Does Professor Quality Matter? Evidence from Random Assignment of Students to Professors
Abstract
In primary and secondary education, measures of teacher quality are often based on contemporaneous student performance on standardized achievement tests. In the postsecondary environment, scores on student evaluations of professors are typically used to measure teaching quality. We possess unique data that allow us to measure relative student performance in mandatory follow‐on classes. We compare metrics that capture these three different notions of instructional quality and present evidence that professors who excel at promoting contemporaneous student achievement teach in ways that improve their student evaluations but harm the follow‐on achievement of their students in more advanced classes.
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Perceptions of learning can be different from actual learning and have been shown to disadvantage more effective teachers and teaching methods.
“Such perceptions can be different from actual learning and have been shown to disadvantage more effective teachers and teaching methods (Carrell and West 2010, Deslauriers et al. 2019).”
From AI Meets the Classroom: When Do Large Language Models Harm Learning? (2024) · cites this paper as Carrell and West 2010
Teachers' impacts on test scores fade out very rapidly in subsequent grades.
“Our conclusion that teachers have long-lasting impacts may be surprising given evidence that teachers' impacts on test scores fade out very rapidly in subsequent grades (Rothstein 2010; Carrell and West 2010; Jacob, Lefgren, and Sims 2010).”
From Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood (2014) · cites this paper as Carrell and West 2010
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Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood
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AI Meets the Classroom: When Do Large Language Models Harm Learning?
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- Authors
- Carrell, S. E., & West, J. E.
- Affiliations
- University of California, Davis (US)
- United States Air Force Academy (US)
- ORCID
- West, James E.
- Venue
- Journal of Political Economy
- Publisher
- University of Chicago Press
- Published
- 2010-06
- Volume
- 118
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 409-432
- ISSN
- 0022-3808 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-534X
- OpenAlex
- W2036308389
- Cited by
- 508
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 18 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 25 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 33 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 56 · 2019: 33 · 2018: 57 · 2017: 21 · 2016: 38 · 2015: 33 · 2014: 28 · 2013: 28 · 2012: 28
- FWCI
- 134.46
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Political Economy (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › Evaluation of Teaching Practices
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Education › Educational Outcomes and Influences
- Keywords
- teaching quality, academic performance, compulsory courses, standardized achievement tests, postsecondary education, student performance
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