The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector: Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers
... We are able to address all three of these limitations in our setting. In developing-country contexts, our results are consistent with other studies finding no correlation between teacher salaries in the public sector and their teaching effectiveness Sundararaman 2011, Bau andDas 2017), and with studies finding that contract teachers who are paid much lower salaries than civil-service teachers are no less effective (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2013, Duflo, Dupas, and Kremer 2015, Bau and Das 2017. ...
... We are able to address all three of these limitations in our setting. In developing-country contexts, our results are consistent with other studies finding no correlation between teacher salaries in the public sector and their teaching effectiveness Sundararaman 2011, Bau andDas 2017), and with studies finding that contract teachers who are paid much lower salaries than civil-service teachers are no less effective (Muralidharan and Sundararaman 2013, Duflo, Dupas, and Kremer 2015, Bau and Das 2017. ...
... Whereas much of the existing evidence is correlational, we provide experimental evidence that unconditional payincreases do not increase public-sector worker productivity. Conversely, the fact that the policy was implemented is consistent with the hypothesis that public-sector compensation policy does not reward productivity; this may help explain why management quality is lower in public organizations than in private firms, which are significantly more likely to compensate service providers for greater productivity(Bloom and Van Reenen 2010, Bau andDas 2017). ...
... Research from Ecuador, India, Pakistan, Uganda, and United States suggests that, at the school level, teachers are the most important determinant of student learning (Araujo Carneiro, Cruz-Aguayo, & Schady, 2016;Azam & Kingdon, 2015;Bau & Das, 2017;Buhl-Wiggers, Kerwin, Smith, & Thornton, 2017;Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010). This is further supported by evidence showing that most interventions that increase student learning have worked through teachers (Snilstveit et al., 2016). ...
... Structural quality, on the other hand, often explains a smaller share of student learning, and weakly predicts process quality (Burchinal, Howes, & Kontos, 2002). Aspects of structural quality that have been investigated include teachers' formal education (Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kane, 2005;Staiger & Rockoff, 2010), experience (Araujo et al., 2016;Bau & Das, 2017;Rockoff, 2004), subject content knowledge (Bietenbeck, Piopiunik, & Wiederhold, 2018), availability of basic inputs like textbooks (Piper, Zuilkowski, Dubeck, Jepkemei, & King, 2018), and school and classroom infrastructure (Barrett, Treves, Shmis, Ambasz, & Ustinova, 2019). ...
... Previous literature has identified several aspects of structural quality that correlates with process quality and student learning (Burchinal et al., 2002). Variables we included here were: teachers' years of formal education (Rivkin, Hanushek, & Kain, 2005;Staiger & Rockoff, 2010), years of experience (Araujo et al., 2016;Bau & Das, 2017;Rockoff, 2004), subject content knowledge (Bietenbeck et al., 2018), availability of basic inputs like textbooks (Piper et al., 2018), and school and classroom infrastructure (Barrett et al., 2019). ...
Monitoring the quality of teaching practices of primary school teachers in low-and-middle-income countries is often hampered by the lack of freely available classroom observation tools that are feasible to administer, validated in their own setting, and can be used as part of national monitoring systems. To address this discrepancy, Teach, an open-access classroom observation tool, was developed to measure the quality of teaching practices of primary school teachers in low-and-middle-income countries. This paper uses data from Punjab, Pakistan to evaluate the validity of Teach. Results show that Teach scores were internally consistent, presented good inter-rater reliability, and provided sufficient information to differentiate low from high-quality teaching practices. Further, higher Teach scores were associated with higher student outcomes.
... In a longitudinal study of over 12,000 children covering Ethiopia, India and Vietnam, researchers identified large differences in attainment of children at age eight, despite the fact that at age five they had similar starting points, suggesting that as well as contextual factors teaching effectiveness may be at play (Rossiter, et al., 2018). A Pakistani study of over 1500 government and nearly 1000 private school teachers found the difference between a less and more effective teacher is equivalent to more than one additional year of schooling (Evans & Yuan, 2017;Bau & Das, 2017). ...
