American Economic Review Vol. 104 No. 9 2014

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

Raj Chetty¹; John N. Friedman²; Jonah E. Rockoff³

¹ Harvard University, Littauer Center 226, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: ) · ² Harvard University, Taubman Center 356, Cambridge, MA 02138 (e-mail: ) · ³ Columbia University, Uris 603, New York, NY 10027 (e-mail: )

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 provide unbiased forecasts of teachers' impacts on student achievement.

DOI

10.1257/aer.104.9.2593

Volume

104

Issue

9

Pages

2593-2632

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

APA 7 MLA 9 Chicago (author–date) Harvard Elsevier Harvard (JFE, JBF…) The Accounting Review Academy of Management American Marketing Association INFORMS (Management Science) Copy citation Copied ✓