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Jacob, Brian A.

Article Teachers, Schools, and Student Performance

NBER Reporter

Provided in Cooperation with: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Cambridge, Mass.

Suggested Citation: Jacob, Brian A. (2016) : Teachers, Schools, and Student Performance, NBER Reporter, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Cambridge, MA, Iss. 4, pp. 26-28

This Version is available at: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/178739

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Jacob students near the proficiency threshold. with the weakest academic preparation. principals the flexibility to dismiss pro- There is also evidence of improvements bationary teachers for any reason and in eighth-grade math achievement, par- The Teacher Labor Market without the documentation and hear- ticularly among traditionally low-achiev- ing process that is typically required for Economists have long realized the in the past four decades. The legislation ing groups and at the lower percentiles. A second area of my research focuses such dismissals. With the cooperation of importance of education for the well-being compelled states to conduct annual stu- In contrast, we find no evidence of any on teachers. A growing body of evidence the school system, I matched informa- of individuals and the productivity of soci- dent assessments, calculate and report the effects on reading performance. finds that there is substantial variance in tion on all teachers who were eligible for ety. Over the past few decades, the eco- fraction of students deemed at least pro- We also use a similar design to exam- teacher effectiveness, but that very little dismissal with records indicating which nomic returns to education have risen dra- ficient in key subjects, and institute an ine the impact of NCLB on educa- of it can be explained by easily observable teachers were dismissed. With these matically, increasing the importance of increasingly severe set of sanctions for tion policies and practices.2 Our results teacher characteristics such as certifica- data, I estimated the relative weight that Brian A. Jacob is the Walter H. this issue. Yet researchers have made only schools that did not show sufficient prog- indicate that NCLB increased per-pupil tion or advanced degrees.4 school administrators place on a variety Annenberg Professor of Education limited progress in understanding how ress toward having all students proficient. spending by nearly $600, which was This naturally raises the question of teacher characteristics. I found evi- Policy and professor of econom- various policies can influence educational In a series of papers, Thomas Dee funded primarily through increased state of whether school principals or district dence that principals do consider teacher ics in the University of Michigan’s outcomes. My research in education eco- and I study how NCLB affects school and local revenue. We find that NCLB officials can distinguish between more absences and value-added measures, Gerald R. Ford School of Public nomics has focused on three areas: stan- practices and student outcomes. We iden- increased teacher compensation and and less effective teachers. Lars Lefgren along with several demographic charac- Policy. His primary fields of inter- dards and accountability, teacher policies, tify the impact of NCLB by compar- the share of elementary school teachers and I surveyed elementary school prin- teristics, in determining which teachers est are labor economics, program and measurement of individual ability. ing changes across states that already had with advanced degrees but to dismiss [Figure 2]. evaluation, and the economics of school accountability policies in place had no effect on class size. Given the large variance education. Standards and Accountability prior to NCLB and those that did not. To We also find that NCLB did Di erences in Probability of Teacher Dismissal in teacher effectiveness and Jacob’s research on education examine student achievement, we utilize not influence overall instruc- by Performance Ranking the high financial and politi- covers a wide variety of topics, from One approach to school reform a state-year panel of student achievement tional time in core academic Di erence in probability of dismissal cal costs of dismissing inef- school choice to teacher labor mar- involves holding schools accountable for scores from the National Assessment of subjects, but did lead schools fective teachers, many observ- kets to standards and accountabil- student performance. In 2002, President Educational Progress (NAEP), a common to reallocate time away from “Satisfactory” relative to “superior” +22.1 percentage points ers have noted