... The LCPS thrives on the availability of poorly qualified and untrained teachers, often having just completed secondary education, willing to work for low pay (Andrabi, et al., 2013). Pakistani government teachers earn, on average, five to seven times GDP per-capita whereas private school teachers earn one fifth of their government counterparts (Bau & Das, 2017). A national large-scale survey in Pakistan found 27% of teachers in Pakistan's urban private schools had no teacher qualification compared to less than 3% of government schools (ASER-Pakistan, 2015). ...
... Teachers' observable characteristics, globally and in Pakistan, such as qualifications, training, certification, attendance and pay have shown little correlation with students' learning-outcomes in most subjects (Bau & Das, 2017). Improbably, teachers with higher qualifications do not produce better student learning than teachers with lower qualifications (Aslam & Kingdon, 2011;Singh & Sarkar, 2012;Hanushek, et al., 2018). ...
To improve learning-outcomes teaching quality matters. However, research into teaching in low- and middle-income countries (L&MIC) is limited, particularly in mathematics and the rapidly rising low-cost private sector (LCPS). The purpose of this research is to study mathematics teaching and learning in Karachi’s LCPS by exploring four related aspects: who attends Karachi’s LCPS-school; the values that underpin LCPS teachers’ instructional and professional practices; the instructional practices teachers use to teach mathematics; and the institutional environment that supports or hinders the development of mathematics teaching practice. Five key components of effective teaching underpinned by communicative pedagogies are explored in this study in relation to LCPS teachers’ practice: planning and preparation; a conducive classroom environment; effective instructional practices; independent practice and summative assessment; and teachers’ role as professionals. Employing a mixed-method case-study approach, this study uses primary data gathered through lesson observations and interviews conducted in five pilot and two in-depth case-study LCPS-schools, and secondary quantitative data. This thesis employs a pragmatic perspective on the school effectiveness and improvement research framework and argues for its greater use in identifying good practice in L&MIC. LCPS teachers are unqualified, untrained and poorly paid but driven by a strong sense of moral purpose underpinned by a transformational view of education. They exhibit a continuum of practice from novice to expert with the latter reflecting the same components of effective practices found in HIC literature. My findings show LCPS teachers can be supported to become expert through a systematic programme of professional development and a supportive accountability framework. Therefore, this study argues for support to be provided to LCPS teachers on developing students’ conceptual understanding, embedding formative assessment and promoting mathematical communication. It concludes with recommendations for policymakers to engage with the LCPS at a systemic level to promote equity and improve learning.
... However, the extent to which inequalities in achievement between poor and rich children can be explained by differential access to high quality schools and teaching is less understood. Some studies have quantified the impact of teachers on pupil achievement in Pakistan, or explored the importance of particular teacher characteristics in determining pupil outcomes in primary (typically children aged 5-9 years) or middle (aged 10-14 years) schools Rawal et al., 2013;De Talance, 2017;Bau & Das, 2017). These studies consistently point to the importance of teachers in improving student learning in Punjab, with teacher content knowledge and the 'process' of teaching, rather than the observed resumé characteristics of teachers being important determinants of pupil outcomes. ...
... Studies of school and teacher effectiveness that have been conducted in Pakistan also confirm the importance of teacher quality for student achievement (Azam & Kingdon, 2015;Bau & Das, 2017;. Bau and Das (2017), using data from rural Punjab, find that moving a student from a teacher in the 5 th percentile of the teacher quality distribution to the 95 th percentile would lead to a 0.64 standard deviation increase in test scores. ...
... Studies of school and teacher effectiveness that have been conducted in Pakistan also confirm the importance of teacher quality for student achievement (Azam & Kingdon, 2015;Bau & Das, 2017;. Bau and Das (2017), using data from rural Punjab, find that moving a student from a teacher in the 5 th percentile of the teacher quality distribution to the 95 th percentile would lead to a 0.64 standard deviation increase in test scores. Studies from neighbouring India have found similar results (Azam & Kingdon, 2015). ...
Pakistan’s Punjab province has witnessed numerous education reforms in recent years. Many of these reforms have been aimed at improving the well-documented low levels of learning by focusing on improving teaching quality. The rhetoric suggests that government schools, particularly those in rural areas with a more disadvantaged pupil base, are especially ineffective at imparting learning. This paper seeks to investigate whether children in rural Punjab are learning literacy and numeracy over the course of a year, and if so, are some pupils progressing more than others. Using recently collected data, it finds that children in our sample are making progress. Variation in progress is found to be greater within schools rather than across them. The competence and qualifications of a teacher also makes a significant difference to a child’s academic progress. The paper further finds differential progress for rich and poor students within schools, suggesting an important role for education policy to put in place targeted support towards those from disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure improvements in their learning keep pace with their peers.
