Searching for Effective Teachers with Imperfect Information

“Teacher effectiveness increases as novice teachers gain experience, especially during the first three to five years of teaching (Hanushek, 2010; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“Obstacles introduced by imprecise performance measurement have also been studied in the setting of education policy (Kane and Staiger 2002; Staiger and Rockoff 2010), with a focus on measurement properties like bias and stability.”

“In the same way that teacher quality is associated with experience (Boyd et al., 2006; Rivkin et al., 2005; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010), researchers have shown that school leaders bene fi t from tenure and prior experience.”

“That means experience is good to have more knowledge, skills, and disposition for classroom teaching of mathematics, however, research findings are not consistent about the relationship between mathematics teacher experience and student achievement (Blomeke et al., 2016; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“Even though educational institutions do not perform optimally in selecting the best teachers (Ballou, 1996; Harris, Ingle, & Rutledge, 2014; Hinrichs, 2021; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010), they still have major selection advantages over students’ selecting capabilities.”

“…that variably influences (positively and negatively) learner performance, being more significant than class size, socio-economic status or the starting level with which the learner arrives (Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002; Hindman & Stronge, 2009; Klassen & Tze, 2014; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“…the past 20 years—such as the transition from district-specific to statewide tests and variations in test timing–we have normalized the test scores by year and grade to have a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one, following established research practices (e.g., Staiger and Rockoff, 2010).”

“Compelling evidence suggests that teacher effectiveness plays a crucial role in student achievement in education systems (e.g., Darling-Hammond & Youngs, 2002; Hanushek, 2011; Hindman & Stronge, 2009; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“Many studies focus on selecting teachers based on the information collected at the time of hire to predict student outcomes (Jacob et al., 2018; Hill et al., 2012; Staiger and Rockoff, 2010).”

“Hiring teachers is generally understood to be a complex endeavour, due in part to incomplete or superficial information about the applicant (Mason & Schroeder, 2010; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“Conversely, Staiger and Rockoff [52] argue that the greatest hiring cost faced by schools is the risk of exposing a group of students to a new teacher who turns out to be highly ineffective.”

“…existing teachers with more effective ones, but this approach is unpromising (because it is difficult to identify effective teachers reliably; Staiger and Rockoff, 2010) impractical, given existing recruitment challenges, and would show meaningful effects very slowly (see Wiliam, 2016,…”

“Current research in empirical methods to accurately and precisely capture teachers’ impacts on SLOs has led to increased adoption of the value-added approach (VA; Chetty, Friedman, & Rockoff, 2014a, 2014b; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“The incorporation of a third-party standards-based observation component to the state teacher evaluation system would also follow recommendations discussed by Darling-Hammond et al. (2012), Jacob & Lefgrin (2008), Staiger & Rockoff (2010), and Teddlie (2006).”

“Advances in discovering the most important inputs of the human-capital production function have led to the conclusion that teacher quality is crucial for building a country’s human-capital stock (Hanushek 1971; Hanushek and Rivkin 2006; Staiger and Rockoff 2010).”

“The main specification excludes this variable because previous research (e.g. Staiger and Rockoff (2010)) suggests that teacher certifications are not good predictors of teacher quality, and thus balancing of samples on teacher certification would be harmful unless such balance could be achieved…”

“…statistically significant), and the regression retained indicated that the quadratic form was the most adequate, confirming that previous teaching experience had the quadratic form identified in the literature (see Ost, 2009; Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005; Rockoff, 2004; Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“Finally, the very premise of deselecting is problematic, as it accepts that more students will experience early-career teachers before they have been deemed effective or ineffective (Staiger & Rockoff, 2010).”

“…value added, the effects of teacher experience, the cost of teacher turnover, and the inability to confidently discern 57 teacher quality during the initial hiring process, Staiger and Rockoff (2010) provided some sweeping recommendations to change the system based on research findings to date.”