IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eej/eeconj/v28y2002i3p285-300.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Teacher Quality and the Future of America

Author

Listed:
  • Peter Temin

    (Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

Abstract

I argue in this paper that we do not pay teachers enough to get high-quality applicants. The reasons we find ourselves in this inferior equilibrium are rooted in our history. Most American teachers are and have been women; we have not accommodated to the increasing opportunities for women in the economy today. Schools are locally funded, and we also have not accommodated to the declining effectiveness of the property tax. The result of having low-quality teachers is that current reforms sub-optimize with the current stock of teachers and therefore result at best in only small gains in educational quality. We are in danger of losing the educational advantage that the United States enjoyed in the 20th century.

Suggested Citation

  • Peter Temin, 2002. "Teacher Quality and the Future of America," Eastern Economic Journal, Eastern Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 285-300, Summer.
  • Handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:28:y:2002:i:3:p:285-300
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://web.holycross.edu/RePEc/eej/Archive/Volume28/V28N3P285_300.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goldin, Claudia, 1992. "Understanding the Gender Gap: An Economic History of American Women," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780195072709.
    2. Darius Lakdawalla, 2001. "The Declining Quality of Teachers," NBER Working Papers 8263, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Thomas J. Kane & Douglas O. Staiger, 2001. "Improving School Accountability Measures," NBER Working Papers 8156, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Susanna Loeb & Marianne E. Page, 2000. "Examining The Link Between Teacher Wages And Student Outcomes: The Importance Of Alternative Labor Market Opportunities And Non-Pecuniary Variation," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Marigee Bacolod, 2006. "Do Alternative Opportunities Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in the Decline of Teacher Quality," Working Papers 06-22, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    2. Falch, Torberg & Johansen, Kåre & Strøm, Bjarne, 2009. "Teacher shortages and the business cycle," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 648-658, December.
    3. Andersson, Christian & Waldenström, Nina, 2007. "Teacher supply and the market for teachers," Working Paper Series 2007:5, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    4. Eric Bettinger & Bridget Terry Long, 2004. "Do College Instructors Matter? The Effects of Adjuncts and Graduate Assistants on Students' Interests and Success," NBER Working Papers 10370, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Sean P. Corcoran & William N. Evans & Robert S. Schwab, 2002. "Changing Labor Market Opportunities for Women and the Quality of Teachers 1957-1992," NBER Working Papers 9180, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Stefan C. Wolter & Stefan Denzler, 2004. "Wage elasticity of the teacher supply in Switzerland," Brussels Economic Review, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles, vol. 47(3-4), pages 387-408.
    7. Kaoru Nabeshima, 2003. "Raising the quality of secondary education in East Asia," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3140, The World Bank.
    8. Peter Temin, 2015. "The American Dual Economy: Race, Globalization, and the Politics of Exclusion," Working Papers Series 26, Institute for New Economic Thinking.
    9. Emma García & Eunice S. Han, 2022. "Teachers’ Base Salary and Districts’ Academic Performance: Evidence From National Data," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    10. Yolanda Kodrzycki, 2002. "Educational attainment as a constraint on economic growth and social progress," Conference Series ; [Proceedings], Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, vol. 47(Jun), pages 37-95.
    11. Peter Temin, 2007. "The Rate of Time Preference in the United States Government," The American Economist, Sage Publications, vol. 51(2), pages 8-15, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Temin, 2002. "Teacher Quality and the Future of America," NBER Working Papers 8898, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Marigee Bacolod, 2006. "Do Alternative Opportunities Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in the Decline of Teacher Quality," Working Papers 06-22, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau.
    3. Emiliana Vegas & Ilana Umansky, 2005. "Improving Teaching and Learning through Effective Incentives : What Can We Learn from Education Reforms in Latin America?," World Bank Publications - Reports 8694, The World Bank Group.
    4. Michael Podgursky, 2006. "Is Teacher Pay Adequate?," Working Papers 0601, Department of Economics, University of Missouri.
    5. Wo[ss]mann, Ludger & West, Martin, 2006. "Class-size effects in school systems around the world: Evidence from between-grade variation in TIMSS," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 50(3), pages 695-736, April.
    6. Howes, Candace & Singh, Ajit, 1995. "Long-term trends in the World economy: The gender dimension," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 23(11), pages 1895-1911, November.
    7. Keller, Elisa, 2019. "Labor supply and gender differences in occupational choice," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 221-241.
    8. Alison L. Booth, 2006. "The Glass Ceiling in Europe: Why Are Women Doing Badly in the Labour Market?," CEPR Discussion Papers 542, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Research School of Economics, Australian National University.
    9. Anne McDaniel & Thomas DiPrete & Claudia Buchmann & Uri Shwed, 2011. "The Black Gender Gap in Educational Attainment: Historical Trends and Racial Comparisons," Demography, Springer;Population Association of America (PAA), vol. 48(3), pages 889-914, August.
    10. Hélène Périvier, 2007. "Les femmes sur le marché du travail aux Etats-Unis: une mise en perspective avec la France et la Suède," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-00972845, HAL.
    11. Rania Gihleb & Osnat Lifshitz, 2022. "Dynamic Effects of Educational Assortative Mating on Labor Supply," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 46, pages 302-327, October.
    12. Nicolas Hérault & Guyonne Kalb, 2022. "Understanding the rising trend in female labour force participation," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 43(4), pages 341-363, December.
    13. Victor Gay, 2023. "Culture: An Empirical Investigation of Beliefs, Work, and Fertility. A Verification and Reproduction of Fernández and Fogli (2009)," Post-Print hal-04194417, HAL.
    14. Angrist, Josh & Lavy, Victor, 2002. "The Effect of High School Matriculation Awards: Evidence from Randomized Trials," CEPR Discussion Papers 3827, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    15. Joseph E. Zveglich Jr. & Yana van der Meulen Rodgers & William M. Rodgers III, 1997. "The Persistence of Gender Earnings Inequality in Taiwan, 1978–1992," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 50(4), pages 594-609, July.
    16. Huffman, Wallace, 2004. "Marketizing U.S. Production in the Post-War Era: Implications for Estimating CPI Bias and Real Income from a Complete-Household-Demand System," Staff General Research Papers Archive 11987, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    17. Stephan E. Maurer & Andrei V. Potlogea, 2021. "Male‐biased Demand Shocks and Women's Labour Force Participation: Evidence from Large Oil Field Discoveries," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 88(349), pages 167-188, January.
    18. Robert Prasch, 1995. "Tyranny of kindness: Dismantling the welfare system to end poverty in America Theresa Funiciello," Forum for Social Economics, Springer;The Association for Social Economics, vol. 25(1), pages 71-75, September.
    19. Chiswick, Barry R. & Robinson, RaeAnn Halenda, 2021. "Women at work in the United States since 1860: An analysis of unreported family workers," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
    20. Gilpin, Gregory A., 2012. "Teacher salaries and teacher aptitude: An analysis using quantile regressions," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 15-29.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Teacher;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J45 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Public Sector Labor Markets
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eej:eeconj:v:28:y:2002:i:3:p:285-300. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Victor Matheson, College of the Holy Cross (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eeaa1ea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.