... In addition to the existing literature on the topic, this paper draws on experience from our Economic and Social Research Council/Department for International Development funded Teaching Effectively All Children (TEACh) project which focuses on the role of teaching quality in explaining low levels of learning in India and Pakistan. 2 Particular issues raised in previous literature with regard to teaching quality in India and Pakistan include: teachers who lack basic subject knowledge themselves; inadequate teacher training; insufficient focus on children from poor backgrounds; weak incentives and poor governance; low motivation; and high levels of teacher absenteeism (Bau and Das, 2017;Bennell and Akyeampong, 2007;Kingdon et al., 2014;Moon, 2013;UNESCO, 2014;Westbrook et al., 2013). What is less understood is the reasons for variation in teaching quality across India and Pakistan and the extent to which it explains some of the variation we see in pupil achievement. ...
... These have been selected as the focus as they are both contexts where studies recognise the persistence of low levels in basic competencies of literacy and numeracy and wide inequalities in learning. The existing evidence seems to confirm the potential importance of teacher quality for student achievement (Azam and Kingdon, 2015;Bau and Das, 2017;De Talancé, 2017). ...
... In the Pakistan and Indian context, such models are becoming more widely used (see, for example, studies in Table 1: Azam and Kingdon, 2015;Bau and Das, 2017;De Talancé, 2017). The results from these kinds of model suggest that teachers vary substantially in their effectiveness. ...
Quantifying the impact of teaching quality on pupil learning, and understanding what teacher characteristics or practices are likely to improve student achievement, are pressing research questions in all countries. Empirical evidence also needs to be context specific since different education systems are likely to have different facilitators and barriers to good teaching. Existing evidence, largely from the US, suggests a number of strong research designs that enable researchers to model the impact of teaching on pupil achievement. However, operationalising these models in more resource-constrained contexts is challenging. In this paper we describe our attempt to model the impact of teachers and their practices on pupil achievement using the quantitative data generated for this research (household and school surveys with a teacher survey and an attempt to assess teacher knowledge). We describe the challenges when trying to implement this approach in the Indian and Pakistan context and the methodological adaptions needed. We reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of our approach. We note that existing literature tends to provide relatively minimal descriptions of the specific research design and instruments used to model teacher quality and hence provides a partial picture of methodological considerations. In this paper we contribute a detailed and frank account of developing a workable research design and the challenges we encountered.
... In a study methodologically similar to this one, 2 The programs in Kenya and India evaluated by Duflo et al. (2015) and Muralidharan and Sundararaman (2013) gave school committees fixed funds to hire extra contract teachers. As part of their study, Bau and Das (2017;2020) estimate the effects of a policy change in Pakistan where contract teachers were centrally hired and assigned to schools. 3 Although we don't find any evidence of spillovers in terms of effort, we do find weak evidence that hiring fixed-term physicians may lead other physicians employed in the same facility to extract more revenue from patients. Das et al. (2016b) compare public and private providers in India, finding that private providers exert significantly more effort in the private sector and are not more likely to prescribe unnecessary treatments. ...
... While correlations, these estimates provide suggestive evidence that, in addition to stronger or more salient career concerns, fixed-term physicians' incentives may be better aligned with quality because their pay is linked to performance. That civil servant pay is not related to performance is in line with the previous findings for public sector physicians in India (Das et al., 2016b) and teachers in Pakistan (Bau and Das, 2017), but in our context it seems that physicians are rewarded for better performance when employed outside of civil service posts even though still in the public sector. ...
A key feature of public sector employment in many countries is rigid civil service rules that effectively limit manager autonomy over hiring, firing, promotion, and compensation decisions. We study the effect of these rules by comparing the quality of healthcare provided by physicians employed as civil servants with physicians hired in the same facilities on fixed-term contracts that give managers more autonomy over personnel decisions. Using data from interactions with unannounced standardized patients, we find that fixed-term contracts motivate greater diagnostic effort without increasing unnecessary treatments. Lower effort among civil servants appears due to both weaker career and wage incentives.
