TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kane,Thomas J.
AU  - Staiger,Douglas O.
TI  - Estimating Teacher Impacts on Student Achievement: An Experimental Evaluation
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14607
PY  - 2008
Y2  - December 2008
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14607
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14607.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Thomas J. Kane
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Center for Education Policy Research
50 Church St., 4th Floor
Cambridge, MA 02138
Tel: 617/496-4359
E-Mail: kaneto@gse.harvard.edu

Douglas O. Staiger
Dartmouth College
Department of Economics
HB6106, 301 Rockefeller Hall
Hanover, NH 03755-3514
Tel: 603/646-2979
Fax: 603/646-2122
E-Mail: douglas.staiger@dartmouth.edu
AB  - We used a random-assignment experiment in Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate various non-experimental methods for estimating teacher effects on student test scores.  Having estimated teacher effects during a pre-experimental period, we used these estimates to predict student achievement following random assignment of teachers to classrooms. While all of the teacher effect estimates we considered were significant predictors of student achievement under random assignment, those that controlled for prior student test scores yielded unbiased predictions and those that further controlled for mean classroom characteristics yielded the best prediction accuracy. In both the experimental and non-experimental data, we found that teacher effects faded out by roughly 50 percent per year in the two years following teacher assignment.
ER  -