Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: In this article, the authors study how teacher performance improves with experience, using classroom observations ratings by school principals.The average teacher's performance improves three quarters of a standard deviation over the first 5 years of her career, with more than one quarter of a standard deviation improvement in just the first year.Understanding how performance improves with experience-the "returns to experience"-could inform teacher policy and management decisions about hiring, turnover, investments in employee training, and more.However, claims of having estimated "returns to experience" are causal claims.The authors describe the assumptions required to interpret changes in observation ratings over time as the causal effect of experience on performance.They compare two difference-in-differences strategies: the two-way fixed effects estimator common in the literature on teacher experience, and an alternative estimation strategy which avoids potential bias arising from effect heterogeneity.Using data from Tennessee and Washington, DC, the authors show empirical tests relevant to assessing the identifying assumptions and substantive threats-e.g., leniency bias, manipulation, changes in incentives or job assignmentsand find their estimates are robust to several threats. DOES ONE PLUS ONE ALWAYS EQUAL TWO? EXAMINING COMPLEMENTARITIES IN EDUCATIONAL INTERVENTIONSPublic policies targeting individuals based on need typically impose disproportionate burden on communities that lack the resources to implement these policies effectively.This study examines whether community-level interventions that focus on similar needs and provide resources to build capacity in these communities could generate complementarities by improving the effectiveness of individual-level interventions.The study addresses this question using two educational interventions in elementary schools in Florida: the third-grade retention policy that targets lowest-performing third graders in reading and the extended school day (ESD) policy that targets the lowest-performing elementary schools in the state in reading.Both policies have been shown to improve student test scores in reading in the short term: This study explores their interaction.The findings suggest that the ESD policy significantly improved the effectiveness of the retention policy in targeted schools.In particular, using a difference-in-difference in regression discontinuity design and the plausibly exogenous expansion of the ESD policy, the study finds that being designated as an ESD school significantly increases the effect of being retained (or being flagged for retention) on reading scores of students in the following year.These interaction effects are large enough to close the gap in retention effects between the lowest-performing and higher-performing schools.The findings of this study suggest that supplementing individual-level educational interventions with school-level interventions with similar objectives that provide additional resources to schools with highest needs
DOI: 10.1002/pam.22651
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4406145824
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