An extensive literature finds that, while teachers vary considerably in initial quality, there are limited teacher quality dynamics: except for the first few years of teaching, teacher quality does not improve over the course of a teacher’s career. This study evaluates the importance of...

This article explores the effects of a 2010 reform in Illinois that substantially increased the difficulty of passing a required basic skills test for all Illinois college students seeking a teaching certification. The policy led to a 33 percent decrease in education program enrollments and a 27...

Empirical research bears out the conventional wisdom that teacher quality is the key schooling resource influencing student achievement, so it is not surprising that policy makers attempt to influence it by regulating admission into the teacher labor market through licensure systems. Most of...

The typical measure used by researchers and school administrators to evaluate teachers is based on how the students' achievement increases after being exposed to the teacher, or based on the teacher's "value-added''. When teacher value-added is heterogeneous across her students, the typically...

Information about teachers' effectiveness at the hiring stage is particularly scarce despite its importance for personnel decisions. Using the German setting of teacher training, I investigate the relationship of teachers' pre-service cognitive and pedagogical skills as measured by two state...

This paper studies the relationship between teacher unionization and student achievement. Generally stable patterns of teacher unionization since the 1970s have historically presented challenges in measuring the effects of unionization on educational production. However, the blossoming of the...

This paper documents a novel stylized fact: many teachers in Latin America have low levels of cognitive skills. This fact is the result of both low levels of skills among the population and - in the case of numeracy - a gap between the average skill level of teachers and the rest of the...

When an employee expects repeated evaluation and performance incentives over time, the potential future rewards create an incentive to invest in building relevant skills. Because new skills benefit job performance, the effects of an evaluation program can persist after the rewards end or even...

This paper investigates how the precision and stability of a teacher's value-added estimate relates to the characteristics of the teacher's students. Using a large administrative data set and a variety of teacher value-added estimators, it finds that the stability over time of teacher...

Today businesses and industry need highly educated and skilled employees. Employers are looking for individuals who have skills and attributes in the various field in which they work. Employers will seek individuals who can think, conduct research, and adapt to change. Numerous challenges in the...