This dissertation is comprised of three essays, each examining a different topic in labor economics. In Chapter 1, I examine the productivity and selection effects of K-12 teacher tenure by leveraging variation from New Jersey's TEACHNJ Act. This law extended the pre-tenure period from three to four years and allowed districts to dismiss…

In this study researchers examined the effectiveness of one of the largest teacher education programs located within the largest research-intensive universities within the US. They did this using a value-added model as per current federal educational policy imperatives to assess the measurable effects of teacher education programs on their teacher…

Value-added models are being implemented in many states in an attempt to measure the contributions of individual teachers and schools toward students' learning. Scores from these models are increasingly used for high-stakes purposes such as setting compensation, hiring or dismissing teachers, awarding tenure, and closing schools. The statistician…

This study disaggregates posttest, pretest, and value-added or difference scores in economics into four types of economic learning: positive, retained, negative, and zero. The types are derived from patterns of student responses to individual items on a multiple-choice test. The micro and macro data from the "Test of Understanding in College…

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the number of charter schools in New Orleans has rapidly expanded. During the 2012/13 school year--the period covered by this study--of the 85 public schools in New Orleans, 75 were chartered, enrolling more than 84 percent of all public school students in the city in 92 different school campuses. This study…

Value-added (VA) measures are currently the predominant approach used to compare the effectiveness of schools. Recent educational effectiveness research, however, has developed alternative approaches including the regression discontinuity (RD) design, which also allows estimation of absolute school effects. Initial research suggests RD is a viable…

The release of institution-level earnings information as part of the Obama Administration's new College Scorecard data has already spawned new "value-added" rankings based on the economic outcomes of students who attended similar institutions. These emerging rankings are an improvement on simple unadjusted rankings, but the wide variance…

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…

Much has been made of the academic success of children who have attended private secondary schools in Britain, but far less attention has been directed to whether there are similar benefits from attending a private primary school. Using data from three British birth cohorts--born in 1958, 1970 and 2000/1--this paper profiles the family background…

Purpose: Resource allocation is a key policy instrument that affects the educational achievement distribution (EAD). The literature on methods of allocation is focused mainly on equity issues. The purpose of this paper is to develop a composite funding formula, which adds to the equity-based element (i.e. a needs-based element compensating for…

Both anecdotal and systematic evidence points to the importance of teachers for students' long-run success. Previous research on effective teachers has focused almost exclusively on student test score gains in math and reading. For this study we are able to link middle and high school teachers to the class-attendance of students in their…

This study examines learning gains of college students' performance in critical thinking, reading, writing, and mathematics as assessed by the ETS Proficiency Profile (EPP). In this study, students' college learning gain was estimated by calculating the score differences between their first and last test administrations. Results revealed that (a)…

Although teacher quality is usually signalled to be the most relevant school-level factor impacting students' learning, little is known about the relevance of teacher effects explaining educational inequality. By using a value-added model for a cohort of 10th graders, in this work we examine the socioeconomic gap in teacher effects across Chilean…

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…

Despite evidence that many schools and districts have considerable discretion when hiring teachers and the existence of an extensive literature on teacher quality, little is known about how best to hire teachers. This is, in part, because predicting teacher quality using readily-observable teacher characteristics has proven difficult and there is…