... Our data also allow for an interesting case study of what happens to TVA when the government decides to hire contract teachers at much lower salaries. This hiring regime change, described in the working paper version of the paper (Bau and Das 2017), stemmed from worries about low public sector accountability and budgetary concerns due to high teacher wages and benefits. The final precipitating factor was a nuclear test in 1998 that led to international sanctions and greatly worsened Punjab's budgetary position. ...
... In Bau and Das (2017), we provide additional robustness tests, showing that (i) the estimated effect of temporary contract status on mean TVA is very similar when the TVA estimation includes controls for average socioeconomic status and lagged test scores (following Altonji and Mansfield 2018), and (ii) that there is no differential attrition from the sample for contract teachers or their students. We also provide suggestive evidence that the observable characteristics of the new teachers 40 Larger bandwidths include contract teachers with lower experience levels, which is likely to negatively bias our estimates of the effect of temporary contract teachers on test scores. ...
Using data from Pakistan, we show that existing methods produce
unbiased and reliable estimates of teacher value
added (TVA) despite significant differences in context. Although effective teachers
increase learning substantially, observed teacher characteristics
account for less than 5 percent of the variation in TVA. The first
two years of tenure and content knowledge correlate with TVA in
our sample. Wages for public sector teachers do not correlate with
TVA, although they do in the private sector. Finally, teachers newly
entering on temporary contracts with 35 percent lower wages have
similar distributions of TVA to the permanent teaching workforce.
(JEL I21, J31, J41, J45, O15)
... Teachers are one type of input that has received attention. Evidence from high-income countries shows that teachers can have a large role in student learning and long-term outcomes (Chetty et al., 2018(Chetty et al., , 2014Jackson et al., 2014), and recent evidence from Pakistan suggests a high impact of teachers on grades in a developing country setting (Bau and Das, 2017). ...
... Our null results regarding the effect of the allowance on student grades is consistent with recent findings in the literature on the effect of unconditional salary increases on teacher performance and student learning (Filho and Pinto, 2014;Bau and Das, 2017;Cabrera and Webbink, 2018;de Ree et al., 2018). It appears that this results generalises to a lowincome setting such as Zambia, using a quasi-experiment based on a real policy. ...
This paper studies the effect of unconditional teacher salary increases on teacher and student outcomes. To study the issue, we evaluate the rural hardship allowance in Zambia, which corresponds to a salary increase of 20%. This allowance is allocated to schools on the basis of a distance criterion allowing us to use a regression discontinuity design. We use administrative data from 2004 to 2015 on school, teacher characteristics and test scores. The administrative data are complemented with a telephone survey of schools close to the eligibility threshold. We find that crossing the threshold increases the share of teachers obtaining the allowance by 40%. Because of some non‐compliance with the allocation rule, our estimates are fairly imprecise. Focusing on provinces with better compliance we find some, albeit weak, evidence that the allowance increases the stock of teachers. We, however, find no effects on teacher characteristics or on student test scores.
... schooling requirements from previous treasures, either from past savings if any, or reducing existing production activity or cutting down family basic needs such as food quality and nutrition. Since a household is poor, an additional price in terms of education might be too costly [3,4,21]. According to Tanaka et al., Bardhan and Udry, averred that, limitations of access to traditional banks highlight the dual causality between revenues and quality human resources development in the rural settlements [16,22]. ...
... These financial expertise's makes it possible for poor rural families who lack the traditional financial requirements, such as collateral to enable them access micro financial services to assist in productive and human capital developments. Existing writings have acknowledged diverse ways micro financial services stimulate human assets development, especially children formal education in the rural areas of emerging nations [9,13,18,21]. For example, Aduda and Kalunda [23], Basu [5], Mazumder and Lu [14], cited micro financial institutions services are efficient and effective devices that, enables financially poor households children universal education in the rural setups. ...
