Disentangling Disadvantage: Can We Distinguish Good Teaching From Classroom Composition?

• In Event: Roundtable Session 28
  In Roundtable Session: Value-Added Methodology: Considerations and Model Comparisons

Abstract

This paper focuses on the use of teacher value-added estimates to assess the distribution of effective teaching across students of varying socioeconomic disadvantage. We use simulation methods to examine the extent to which different commonly used teacher-value added estimators accurately capture the distribution of effective teaching as we vary our model specifications as well as our assumptions about student sorting and classroom composition effects. The findings may be of interest to researchers or policy leaders who seek to understand how teacher effectiveness is distributed with regard to student demographics in a particular school district, state, or charter management organization.

Authors

• Jennifer L. Steele, RAND Corporation

• John Engberg, RAND Corporation

• Juan Esteban Saavedra, Harvard University

• Gema Zamarro, University of Southern California