TY - JOUR AU - Hanushek,Eric A. AU - Kain,John F. AU - O'Brien,Daniel M. AU - Rivkin,Steven G. TI - The Market for Teacher Quality JF - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series VL - No. 11154 PY - 2005 Y2 - February 2005 UR - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11154 L1 - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11154.pdf N1 - Author contact info: Eric A. Hanushek Hoover Institution Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-6010 Tel: 650/736-0942 Fax: 650/723-1687 E-Mail: hanushek@stanford.edu John Kain Director Cecil and Ida Green Center for the Study of Scienc Mail Station GC21 P.O. Box 830688 Richardson, TX 75083-0688 Tel: 972-883-2555 E-Mail: N/A user is deceased Daniel O'Brien University of Texas at Dallas E-Mail: obri@utdallas.edu Steven G. Rivkin Department of Economics University of Illinois at Chicago 601 South Morgan UH725 M/C144 Chicago, IL 60607 Tel: 312.413.2368 E-Mail: sgrivkin@uic.edu AB - Much of education policy focuses on improving teacher quality, but most policies lack strong research support. We use student achievement gains to estimate teacher value-added, our measure of teacher quality. The analysis reveals substantial variation in the quality of instruction, most of which occurs within rather than between schools. Although teacher quality appears to be unrelated to advanced degrees or certification, experience does matter -- but only in the first year of teaching. We also find that good teachers tend to be effective with all student ability levels but that there is a positive value of matching students and teachers by race. In the second part of the analysis, we show that teachers staying in our sample of urban schools tend to be as good as or better than those who exit. Thus, the main cost of large turnover is the introduction of more first year teachers. Finally, there is little or no evidence that districts that offer higher salaries and have better working conditions attract the higher quality teachers among those who depart the central city district. The overall results have a variety of direct policy implications for the design of school accountability and the compensation of teachers. ER -