Using a survey design, both quantitative and qualitative sampling procedure was employed. A Sample of 500 was drawn among the population of rural Northern Migrants in the villages of Techiman Municipality and Odumasi District in the Brong Ahafo Region of Ghana. This study concretizes the perception that women access to micro financial services, especially micro loan is capable of promoting rural children formal education among others. Analyzing the primary quantitative data by use of SPSS statistical software, the findings revealed increase in quality of food, nutrition and health care of micro clienteles. On the contrary, the results showed a continuous access to micro loans compels women micro loans beneficiaries to withdraw their female children from school to help in households’ chores or hawking to enable the repayment of the micro loans. The study concludes that Northern Rural Migrant women continuous access to micro loans alone is not a panacea to children formal education and recommends the awareness of children formal education as the only long term solution to quality of life among others.
... While their results are interesting, they do not control for student past performance and do not specifically focus on teachers. Das and Bau (2014) make use of the same database to look at the relationship between teacher pay and productivity, using the rise in contract teachers as a natural experiment. Their empirical method is different as they estimate teacher value-added (teacher fixed effects) without children fixed effects. ...
... Hanushek and Rivkin (2010) review 10 studies in the United States, where the estimates vary between 0.08 and 0.36. Our larger effect size may be explained by the greater variation in teacher quality in low-income countries like Pakistan (Das & Bau, 2014). Such comparisons are however problematic as one standard deviation in the United States may well not be comparable to that in Pakistan. ...
Most of the existing literature examining the determinants of school quality in developing countries has failed to take into account the crucial role of teachers. This study assesses how teachers contribute to knowledge acquisition in Punjab, Pakistan. The baseline specification used is a gain model with three different levels of fixed effects. We find that teacher quality is strongly correlated with student achievement. Increasing teachers’ wages could improve schooling quality, as could the recruitment of local and contract teachers. Our analysis also underlines the importance of reforming training programmes and re-thinking wage policies.
... Hay suficiente evidencia empírica en países con diferentes niveles de desarrollo económico para concluir que la calidad de un sistema educativo es tan buena como la calidad de sus docentes (Barber & Mourshed, 2007;Lee & Koh, 2020). En efecto, los estudios en países en desarrollo (países de ingresos bajos y medianos) han encontrado repetidamente que la diferencia entre un docente débil y uno bueno en los puntajes de las pruebas de los estudiantes se ha estimado en 0.36 desviaciones estándar (DE) en Uganda (Buhl-Wiggers et al., 2017) y 0.54 DE en Pakistán (Bau & Das, 2017). Esto significa que, durante un año escolar, tener un buen docente frente a uno débil equivale a una diferencia de más de dos años de escolaridad (Evans & Yuan, 2018). ...
El presente artículo presenta una revisión de la literatura y de la evidencia empírica basada en estudios de evaluación de impacto (ensayos de control aleatorios) sobre la importancia del rol directivo escolar para la mejora educativa. Dado el pequeño número de estudios, aún existen muchas preguntas por responder, por lo que la finalidad de este documento es contribuir a la reflexión y al diálogo sobre el papel del director escolar y sobre cómo fortalecer su capacidad para que desempeñe sus funciones. Se parte de la premisa de que la política de capacitar a los directores de colegios se justifica al entender que el director es el segundo factor que mayor incidencia tiene sobre los aprendizajes de los estudiantes. De esta manera, al fortalecer la capacidad de estos actores se lograrían mejoras en el proceso educativo, en los aprendizajes y en la calidad de la educación. La literatura sobre este tema es escandalosamente escasa, en particular cuando se trata de estudios que permitan establecer atribución. Es recomendable, por lo tanto, que se fomenten más estudios que permitan identificar los factores más efectivos en mejorar la calidad de los directores de escuelas y de los resultados de calidad entre los alumnos de las mismas.
... We might determine that whilst the effectiveness literature assists, at least in part, in locating the problem, its scope is too limited to engage with contextual factors that might shape or influence cultural or sociological aspects of quality (Glewwe and Muralidharan, 2015;Heneveld & Craig, 1996;Azam & Kingdon, 2015;Bau & Das, 2017 Second, if we are able to see space as power and its associated spatial arrangements (Massey, 2005) as detrimental to 'success,' then are we not reproducing a kind of violence of exception by 'relegating the colonised to a third zone between subjecthood and objecthood'? . Could we find another way to look at the problem of 'progress' and 'quality' in different sense? ...
