Despite the concerns regarding value-added models (VAMs), advocates hold strong to VAMs' theoretical strengths and potentials, while adopting a set of agreed-upon albeit "heroic" set of assumptions, without research in support. These assumptions transcend promotional, policy, media, and research-based pieces, but they have never been…

When students look back on their most important teachers, the social aspects of their education are often what they recall. Learning to set goals, take risks and responsibility, or simply believe in oneself are often fodder for fond thanks--alongside mastering precalculus, becoming a critical reader, or remembering the capital of Turkmenistan. The…

We apply "value-added" models to estimate the effects of teachers on an outcome they cannot plausibly affect: student height. When fitting the relatively simple models that are widely used in educational practice to New York City data, we find the standard deviation of teacher effects on height is nearly as large as that for math and…

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…

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…

In the fall of 2012, Idaho implemented a plan to award bonus pay to schools whose students demonstrated academic growth based on the Betebenner (2008) method. This study examined the relationship of the amount of bonus paid to a school, the percentage of students from low income families associated with a school, and the location of the school…

The educational reform movement in the United States has resulted in a variety of states moving toward a system of value-added modeling (VAM) to measure a teacher's contribution to student achievement. Recently, many states have begun using VAM scores as part of a larger system to evaluate teacher performance. In the past decade, only "core…

Evidence that teachers' short-term instructional effects persist over time and predict substantial long-run impacts on students' lives provides much of the impetus for a wide range of educational reforms focused on identifying and responding to differences in teachers' value-added to student learning. However, relatively little research has…