Year: 2006
Type: book
Abstract: This paper exploits unique data that permits the matching of students’ test scores in different subjects to the\nteachers that teach those subjects. Within-pupil (across-subject, rather than across-time) variation is used to\nexamine whether the characteristics of different subject teachers are related to a student’s marks across\nsubjects. There are four main contributions. Firstly the findings, using a credible methodology for\nidentification, give only modest grounds for optimism about the effects of teacher policies. A teacher’s\npossession of Masters level qualification and pre-service training have well identified but small effects on\nstudent achievement. While a teacher’s union membership strongly reduces pupil achievement, union\nmembership is typically not a policy variable. The bulk of the variation in student achievement is a school\nfixed effect and observed school characteristics explain less than 30% of this fixed effect. The second main\ncontribution of the paper is to highlight the importance of ‘controlling for’ the non-random matching of\nstudents to schools and teachers. The finding that within-pupil effects of many teacher variables differ very\nsignificantly from the across school effects indicates that much of the extant achievement production\nfunction literature – which perforce relies on across school estimation – leads to incorrect inferences because\nit confounds the effect of unobserved school and pupil heterogeneity with the effect of teacher\ncharacteristics. This underlines the importance of finding credible sources of within school and preferably\nwithin-student variation in future research. Thirdly, the paper showcases the use of an across-subject\nestimator of the achievement production function which is similar to the more familiar panel data approach\nbut which circumvents the problem of non-random attrition of students/teachers over time and the problem\nof non-random matching of students to teachers, and which permits the identification of teacher effects in\ncross-section data that are readily available. Finally, a school fixed effects equation of teacher pay shows\nthat while teacher compensation is efficient in some respects, i.e. teachers are rewarded for characteristics\nthat raise student achievement, it is not so in other respects. In particular, union membership is substantially\nrewarded when in fact it is associated with significantly lower student achievement, raising the question\nwhether teachers’ right to unionize pits teacher interests against student interests.
Author: Geeta Kingdon
Institution: University of Oxford
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2168452864