Currently, a number of young people are attending schools in developing countries where there is substantial ethnic, religious, and political conflict and a striving towards social justice aims in education via the development project. There is an ongoing debate about the role of teachers in such contexts, particularly as it relates to ‘outcomes’ and success for young people as well as their capacity for realising aspirations, educational choices, and positive social futures. I engage in this thesis not only with this debate on the role of teachers, but also the larger concern with epistemic justice as it relates to the project of development (Escobar, 2011) and the modern (Bhambra, 2021). I argue that work on quality teachers and on school equity lacks several major elements: understanding the dynamic space of a classroom and the historic, local, and global forces that inform the ecological ‘field’ in which the teacher exists. I define the classroom as a ‘claimed/created space’ (Gaventa, 2006) where, willingly or unwillingly, teachers and students both wrestle with power centers and perform organic political and affective roles. Multiple definitions of the ontology of teaching exist, informed by national, local, global, and historic forces, but my work hypothesises that each teacher carries a fragmented habitus formed from the symbols and codes contained in the ‘field’ around them. In working with exclusively female teachers, I also add elements of feminist post-colonial theory including a historical debt of ‘honour/izzat,’ women as ‘borderings,’ and elements of constraint because of limited agency in the masculine nation-state (McClintock, 1995). In an urban conurbation of Karachi, Pakistan – Orangi-town – I conducted an ethnography to ‘map’ how teachers conceptualise their political role in the classroom, how the community, national, and historical influence this role, and how students perceive and respond to teachers’ authorial roles, particularly with regards to citizenship, belonging, and violence in an autocratic and militarised nation state. Methods included visual renderings, photo journals, spatial ethnography, archival research for post-colonial remnants, observations, field notes, and ethnographic interviews and focus groups with groups of children, teachers, and community members. Using the work of Ricœur (1970), Arendt (1958; 1968; 1970), and Mbembe (& Corcoran, 2019), I use hermeneutic phenomenology to interpret and understand the narrative imaginaries of community members, students, and teachers. To access the national mythos as it appears in the visual, the dialogic, and the spatial, I also turn towards a historical contextualisation which includes major themes in my findings: a state of emergence (Honig, 2009), a sacred state which is justified by borderings and ‘Others,’ glorification of the military, populist politics, and static time. In my findings, I highlight conceptions of entrapment in coloniality, what my participants call majboori, in Orangi due to historical debt (Sutoris, 2019), impoverishment, political violence, bureaucratisation, and what Mbembe refers to as ‘deathscapes’ (2019). Teachers and children illustrate their desire for self-sacrifice in service of the state, noting that while schooling and quality are significant as a moral regime, they have little impact on their aspirations. These dreams are to show their loyalty to Pakistan, where they are azaad/free. I explore the ideological closure of this state narrative as it further constricts the lives of young people on the periphery and facilitates the increased regulation, militarisation, and autocratic nature of the state. Schooling and teaching, on this periphery, are relegated to instruments of state control, with teachers functioning as (unknowing) bureaucrats and children identifying futures which are saturated with violence. I conclude this work with an examination of the political imaginaries of children, which yield potential avenues for hope, and questions surrounding the ‘colonial constitution’ (Bhambra, 2021) of modernity as it leads to ‘violent instrumentality’ and logics of the neoliberal and autocratic (Arendt, 1968).
... Teachers are the most important factor affecting learning in schools (Schleicher 2018). US students with great teachers advance three times faster than those with a poor teacher; in developing countries, teacher quality can matter even more (Bau and Das 2017). And teacher salaries are the largest single educationbudget item, taking up three-quarters of the primary-level budget in developing countries. ...
Rising inequality and widespread poverty, social unrest and polarization, gender and ethnic disparities, declining social mobility, economic fragility, unbalanced growth due to technology and globalization, and existential danger from climate change are urgent global concerns of our day. These issues are intertwined. They therefore require a holistic framework to examine their interplay and bring the various strands together. This book brings together leading academic economists and experts from several international institutions to explain the sources and scale of these challenges. The book summarizes a wide array of empirical evidence and country experiences, lays out practical policy solutions, and devises a comprehensive and unified plan of action for combatting these economic and social disparities. This authoritative book is accessible to policy makers, students, and the general public interested in how to craft a brighter future by building a sustainable, green, and inclusive society in the years ahead.
