We present new estimates of the importance of teachers in early grades for later grade outcomes, but unlike the existing literature that examines teacher "fade-out," we directly compare the contribution of early-grade teachers to later year outcomes against the contributions of later year teachers to the same later year outcomes. Where…

Teachers' impact on student long-run success is only partially explained by their contributions to students' short-run academic performance. For this study, we explore a second dimension of teacher effectiveness by creating measures of teachers' contributions to student class-attendance. We find systematic variation in teacher effectiveness at…

Having good teachers in the classroom matters, and in recent years better data have helped researchers more accurately measure individual teachers' effects on their pupils. A novel RAND study goes further, finding that teachers' effectiveness (or lack thereof) ripples out beyond their own students and affects the educational experiences of their…

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…

Responding to an Illinois law that took effect in 2010, the Performance Evaluation Reform Act (PERA), Chicago Public Schools (CPS) created and implemented the REACH (Recognizing Educators Advancing Chicago's Students) educator evaluation and support system. REACH was piloted in 2012-13. It is still being implemented as of the 2019-20 school year…

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…

There is a great deal of concern regarding teacher impacts on student achievement being used as a substantial portion of a teacher's performance evaluation. This study investigated the degree of concordance and discordance between mathematics teacher ranking using value tables and covariate regression, which have both been used as measures 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…

In this study, we compare the teacher quality distributions in charter schools and traditional public schools, and examine mechanisms that might explain cross-sector differences in teacher effectiveness as measured by teacher value-added scores using school and teacher level data from Florida. We have three main findings. First, we find that…

Estimates of teacher "value-added" suggest teachers vary substantially in their ability to promote student learning. Prompted by this finding, many states and school districts have adopted value-added measures as indicators of teacher job performance. In this paper, we conduct a new test of the validity of value-added models. Using…

The single best predictor of who will be a great teacher next year is who was a great teacher this year. Some great teachers are seasoned veterans, while some are new to the field. Experience matters, of course, particularly in the early years of a teaching career, but it's no guarantee of teacher effectiveness. There is a wide variation in…

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…