Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood

Raj Chetty, John N. Friedman, Jonah E. Rockoff

NBER Working Paper No. 19424
Issued in September 2013, Revised in May 2014
NBER Program(s):Program on Children, Economics of Education Program, Labor Studies Program, Public Economics Program

Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores ("value-added") a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate partly because of a lack of evidence on whether high value-added (VA) teachers who raise students' test scores improve students' long-term outcomes. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we find that students assigned to high-VA teachers in primary school are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, and are less likely to have children as teenagers. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5% with an average teacher would increase the present value of students' lifetime income by approximately $250,000 per classroom.

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w19424

Published: Raj Chetty & John N. Friedman & Jonah E. Rockoff, 2014. "Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, American Economic Association, vol. 104(9), pages 2633-79, September. citation courtesy of

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