... We observe large increases in the number of teachers (from two to five), reducing pupil-teacher ratios from 35 to 25, despite the concurrent increase in student enrolment (Table 5). This increase in teachers is enabled by the substantially lower market rate for salaries in private schools -1,407 rupees ($12) per month, compared to 7,671 rupees ($66) in government schools (Bau and Das 2017). Analysis of MEA data by McKinsey (2017) found no change in teacher presence rates for PSSP Phase 1 and 2 schools after conversion, and no change in school facilities (boundary walls, toilets, electricity, drinking water). ...
Can governments contract out school management at scale? In 2016 the Government of Punjab transferred management of over 4,000 failing primary schools to private operators. Schools remained free to students. Private operators received a government subsidy per enrolled student of less than half per-student spending in government schools. This paper evaluates the effects on performance of converted schools. Comparing early converters to later converters, we estimate that enrolment in treated schools increased by over 60 percent, and test scores declined sharply. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Research around the world shows that teachers have a critical role in promoting student learning (Araujo et al., 2016;Azam & Kingdon, 2015;Bau & Das, 2017;Buhl-Wiggers et al., 2017;Hanushek & Rivkin, 2010). For instance, Snilstveit et al. (2016) showed in their cross-country review that out of all school-related interventions in low-and middle-income countries to improve learning, the ones that had the largest positive impacts on student learning outcomes are those that supported teachers improve the quality of their classroom instruction with appropriate training. ...
This article studies the power of the Lagrange Multiplier Test and the Generalized Lagrange Multiplier Test to detect measurement non-invariance in Item Response Theory (IRT) models for binary data. We study the performance of these two tests under correct model specification and incorrect distribution of the latent variable. The asymptotic distribution of each test under the alternative hypothesis depends on a noncentrality parameter that is used to compute the power. We present two different procedures to compute the noncentrality parameter and consequently the power of the tests. The performance of the two methods is evaluated through a simulation study. They turn out to be very similar to the classic empirical power but less time consuming. Moreover, the results highlight that the Lagrange Multiplier Test is more powerful than the Generalized Lagrange Multiplier Test to detect measurement non-invariance under all simulation conditions.
... Although this assumption is made mainly for analytical convenience, it is not alien to empirical evidence. Indeed, the studies by Langbein and Lewis (1998), Ozmucur and Celasun (2001) and Bau and Das (2017) have not found any significant relation between productivity differentials and wages in the public sector. We will also assume that the production of public goods occurs prior to private production. ...
We study the relation between nuclear family ties and corruption. Our theoretical model shows that the population share of people who desire close ties with their families (i.e. the extensive margin) has an ambiguous effect on the level of corruption, due to the presence of conflicting mechanisms. However, the strength of this desire among people who want close family ties (i.e. the intensive margin) has an unambiguously negative effect on corruption. The latter outcome finds support from our empirical analysis: Using micro-level data, we show that, in contrast to conventional wisdom and cross-country reflections, stronger family ties are negatively correlated with a broad set of activities that measure corruption.
... Teachers are the most important factor affecting learning in schools (Schleicher 2018). US students with great teachers advance three times faster than those with a poor teacher; in developing countries, teacher quality can matter even more (Bau and Das 2017). And teacher salaries are the largest single educationbudget item, taking up three-quarters of the primary-level budget in developing countries. ...
The chapter discusses existing shortfalls and inequalities in the accumulation of human capital—knowledge, skills, and health. It analyzes their immediate and systemic causes and assess the scope for public intervention. The broad policy goals should be to improve: the quality, and not just the quantity, of education and health care; outcomes for disadvantaged groups; and lifelong outcomes. The means to achieve these goals, while maximizing value for money, include focusing on results rather than just inputs; moving from piecemeal interventions to systemic reform; and adopting a “whole-of-society” approach. Reforms must be underpinned by a robust evidence base.
... Teachers are the most important factor affecting learning in schools (Schleicher 2018). US students with great teachers advance three times faster than those with a poor teacher; in developing countries, teacher quality can matter even more (Bau and Das 2017). And teacher salaries are the largest single educationbudget item, taking up three-quarters of the primary-level budget in developing countries. ...
