IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpb/discus/294.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Teacher quality and student achievement: Evidence from a Dutch sample of twins

Author

Listed:
  • Sander Gerritsen
  • Erik Plug
  • Dinand Webbink

Abstract

This paper examines the causal link that runs from classroom quality to student achievement using data on twin pairs who entered the same school but were allocated to different classrooms in an exogenous way. In particular, we apply twin fixed-effects estimation to assess the effect of teacher quality on student test scores from second through eighth grade, arguing that a change in teacher quality is probably the most important classroom intervention within a twin context. In a series of estimations using measurable teacher characteristics, we find that: (a) the test performance of all students improve with teacher experience; (b) teacher experience also matters for student performance after the initial years in the profession; (c) the teacher experience effect is most prominent in earlier grades; (d) the teacher experience effects are robust to the inclusion of other classroom quality measures, such as peer group composition and class size; and (e) an increase in teacher experience also matters for career stages with less labor-market mobility which suggests positive returns to on the job training of teachers.

Suggested Citation

  • Sander Gerritsen & Erik Plug & Dinand Webbink, 2014. "Teacher quality and student achievement: Evidence from a Dutch sample of twins," CPB Discussion Paper 294, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
  • Handle: RePEc:cpb:discus:294
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cpb.nl/sites/default/files/publicaties/download/dp294-teacher-quality-and-student-achievement.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas S. Dee, 2004. "Teachers, Race, and Student Achievement in a Randomized Experiment," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 195-210, February.
    2. Jesse Rothstein, 2010. "Teacher Quality in Educational Production: Tracking, Decay, and Student Achievement," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 175-214.
    3. Alan B. Krueger, 1999. "Experimental Estimates of Education Production Functions," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 114(2), pages 497-532.
    4. Harris, Douglas N. & Sass, Tim R., 2011. "Teacher training, teacher quality and student achievement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7-8), pages 798-812, August.
    5. Jonah E. Rockoff, 2004. "The Impact of Individual Teachers on Student Achievement: Evidence from Panel Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 247-252, May.
    6. Hanushek, Eric A., 2011. "The economic value of higher teacher quality," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 466-479, June.
    7. Douglas O. Staiger & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2010. "Searching for Effective Teachers with Imperfect Information," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 97-118, Summer.
    8. Jere R. Behrman & Mark R. Rosenzweig, 2002. "Does Increasing Women's Schooling Raise the Schooling of the Next Generation?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(1), pages 323-334, March.
    9. Sean P. Corcoran & William N. Evans & Robert M. Schwab, 2004. "Changing Labor-Market Opportunities for Women and the Quality of Teachers, 1957-2000," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 230-235, May.
    10. Marigee P. Bacolod, 2007. "Do Alternative Opportunities Matter? The Role of Female Labor Markets in the Decline of Teacher Quality," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 89(4), pages 737-751, November.
    11. Eric A. Hanushek & John F. Kain & Steven G. Rivkin & Daniel M. O'Brien, 2005. "The Market for Teacher Quality," Discussion Papers 04-025, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    12. Cassandra M. Guarino & Mark D. Reckase & Jeffrey M. Woolrdige, 2014. "Can Value-Added Measures of Teacher Performance Be Trusted?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 10(1), pages 117-156, November.
    13. Daniel Aaronson & Lisa Barrow & William Sander, 2007. "Teachers and Student Achievement in the Chicago Public High Schools," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25(1), pages 95-135.
    14. Hongbin Li & Mark Rosenzweig & Junsen Zhang, 2010. "Altruism, Favoritism, and Guilt in the Allocation of Family Resources: Sophie's Choice in Mao's Mass Send-Down Movement," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 118(1), pages 1-38, February.
    15. Mueller, Steffen, 2013. "Teacher experience and the class size effect — Experimental evidence," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 98(C), pages 44-52.
    16. Charles T. Clotfelter & Helen F. Ladd & Jacob L. Vigdor, 2006. "Teacher-Student Matching and the Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 41(4).
    17. Kane, Thomas J. & Rockoff, Jonah E. & Staiger, Douglas O., 2008. "What does certification tell us about teacher effectiveness? Evidence from New York City," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 615-631, December.
    18. Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of the Economics of Education," Handbook of the Economics of Education, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 1, number 1, June.
    19. Erik Hanushek & F. Welch (ed.), 2006. "Handbook of the Economics of Education," Handbook of the Economics of Education, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 2, number 2, June.
    20. Caroline M. Hoxby & Andrew Leigh, 2004. "Pulled Away or Pushed Out? Explaining the Decline of Teacher Aptitude in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(2), pages 236-240, May.
    21. Petra E. Todd & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2003. "On The Specification and Estimation of The Production Function for Cognitive Achievement," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 113(485), pages 3-33, February.
    22. Hanushek, Eric, 1971. "Teacher Characteristics and Gains in Student Achievement: Estimation Using Micro Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 61(2), pages 280-288, May.
    23. Hanushek, Eric A, 1992. "The Trade-Off between Child Quantity and Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 100(1), pages 84-117, February.
    24. Li Feng, 2009. "Opportunity Wages, Classroom Characteristics, and Teacher Mobility," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 75(4), pages 1165-1190, April.
    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. Marc van der Steeg & Roel van Elk, 2015. "The effect of schooling vouchers on higher education enrollment and completion of teachers: A regression discontinuity analysis," CPB Discussion Paper 305, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Marc van der Steeg & Roel van Elk, 2015. "The effect of schooling vouchers on higher education enrollment and completion of teachers: A regression discontinuity analysis," CPB Discussion Paper 305.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.

