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  4. September 2014
  5. Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates

American Economic Review

ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)

Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates

  • Raj Chetty
  • John N. Friedman
  • Jonah E. Rockoff
American Economic Review
vol. 104, no. 9, September 2014
(pp. 2593–2632)
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Abstract

Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores ("value-added") a good measure of their quality? One reason this question has sparked debate is disagreement about whether value-added (VA) measures provide unbiased estimates of teachers' causal impacts on student achievement. We test for bias in VA using previously unobserved parent characteristics and a quasi-experimental design based on changes in teaching staff. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we find that VA models which control for a student's prior test scores exhibit little bias in forecasting teachers' impacts on student achievement.

Citation

Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, and Jonah E. Rockoff. 2014. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher Value-Added Estimates." American Economic Review 104 (9): 2593–2632. DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.9.2593

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • H75 State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions
  • I21 Analysis of Education
  • J24 Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
  • J45 Public Sector Labor Markets