← Search

The Effect of the Prior Teacher on Value-Added

Michael Gilraine¹; Odhrain McCarthy²

¹ Simon Fraser University · ² New York University

Abstract We show that teachers’ value added (VA) depends on the VA of the teachers who preceded them. To do so, we use administrative data from North Carolina and find that a one-standard deviation increase in last grade’s mean teacher VA causes a 0.08σ decrease in teacher VA. Controlling for prior teacher assignment eliminates this bias. Under a benchmark policy that releases teachers in the bottom 5% of the VA distribution, 32% of teachers are incorrectly released using traditional techniques. Our results highlight the importance of incorporating dynamic features of education production into the estimation of teacher quality.

DOI

10.1162/rest_a_01409

Volume

108 (3)

Pages

645-662

Language

en

Export

BibTeX

Sources

crossref openalex