cover image: Alternative Measures of Teachers’ Value Added and Impact on Short and Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence From Random Assignment

20.500.12592/41w527o

Alternative Measures of Teachers’ Value Added and Impact on Short and Long-Term Outcomes: Evidence From Random Assignment

11 Jul 2024

A recent critique of using teachers’ test score value-added (TVA) is that teacher quality is multifaceted; some teachers are effective in raising test scores, others are effective in improving long-term outcomes. This paper exploits an institutional setting where high school teachers are randomly assigned to classes to compute multiple long-run TVA measures based on university schooling outcomes and high school behavior. We find substantial correlations between test scores and long-run TVA but zero correlations between these two TVA measures and behavior TVA. We find that short-term test-score TVA and long-run TVA are highly correlated and equally good predictors of long-term outcomes.
education development economics economics of education labor economics labor studies labor supply and demand health, education, and welfare children and families

Authors

Victor Lavy, Rigissa Megalokonomou

Acknowledgements & Disclosure
We thank the AER editor, John Friedman, for his detailed and useful comments on the first submitted draft, which led to a substantial revision of this paper. We also thank Anjali Adukia, Bo Jackson, Andrew Bacher-Hicks, David Card, Aimee Chin, Adeline Delavande, Alexandra de Gendre, Josh Goodman, Mike Gilraine, CarolineHoxby, Kevin Lang, Dick Murnane, Cristian Pop-Eleches, and Chrisovalantis Vasilakis. We also thank seminar participants at the 2022 Australasia Meeting of the Econometric Society, the 13th International Workshop on Applied Economics of Education, the 2020 NBER Summer Institute, the 2020 CESifo Conference on the Economics of Education, the 2021 Organisational Economics Workshop in Australia, the 2021 Labour Econometrics Workshop at Monash University, the 1st Moscow International Workshop on Applied Research in Labor Economics and Human Capital, the 2023 Western Economics Association conference at the University of Melbourne, participants at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, University of Essex, University of Adelaide, University of Wollongong, Bangor University, E61 Institute, University of Warwick, and Hebrew University. We are grateful to Elias Arvanitakis for helping compile the data and to Dominic Byrne and Yuancheng Han for excellent research assistance. This paper uses data collected from school archives and administrative data, and we are not at liberty to publish online; however, we can provide the code as well as detailed instructions and assistance on how to apply and access the data to enhance the replicability of our analysis. There is no material or financial conflict of interest on the part of any of the authors with respect to any of the research in this paper. Rigissa Megalokonomou acknowledges research support from the University of Queensland BEL Early Career Grant (No: UQECR1833757) and the Monash University, Monash Establishment Grant (No: 1755774). The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3386/w32671
Pages
100
Published in
United States of America

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