Searching for Effective Teachers with Imperfect Information
Abstract
Over the past four decades, empirical researchers—many of them economists—have accumulated an impressive amount of evidence on teachers. In this paper, we ask what the existing evidence implies for how school leaders might recruit, evaluate, and retain teachers. We begin by summarizing the evidence on five key points, referring to existing work and to evidence we have accumulated from our research with the nation's two largest school districts: Los Angeles and New York City. First, teachers display considerable heterogeneity in their effects on student achievement gains. Second, estimates of teacher effectiveness based on student achievement data are noisy measures. Third, teachers' effectiveness rises rapidly in the first year or two of their teaching careers but then quickly levels out. Fourth, the primary cost of teacher turnover is not the direct cost of hiring and firing, but rather is the loss to students who will be taught by a novice teacher rather than one with several years of experience. Fifth, it is difficult to identify at the time of hire those teachers who will prove more effective. As a result, better teachers can only be identified after some evidence on their actual job performance has accumulated. We then explore what these facts imply for how principals and school districts should act, using a simple model in which schools must search for teachers using noisy signals of teacher effectiveness. The implications of our analysis are strikingly different from current practice. Rather than screening at the time of hire, the evidence on heterogeneity of teacher performance suggests a better strategy would be identifying large differences between teachers by observing the first few years of teaching performance and retaining only the highest-performing teachers.
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The marginal gains from obtaining one more year of data are outweighed by the expected cost of having a low value-added teacher on the staff even after the first year.
“The marginal gains from obtaining one more year of data are outweighed by the expected cost of having a low VA teacher on the staff even after the first year (Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”
From Measuring the Impacts of Teachers II: Teacher Value-Added and Student Outcomes in Adulthood (2014) · cites this paper as Staiger and Rockoff 2010
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“However, it remains unclear what specific behaviors and characteristics make teachers effective (Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”
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“This is broadly consistent with the physician practice style and teacher value-added literature, which demonstrate large variation in decisions and outcomes that appear uncorrelated with physician or teacher characteristics (Epstein and Nicholson 2009; Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”
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“…at the time of hire, the evidence on heterogeneity of teacher performance suggests a better strategy would be identifying large differences between teachers by observing the first few years of teaching performance and retaining only the highest-performing teachers (Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”
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“…that teachers play a critical role in shaping a child ’ s learning trajectory (Das et al. 2007; Clotfelter, Ladd, and Vigdor 2010; Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain 2005; Staiger and Rockoff 2010) and that good teaching practices correlate with faster learning (Allen et al. 2013; Araujo et al. 2016).”
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“Improving the hiring process has the potential to be a cost-effective policy since it can help avoid the costs of remedial programs by preventing students from being exposed to ineffective teachers (Staiger and Rockoff, 2010).”
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“KEYWORDS Meta-analysis; factor structure; Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) PRIOR RESEARCH SHOWS that teacher quality is a very important factor influencing student learning outcomes (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Rockoff, 2004; Sanders, Wright, & Horn, 1997; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”
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“Burgess (2019) reaches the conclusion, based on studies that simulate the impact of possible policies (Rothstein, 2015; Staiger and Rockoff, 2010), that teachers should be monitored closely, with the least effective among them being dismissed early on in their careers.”
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“Debate on providing access to highly engaged teachers is of critical importance in the recent educational context and research (Staiger and Rockoff, 2010; Pianta et al., 2012).”
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“…very broad level of macro conditions (e.g. socio-economic conditions) that have shaped teacher education over decades, with implications for TEER (Staiger & Rockoff, 2010); theories, theoretical frameworks, or models that have a more general scope but are directly significant for understanding…”
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“Unfortunately, teacher selection (and selection for teacher training) practices are often ineffective and unsystematic (Barber & Mourshed, 2007; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010; House of Commons Education Committee, 2012), having received little attention from educational psychology researchers (e.g.,…”
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“that offer competing views include Briggs and Domingue (2011) and Rothstein (2009, 2010).”
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“Because a more efficient system of teacher evaluation could provide gains to students on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars (Staiger & Rockoff, 2010), academic researchers have recently gone to great lengths to seek out both better quality indicators that might be used in hiring…”
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“For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com 1 at D epartm ent of the Parliam entary L ibrary on M ay 21, 2013 http://cesifo.oxfordjournals.org/ D ow nloaded from an undersupply of applicants, or payments for obtaining additional academic qualifications.”
BURGESS, S. M., Rawal, S., & Taylor, E. S. (2020) · Journal of Labor Economics · doi:10.1086/712997 · Cited by 57 · see citing works
“While the fi rst steps are intuitive, the equilibrium effect of this proposal likely depends more on how labor supply responds than on the measurement process (Staiger and Rockoff 2010; Rothstein 2015).”
BackgroundTeacher Preferences, Working Conditions, and Compensation StructurePreprint
Johnston, A. C. (2020) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3532779 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Instruction time and student achievement: The moderating role of teacher qualifications
Wedel, K. (2021) · Economics of Education Review · doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2021.102183 · Cited by 39 · see citing works
Value Added and Its Uses: Where You Stand Depends on Where You Sit
Corcoran, S. P., & Goldhaber, D. D. (2013) · Education Finance and Policy · doi:10.1162/edfp_a_00104 · Cited by 28 · see citing works
Fernández-García, C.-M., Maulana, R., Inda-Caro, M., Helms-Lorenz, M., & García-Pérez, O. (2019) · Frontiers in Psychology · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00533 · Cited by 30 · see citing works
Pham, P.-T., Phan, T.-T. T., Nguyen, Y., & Hoang, A.-D. (2021) · Journal of education · doi:10.1177/00220574211039483 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
“Notwithstanding, teacher effectiveness in fl uences student achievement the most, in comparison with other determinants like class size, in-class composition, or previous student achievement (Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”
BackgroundTeacher Performance Trajectories in High- and Lower-Poverty Schools
Xu, Z., Özek, U., & Hansén, M. (2014) · Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · doi:10.3102/0162373714561513 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Test Measurement Error and Inference from Value-Added Models
Koedel, C., Leatherman, R., & Parsons, E. (2012) · The B E Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy · doi:10.1515/1935-1682.3314 · Cited by 29 · see citing works
Huang, W., Li, T., Pan, Y., & Ren, J. (2023) · Social Science Research Network · doi:10.2139/ssrn.3803728 · Cited by 27
Do teaching practices impact socio-emotional skills?
