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Teacher Value Added and Long-Run Student Outcomes

Saturday, November 15, 1:45 to 3:15pm, Property: Hyatt Regency Seattle, Floor: 5th Floor, Room: 504 - Foss

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

A large body of literature has shown significant and multifaceted effects of teachers on students’ cognitive and noncognitive outcomes, using value added models to estimate teachers’ contributions to the education production function (Bacher-Hicks and Koedel, 2023). Moreover, a growing body of recent work documents significant effects of teacher value added on students’ long-run outcomes including college enrollment and adult earnings (Chetty et al., 2014; Jackson, 2018; Gilraine and Pope, 2021; Petek and Pope, 2023; Backes et al., 2024). This panel provides new evidence on the long-run implications of access to teachers with high value added. The first three papers leverage longitudinal data linking K-12 student achievement with postsecondary outcomes to understand the persistent impacts of educational inputs during childhood, and the fourth paper complements these studies with evidence that teacher compensation policies can support high-quality teacher retention. 

The first paper, by Hema Shah, studies the impacts of high school teachers on students’ college admissions test scores and the subsequent implications for college enrollment and college performance. The author finds that students exposed to teachers with high value added on college admissions test scores are more likely to enroll in 4-year colleges. Exposure to teachers with high value added on college admissions test scores leads to increases in college GPA and completion and reductions in college dropout, conditional on whether and where students enroll in college. These results provide the first link between K-12 teacher value added and student performance in college coursework, suggesting that high school teachers have significant scope to influence the accumulation of college-relevant cognitive skills

The second paper, by Ben Backes and James Cowan, proposes a new method to understand how teacher value added on various short-run outcomes contributes to students’ long-run outcomes. The authors estimate combined value-added models which leverage both test and nontest measures of teacher value added to predict long-run student outcomes, including high school graduation and college enrollment. The authors find that combined value added models expand on the predictive power of traditional test-based value added measures.


The third paper, by Steven Rivkin, Benjamin Feigenberg, Eric Hanushek, and Samuel Mosley, provides new evidence on variation in school-average teacher quality and the channels through which teachers affect students’ long-run outcomes. The authors use a two-stage methodology, leveraging teachers who switch schools to estimate school-average teacher effectiveness at raising students’ cognitive and noncognitive skills. The results will advance a larger research agenda focused on the contributions of teachers and schools to long-run educational attainment, labor market engagement, and involvement in the criminal justice system.

The fourth paper, by Kristin Mansell, evaluates the impacts of the Teacher Incentive Allotment (TIA) on teacher retention in differing contexts around Texas. The author finds that TIA significantly reduced teacher turnover, offering early evidence that strategic compensation policies can reduce teacher attrition and support instructional quality. 

Taken together, results from the four papers underscore the crucial contributions of K-12 teachers not only to short-run measures of students’ cognitive and noncognitive achievement, but also to multiple dimensions of later-life success.

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