    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. Sander Gerritsen & Erik Plug & Dinand Webbink, 2014. "Teacher quality and student achievement: Evidence from a Dutch sample of twins," CPB Discussion Paper 294.rdf, CPB Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis.
    2. Marine de Talancé, 2015. "Better Teachers, Better Results? Evidence from Rural Pakistan," Working Papers DT/2015/21, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    3. Hanushek, Eric A., 2011. "The economic value of higher teacher quality," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 466-479, June.
    4. Hinrichs, Peter, 2021. "What kind of teachers are schools looking for? Evidence from a randomized field experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 186(C), pages 395-411.
    5. Hanushek, Eric A. & Rivkin, Steven G. & Schiman, Jeffrey C., 2016. "Dynamic effects of teacher turnover on the quality of instruction," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 132-148.
    6. Wiswall, Matthew, 2013. "The dynamics of teacher quality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 61-78.
    7. Dhushyanth Raju, 2017. "Public School Teacher Management in Sri Lanka," South Asia Economic Journal, Institute of Policy Studies of Sri Lanka, vol. 18(1), pages 39-63, March.
    8. Eric A. Hanushek & Steven G. Rivkin, 2010. "The Quality and Distribution of Teachers under the No Child Left Behind Act," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 24(3), pages 133-150, Summer.
    9. Eric Hanushek & Steven Rivkin, "undated". "Constrained Job Matching: Does Teacher Job Search Harm Disadvantaged Urban Schools?," Discussion Papers 09-011, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    10. Papay, John P. & Kraft, Matthew A., 2015. "Productivity returns to experience in the teacher labor market: Methodological challenges and new evidence on long-term career improvement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 130(C), pages 105-119.
    11. Allison Atteberry & Susanna Loeb & James Wyckoff, 2013. "Do First Impressions Matter? Improvement in Early Career Teacher Effectiveness," NBER Working Papers 19096, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Grönqvist, Erik & Vlachos, Jonas, 2008. "One size fits all? The effects of teacher cognitive and non-cognitive abilities on student achievement," Working Paper Series 2008:25, IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy.
    13. Canales, Andrea & Maldonado, Luis, 2018. "Teacher quality and student achievement in Chile: Linking teachers' contribution and observable characteristics," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 33-50.
    14. Helen F. Ladd & Lucy C. Sorensen, 2017. "Returns to Teacher Experience: Student Achievement and Motivation in Middle School," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 12(2), pages 241-279, Spring.
    15. Koedel, Cory & Mihaly, Kata & Rockoff, Jonah E., 2015. "Value-added modeling: A review," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 180-195.
    16. Sean Corcoran & Dan Goldhaber, 2013. "Value Added and Its Uses: Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 8(3), pages 418-434, July.
    17. Grönqvist, Erik & Vlachos, Jonas, 2008. "One Size Fits All? The Effects of Teacher Cognitive and Non-cognitive Abilities on Student," Working Paper Series 779, Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
    18. Eric S. Taylor & John H. Tyler, 2011. "The Effect of Evaluation on Performance: Evidence from Longitudinal Student Achievement Data of Mid-career Teachers," NBER Working Papers 16877, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Jesse Rothstein, 2007. "Do Value-Added Models Add Value? Tracking, Fixed Effects, and Causal Inference," Working Papers 1036, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Center for Economic Policy Studies..
    20. Pau Balart & Antonio Cabrales, 2015. "La evaluación docente basada en el resultado como vía de mejora del sistema educativo," Studies on the Spanish Economy eee2015-13, FEDEA.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • J4 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:cpb:discus:294. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cpbgvnl.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.