Korbel, V., & Paulus, M. J. (2018) · Education Economics · doi:10.1080/09645292.2018.1460320 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
“We focus specifically on teaching practices because, while the fact that teachers are crucial to academic achievement has been known for a long time, researchers have thus far been unable to identify what determines teacher quality (Rockoff 2004; Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”
Personalities and Public Sector Performance: Evidence from a Health Experiment in PakistanPreprint
Callen, M. J., Gulzar, S., Hasanain, S. A., Khan, M. Y., & Rezaee, A. (2015) · SSRN Electronic Journal · doi:10.2139/ssrn.2613671 · Cited by 23 · see citing works
Barrett, N., Strunk, K. O., & Lincove, J. A. (2021) · Education Economics · doi:10.1080/09645292.2021.1921111 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“Two prior studies utilized simulations to test the labor market impacts of diminished tenure protections (Staiger & Rockoff, 2010; Rothstein, 2015).”
ResultPianta, R. C. (2016) · Wiley eBooks · doi:10.1002/9781119125556.devpsy415 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Childcare Quality and Child Development
Araujo, M. C., Dormal, M., & Schady, N. (2018) · The Journal of Human Resources · doi:10.3368/jhr.54.3.0217.8572r1 · Cited by 42 · see citing works
Public and Private Employer Learning: Evidence from the Adoption of Teacher Value Added
Bates, M. (2019) · Journal of Labor Economics · doi:10.1086/705881 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
Do tests applied to teachers predict their effectiveness
Cruz-Aguayo, Y., Ibarrarán, P., & Schady, N. R. (2017) · Economics Letters · doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2017.06.035 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
“Research from the United States has generally been pessimistic about the ability of various tests to identify better teachers (Hanushek and Rivkin 2006; Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”
BackgroundHan, E. S. (2020) · Industrial Relations A Journal of Economy and Society · doi:10.1111/irel.12256 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
Teacher Performance Ratings and Professional Improvement
Koedel, C., Li, J., Springer, M. G., & Tan, L. (2018) · Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness · doi:10.1080/19345747.2018.1490471 · Cited by 27 · see citing works
“…human resource policies, real or hypothetical, such as selective retention policies (e.g., Hanushek, 2011; Springer, Swain, & Rodriguez, 2016; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010; Winters & Cowen, 2013) or task reallocation policies (e.g., see Condie, Lefgren, & Sims, 2014; Goldhaber, Cowan, & Walch,…”
Backes, B., Cowan, J., Goldhaber, D. D., Koedel, C., Miller, L. C., & Xu, Z. (2017) · Economics of Education Review · doi:10.1016/j.econedurev.2017.10.004 · Cited by 16 · see citing works
How Not to Fool Ourselves About Heterogeneity of Treatment Effects
von Hippel, P. V., & Schuetze, B. A. (2025) · Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/25152459241304347 · Cited by 20 · see citing works
“Because students are not assigned to teachers at random, value-added studies commonly control for prior test scores and other covariates (Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”
Local supply, temporal dynamics, and unrealized potential in teacher hiring
James, J., Kraft, M. A., & Papay, J. P. (2023) · Journal of Policy Analysis and Management · doi:10.1002/pam.22496 · Cited by 17 · see citing works
“…systems, and merit-based pay (e.g., Adnot and Wyckoff 2015; Donaldson and Papay 2015; Jackson, Rockoff, and Staiger 2014; James and Wyckoff 2020), as well as to replace ineffective teachers with more effective teachers (Gordon, Kane, and Staiger 2006; Hanushek 2011; Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”
BackgroundTeacher-to-Classroom Assignment and Student Achievement
Graham, B. S., Ridder, G., Thiemann, P., & Zamarro, G. (2022) · Journal of Business and Economic Statistics · doi:10.1080/07350015.2022.2126480 · Cited by 11 · see citing works
Teachers’ unions, compensation, and tenure
West, K. L. (2015) · doi:10.1111/irel.12089 · Cited by 19
- Authors
- Staiger, D. O., & Rockoff, J. E.
- Affiliations
- Dartmouth College (US)
- Columbia University (US)
- ORCID
- Staiger, Douglas O
- Venue
- Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2010-08-01
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 97-118
- ISSN
- 0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2107815207
- Cited by
- 345
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 13 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 24 · 2022: 29 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 24 · 2019: 35 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 13 · 2016: 36 · 2015: 20 · 2014: 23 · 2013: 19 · 2012: 21
- FWCI
- 84.60
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Education › School Choice and Performance
- Social Sciences › Education › School Leadership and Teacher Performance
- Social Sciences › Education › Teacher Professional Development and Motivation
- Keywords
- teacher effectiveness, teacher employment, teacher evaluation, teacher retention, teacher turnover, teacher heterogeneity, academic performance, imperfect information, signaling, school leadership, novice teachers, teacher screening
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