that teacher 1 ity. His work has appeared in lead- Bush signed the No Child Left Behind Act metric that was low-stakes for schools. science and social studies “Excellent” relative to “superior” +4.3 percentage points selection may be a cost-effec- ing economics journals, including (NCLB), which dramatically expanded Our results indicate that NCLB gener- and toward the tested sub- tive means of improving edu- the American Economic Review, the federal influence over the nation’s pub- ated substantial increases in the average ject of reading. Rankings: superior > excellent > satisfactory cational quality. However, Q uarterly Journal of Economics, lic schools. NCLB is arguably the most math performance of elementary students As states have imple- Baseline average dismissal rate: 11 percent to date there has been little and the Review of Economics and far-reaching education policy initiative [Figure 1]. Moreover, we find evidence of mented school accountabil- Source: B. A. Jacob, NBER Working Paper No. 15715 research that links informa- Statistics. Earlier in his career, he ity systems, they have also Figure 2 tion gathered during the hir- served as a policy analyst in the raised standards. Since the ing process to subsequent Office of the Mayor of New York Math Achievement Increased a er No Child Le Behind Act 1970s, states have slowly increased cipals and asked them to evaluate all of teacher performance. City and taught middle school in Fourth grade proficiency on the National Assessment of Educational Progress high school graduation requirements. their teachers along a variety of dimen- In a recent project, several colleagues 5 East Harlem. Students meeting basic standards Recently, some have begun requiring sions. We then calculated value-added and I partnered with the District of Jacob is a research associate in 80% students to pass rigorous college prepa- measures of teacher effectiveness, using Columbia Public Schools (DCPS) to the NBER’s Program on Children NCLB implemented ratory classes. Michigan was among the standardized test scores as the outcome. study teacher hiring.7 We examined and Program on Education, and first states to do so when it began requir- When we compare these subjective and detailed teacher candidate data collected a member of the editorial boards ing students in the high school class of objective measures of teacher perfor- during a multi-stage application process, of the 2011 to pass geometry, algebra 2, biol- mance, we find that principals’ assess- including written assessments, a personal American Economic Journal: 70 Applied Economics, Education ogy, and chemistry/physics. ments of teachers predict future student interview, and sample lessons. We identi- and the My colleagues and I use several achievement significantly better than the fied a number of background characteris- Finance and Policy, Review of States that did not adopt school Economics and Statistics. He received accountability policies before NCLB non-experimental strategies to study the traditional measures used for teacher tics, such as undergraduate GPA, as well his B.A. from Harvard College and impact of this policy.3 Our analyses sug- compensation, such as educational cre- as screening measures, such as applicant his Ph.D. from the University of 60 gest that the higher expectations embod- dentials or prior experience. We find that performance on a mock teaching lesson, Chicago. In 2008 he was awarded ied in the Michigan Merit Curriculum principals are quite good at identifying that strongly predicted teacher effective- the Association for Public Policy States that adopted school have had little impact on student out- those teachers who produce the larg- ness. Interestingly, we found that these Analysis & Management’s David accountability policies by 1998 comes. Looking at student performance est and smallest test score gains in their measures are only weakly associated with N. Kershaw Prize for distinguished on the ACT, the only clear evidence of a schools, but have far less ability to dis- the likelihood of being hired, suggesting contributions to public policy and 50 change in academic performance is in sci- tinguish among teachers in the middle. considerable scope for improving teacher 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 management by an individual under ence. While our estimates for high school In subsequent work, I take advantage quality through the hiring process. the age of 40. Source: T. S. Dee and B. A. Jacob, NBER Working Paper No. 15531 completion are sensitive to the sample of a policy change in Chicago to examine In response to this finding, DCPS Figure 1 and methodology, the weight of the evi- a similar question.6 The Chicago Public changed the way it presented informa-

