We examine the relationships between observational ratings of teacher performance, principals’ evaluations of teachers’ cognitive and non-cognitive skills and test-score based measures of teachers’ productivity. We find that principals can distinguish between high and low performing...

Research on teacher productivity, as well as recently developed accountability systems for teachers, relies on “value-added” models to estimate the impact of teachers on student performance. We consider six value-added models that encompass most commonly estimated specifications. We test...

We study the effects of various types of education and training on the productivity of teachers in promoting student achievement. Previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequate measures of teacher training and difficulties in addressing the non-random selection of teachers to...

Annual student testing may make it possible to measure the contributions to student achievement made by individual teachers. But would these “teacher value-added” measures help to improve student achievement? I consider the statistical validity, purposes, and costs of teacher value-added...

Given scarce resources for evaluation, we recommend that education researchers more frequently conduct comprehensive randomized trials that generate evidence on how, why, and under what conditions interventions succeed or fail in producing effects. Recent experience evaluating a randomized...