools to recruit and retain highly skilled teachers. Over the past two decades, policy strategies including the federal No Child Left Behind Act and alternative pathways to teaching, as well as changes in the broader labor market, have altered the…

There is growing interest among researchers, policy makers, and practitioners in identifying teachers who are skilled at improving student outcomes beyond test scores. However, questions remain about the validity of these teacher effect estimates. Leveraging the random assignment of teachers to classes, I find that teachers have causal effects on…

Sorensen (corresponding author) Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy University of Albany SUNY Albany, NY 12222 lsorensen@albany.edu Abstract We use rich longitudinally matched administrative data on students and teachers in North Carolina to examine the patterns of differential effectiveness by teachers' years of experience. The paper…

Teacher effectiveness varies substantially, yet principals' evaluations of teachers often fail to differentiate performance among teachers. We offer new evidence on principals' subjective evaluations of their teachers' effectiveness using two sources of data from a large, urban district: principals' high-stakes personnel evaluations of teachers,…

There is growing concern among policy makers over the quality of the teacher workforce in general, and the distribution of effective teachers across schools. The impact of teacher attrition on overall teacher quality will depend on the effectiveness of teachers who leave the profession. Likewise, teacher turnover may alleviate or worsen inequities…

Accountability systems are designed to introduce market pressures to increase efficiency in education. One potential channel by which this can occur is to match with effective teachers in the transfer market. I use a smooth maximum score estimator model, North Carolina data, and the state's bonus system to analyze how teachers and schools change…

Current uses of value-added modeling largely ignore or assume away the potential for teachers to be more effective with one type of student than another or in one subject than another. This paper explores the stability of value-added measures across different subgroups and subjects using administrative data from a large urban school district. For…

Research on the effectiveness of educational inputs, particularly research on teacher effectiveness, typically overlooks teachers' potential impact on behavioral outcomes, such as student attendance. Using longitudinal data on teachers and students in North Carolina I estimate teacher effects on primary school student absences in a value-added…

We examine behavioral responses to an incentive program that offers high-performing teachers in ten school districts across the country $20,000 to transfer into the district's hardest-to-staff schools. We discuss behavioral responses to the program on high-performing teachers' willingness to transfer (supply) and the effect of the transfer offer…

We investigate whether commonly used value-added estimation strategies produce accurate estimates of teacher effects under a variety of scenarios. We estimate teacher effects in simulated student achievement data sets that mimic plausible types of student grouping and teacher assignment scenarios. We find that no one method accurately captures…

We compare teacher preparation programs in Missouri based on the effectiveness of their graduates in the classroom. The differences in effectiveness between teachers from different preparation programs are much smaller than has been suggested in previous work. In fact, virtually all of the variation in teacher effectiveness comes from…

Most teacher layoffs during the Great Recession were implemented following inverse-seniority policies. In this paper, I examine the implementation of a discretionary layoff policy in Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. Administrators did not uniformly lay off the most or least senior teachers but instead selected teachers who were previously retired,…

Since 2002, public school teachers in Florida have been permitted to choose between a defined benefit (DB) and a defined contribution (DC) retirement plan. We exploit this unique policy environment to study new teachers' revealed preferences over pension plan structures. Roughly 30 percent of teachers hired between 2003 and 2008 selected the DC…

State policies affect the qualifications of beginning teachers in numerous ways, including regulating entry requirements, providing incentives for graduate degrees, and subsidizing preparation programs at public universities. In this paper we assess how these policy choices affect student achievement, specifically comparing traditionally prepared…