26 NBER Reporter • No. 4, December 2016 NBER Reporter • No. 4, December 2016 27 tion on applicant quality to principals. measures of student ability. For exam- and B. Schneider, “Are Expectations NBER News Specifically, the district assigned each ple, scores computed for students who Alone Enough? Estimating the applicant a letter “grade” that corre- take the NAEP test depend not only on Effect of a Mandatory College-Prep sponded to our measures of predicted the examinees’ responses to test items, Curriculum in Michigan,” NBER effectiveness. We are currently in the pro- but also on their background charac- Working Paper No. 22013, February cess of studying how this change affected teristics, including race and gender. As 2016. Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmström Win Nobel Prize in teacher hiring and student performance. a consequence, if a black student and 4 R. Chetty, J.N. Friedman, and J.E. a white student respond identically to Rockoff, “Measuring the Impacts of Economic Sciences for Research on Contract Theory Measurement of Student Ability questions on the NAEP assessment, the Teachers I: Evaluating Bias in Teacher reported ability for the black student Value-Added Estimates,” American Most recently I have written about will be lower than for the white stu- Economic Review, 104(9), 2014, pp. Oliver Hart of Harvard and Bengt ciate in two NBER programs — Corporate how individual ability is measured in dent — reflecting the lower average per- 2593–632. Holmström of MIT, who both have been Finance and Law and Economics. He has modern assessment systems. Economists formance of black students. 5 B.A. Jacob and L. Lefgren, NBER research associates for more than two been an NBER affiliate since 1990. use test scores to measure human capital Even when reported scores are unbi- “Principals as Agents: Subjective decades, were awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize Holmström is the Paul A. Samuelson in explaining wages and other employ- ased measures of student ability, they Performance Measurement in in Economic Sciences for their contributions Professor of Economics at MIT, and a research ment outcomes and, increasingly, as often are transformed to scale scores. This Education,” NBER Working Paper to analyzing incentives, institutions, and orga- associate in the NBER Corporate Finance outcome measures in evaluations of undermines many of the purposes for No. 11463, July 2005, and Journal of nizations in the field of economics known as program, which he joined in 1996. Between programs or policies aimed at improv- which researchers use test scores, such as Labor Economics, 26(1), 2008, pp. “contract theory.” 1984 and 1986, he was also a research associ- ing human capital formation. Applied measuring the magnitude of a treatment 101–36. “Contract theory provides us with a gen- ate in the Labor Studies Program. Both have researchers typically take cognitive test effect or quantifying the difference in 6 B.A. Jacob, “Do Principals Fire eral means of understanding contract design. been active in the NBER Working Group on scores from pre-existing surveys or data- ability between two demographic groups. the Worst Teachers?” NBER Working One of the theory’s goals is to explain why Organizational Economics. sets without exploring how they are con- Rothstein and I currently are working on Paper No. 15715, February 2010, and contracts have various forms and designs. Hart and Holmström join a group of structed. These test scores often reflect a project to characterize the magnitude of Educational Evaluation and Policy Another goal is to help us work out how twenty-four current or past NBER research Oliver Hart non-trivial decisions about how to mea- biases that arise in common applications. Analysis, 33(4), February 2011, pp. to draw up better contracts, thereby shap- affiliates who have received the Nobel Prize: sure and scale student achievement. 403–34. ing better institutions in society,” the Royal Angus Deaton, 2015; Lars Hansen and Jesse Rothstein and I discuss several 1 T.S. Dee and B.A. Jacob, “The 7 B.A. Jacob, J. Rockoff, E. Taylor, Swedish Academy of Sciences said in a state- Robert Shiller, 2013; Alvin Roth, 2012; important issues relating to the mea- Impact of No Child Left Behind on B. Lindy, and R. Rosen, “Teacher ment announcing the award. “The contribu- Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims, surement and scaling of individual abil- Student Achievement,” NBER Working Applicant Hiring and Teacher tions of this year’s laureates are invaluable in 2011; Peter Diamond, 2010; Paul Krugman, ity measures, highlighting the implica- Paper No. 15531, 2009, and Journal Performance: Evidence from D.C. helping us understand real-life contracts and 2008; Edward C. Prescott and Finn Kydland, tions for secondary analyses.8 We p oint of Policy Analysis and Management, Public Schools,” NBER Working Paper institutions, as well as the potential pitfalls 2004; Robert F. Engle, 2003; Joseph E. out that the test score measures reported 30(3), 2011, pp. 418–46. No. 22054, March 2016. when designing new contracts.” Stiglitz, 2001; James J. Heckman and Daniel in many surveys are rarely simple sum- 2 T.S. Dee, B.A. Jacob, and N.L. 8 B.A. Jacob and J. Rothstein, “The The Academy cited a range of contexts in L. McFadden, 2000; Robert C. Merton and maries of student performance like the Schwartz, “The Effects of NCLB Measurement of Student Ability in which contract theory provides key insights Myron S. Scholes, 1997; Robert E. Lucas, fraction of items answered correctly, on School Resources and Practices,” Modern Assessment Systems,” NBER for understanding economic behavior and Jr., 1995; the late Dale Mortenson, 2010; but rather are estimates generated by Educational Evaluation and Policy Working Paper No. 22434, July the associated institutions. These include the Robert W. Fogel, 1993; Gary S. Becker, complex statistical models. The result- Analysis, 35(2), 2013, pp. 252–79. 2016, and forthcoming in Journal of tradeoff between providing insurance against 1992; George J. Stigler, 1982; Theodore W. ing scores are generally not unbiased 3 B.A. Jacob, S. Dynarski, K. Frank, Economic Perspectives. adverse outcomes and maintaining incentives Schultz, 1979; Milton Friedman, 1976; and to take care, designing executive pay con- Simon Kuznets, 1971. In addition, six cur- Bengt Holmström tracts that depend in part on corporate per- rent or past members of the NBER Board formance, deciding how to allocate property of Directors have received the Nobel Prize: rights, and choosing between public and pri- George Akerlof, 2001; Robert Solow, 1987; vate provision of basic services. the late William Vickrey, 1996; Douglass Hart is the Andrew E. Furer Professor of North, 1993; James Tobin, 1981; and Paul Economics at Harvard, and a research asso- Samuelson, 1970.

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