IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecoedu/v38y2014icp9-23.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Value-added models and the measurement of teacher productivity

Author

Listed:
  • Sass, Tim R.
  • Semykina, Anastasia
  • Harris, Douglas N.

Abstract

Research on teacher productivity, as well as recently developed accountability systems for teachers, relies on “value-added” models to estimate the impact of teachers on student performance. We consider six value-added models that encompass most commonly estimated specifications. We test many of the central assumptions required to derive each of the value-added models from an underlying structural cumulative achievement model and reject nearly all of them. While some of the six popular models produce similar estimates, other specifications yield estimates of teacher productivity and other key parameters that are considerably different.

Suggested Citation

  • Sass, Tim R. & Semykina, Anastasia & Harris, Douglas N., 2014. "Value-added models and the measurement of teacher productivity," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 9-23.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecoedu:v:38:y:2014:i:c:p:9-23
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econedurev.2013.10.003
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272775713001362
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econedurev.2013.10.003?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. 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.
    2. Tahir Andrabi & Jishnu Das & Asim Ijaz Khwaja & Tristan Zajonc, 2011. "Do Value-Added Estimates Add Value? Accounting for Learning Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(3), pages 29-54, July.
    3. Brian A. Jacob & Lars Lefgren & David P. Sims, 2010. "The Persistence of Teacher-Induced Learning," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 45(4), pages 915-943.
    4. Thomas J. Kane & Douglas O. Staiger, 2008. "Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation," NBER Working Papers 14607, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Petra E. Todd & Kenneth I. Wolpin, 2007. "The Production of Cognitive Achievement in Children: Home, School, and Racial Test Score Gaps," Journal of Human Capital, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 91-136.
    6. Eric A. Hanushek, 1979. "Conceptual and Empirical Issues in the Estimation of Educational Production Functions," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 14(3), pages 351-388.
    7. Figlio, David N., 1999. "Functional form and the estimated effects of school resources," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(2), pages 241-252, April.
    8. 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.
    9. Bonesronning, Hans, 2004. "The determinants of parental effort in education production: do parents respond to changes in class size?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 1-9, February.
    10. Cory Koedel & Julian R. Betts, 2011. "Does Student Sorting Invalidate Value-Added Models of Teacher Effectiveness? An Extended Analysis of the Rothstein Critique," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 6(1), pages 18-42, January.
    11. 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.
    12. Douglas Harris, 2007. "Diminishing Marginal Returns and the Production of Education: An International Analysis," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(1), pages 31-53.
    13. 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).
    14. J. R. Lockwood & Daniel F. McCaffrey, 2009. "Exploring Student-Teacher Interactions in Longitudinal Achievement Data," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 4(4), pages 439-467, October.
    15. Andrew J. Houtenville & Karen Smith Conway, 2008. "Parental Effort, School Resources, and Student Achievement," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 43(2), pages 437-453.
    16. Daniel F. McCaffrey & J. R. Lockwood & Kata Mihaly & Tim R. Sass, 2012. "A review of Stata commands for fixed-effects estimation in normal linear models," Stata Journal, StataCorp LP, vol. 12(3), pages 406-432, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Koedel, Cory & Mihaly, Kata & Rockoff, Jonah E., 2015. "Value-added modeling: A review," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 180-195.
    2. 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.
    3. Goldhaber, Dan & Cowan, James & Walch, Joe, 2013. "Is a good elementary teacher always good? Assessing teacher performance estimates across subjects," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 216-228.
    4. Harris, Douglas N. & Sass, Tim R., 2011. "Teacher training, teacher quality and student achievement," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(7), pages 798-812.
    5. Marine de Talancé, 2015. "Better Teachers, Better Results? Evidence from Rural Pakistan," Working Papers DT/2015/21, DIAL (Développement, Institutions et Mondialisation).
    6. Mani, Subha & Hoddinott, John & Strauss, John, 2012. "Long-term impact of investments in early schooling — Empirical evidence from rural Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(2), pages 292-299.
    7. Koedel Cory & Leatherman Rebecca & Parsons Eric, 2012. "Test Measurement Error and Inference from Value-Added Models," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 12(1), pages 1-37, November.
    8. Condie, Scott & Lefgren, Lars & Sims, David, 2014. "Teacher heterogeneity, value-added and education policy," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 76-92.
    9. Lindsay Fox, 2016. "Playing to Teachers’ Strengths: Using Multiple Measures of Teacher Effectiveness to Improve Teacher Assignments," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 11(1), pages 70-96, Winter.
    10. Singh, Abhijeet, 2015. "Private school effects in urban and rural India: Panel estimates at primary and secondary school ages," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 16-32.
    11. Ding, Weili & Lehrer, Steven F., 2014. "Understanding the role of time-varying unobserved ability heterogeneity in education production," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 55-75.
    12. Sam Jones, 2020. "Testing the Technology of Human Capital Production: A General‐to‐Restricted Framework," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 82(6), pages 1429-1455, December.
    13. 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.
    14. Nirav Mehta, 2019. "Measuring quality for use in incentive schemes: The case of “shrinkage” estimators," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(4), pages 1537-1577, November.
    15. Stacy, Brian, 2014. "Ranking Teachers when Teacher Value-Added is Heterogeneous Across Students," EconStor Preprints 104743, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    16. Figlio, D. & Karbownik, K. & Salvanes, K.G., 2016. "Education Research and Administrative Data," Handbook of the Economics of Education,, Elsevier.
    17. Valentin Verdier, 2020. "Estimation and Inference for Linear Models with Two-Way Fixed Effects and Sparsely Matched Data," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 102(1), pages 1-16, March.
    18. 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.
    19. Azam, Mehtabul & Kingdon, Geeta Gandhi, 2015. "Assessing teacher quality in India," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 74-83.
    20. Richard K. Mansfield, 2015. "Teacher Quality and Student Inequality," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 33(3), pages 751-788.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Teacher productivity; Value added;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity

    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:eee:ecoedu:v:38:y:2014:i:c:p:9-23. 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: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/econedurev .

    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.