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Beyond Levels and Growth: Estimating Teacher Value-Added and its Persistence
- Journal of Human Resources
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Volume 47, Number 3, Summer 2012
- pp. 722-753
- 10.1353/jhr.2012.0023
- Article
- Additional Information
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The levels and growth achievement functions make extreme and diametrically opposed assumptions about the rate at which teacher inputs persist. I first show that if these assumptions are incorrect, teacher value-added estimates can be significantly biased. I then develop a tractable, cumulative model of student achievement that allows for the joint estimation of unobserved teacher quality and its persistence. The model can accommodate varying persistence rates, student heterogeneity, and time-varying teacher attributes. I implement the proposed methodology using schooling data from North Carolina, and find that only a third of the contemporaneous teacher effect survives into the next grade.