The past two decades have seen a rapid increase in interest in financial inclusion, both from policymakers and researchers. This chapter surveys the main findings from the literature, documenting the trends over time and gaps that have arisen across regions, income levels, and gender, among others. It points out that structural, as well as policy-related, factors, such as encouraging banking competition or channelling government payments through bank accounts, play an important role, and describes the potential macro and microeconomic benefits that can be derived from greater financial inclusion. It argues that policy should aim to identify and reduce frictions holding back financial inclusion, rather than targeting specific levels of inclusion. Finally, it suggests areas for future research.
... Teachers are the most important factor affecting learning in schools (Schleicher 2018). US students with great teachers advance three times faster than those with a poor teacher; in developing countries, teacher quality can matter even more (Bau and Das 2017). And teacher salaries are the largest single educationbudget item, taking up three-quarters of the primary-level budget in developing countries. ...
Labor earnings are the dominant income source for most individuals. Thus, an inclusive labor market is key for ensuring inclusive growth. In this chapter we propose four principles that an inclusive labor market will embody: access, fairness, protection and voice. While measuring inclusivity presents challenges, we discuss how data can be used to shed light on the extent of inclusivity and document cross-country trends and stylized facts. We also discuss the role of policy in achieving an inclusive labor market, focusing on the need to rebalance growth; improve risk sharing; and fight discrimination. Several messages emerge. First, some policies entail a trade-off between the different dimensions of inclusivity. Second, it is important to view policies as a bundle, taking into account substitution and complementarities. Third, some policies are win-win, in the sense that they both increase inclusivity and improve overall efficiency.
... Rigorous research in the United States has indicated that students' cognitive function can develop three times as much with a high-quality teacher as opposed to studying with a less effective teacher (Rockoff 2004). More important, such links between the quality of teachers and student learning outcomes have been shown to be more influential in low-and middle-income countries, where school factors play decisive roles in supporting student's cognitive growth (Bau and Das 2017;Liu and Steiner-Khamsi 2020). ...
Teachers’ own level of human capital development is commonly believed to be deterministic for the quality and effectiveness of their instruction and management in the classroom. Yet, there still exists an international debate on whether better educated teachers contribute to students’ cognitive development. Leveraging a random class-assignment subsample (N = 3436) from a nationally representative teacher-student linked dataset in China, this study reassesses the ongoing contention regarding the value of teacher education. By linking differences in teachers’ own educational attainment levels across different subjects of instruction to variation in seventh grade students’ Chinese, Math and English test scores using student fixed-effect models, this study quantifies the
cognitive returns attributable to better educated teachers, in student learning terms. Findings show that teachers with at least a bachelor’s degree contribute substantially to student learning compared to those who are less qualified, by as much as 0.069 SDs or about two additional months of learning over a typical academic year. Additional sensitivity analyses suggest that this observed effect is robust to model specifications, and is consistent for students from different backgrounds.
... Low-income countries typically have a much lower ratio of public employees per citizen in part because of their lower tax-to-GDP ratios, and in part because of much higher public-employee salaries relative to GDP than richer countries (Finan, Olken, and Pande, 2017). Further, a growing body of evidence suggests that this civil-service wage premium is not correlated with productivity (Bau and Das, 2017;de Ree et al., 2018). Thus, expanding hiring of local staff at lower than civil-service salaries may be a promising policy option for expanding state capacity for service delivery more broadly (Haines et al., 2007;Muralidharan, 2016). ...
... To that end, evidence across international contexts underscores the critical importance of effective teaching for bolstering educational success, encouraging meaningful interaction, and sustaining lifelong learning (Altinok and Kingdon, 2012;Hanushek and Rivkin, 2012;Chetty et al., 2014). More critically, the weight of the influence of teachers on learning outcomes has been shown to be more deterministic in developing countries, where availability of home educational resources and learning opportunities are scarce (Bau and Das, 2017;Liu and Steiner-Khamsi, 2020). Consequently, policymakers have become interested in evaluating how the educational credentials of teachers can serve as promising predictors of effective teaching and in understanding how such observable indicators of teacher quality affect the learning of children (Liu, 2021). ...
Many factors serve as predictors of effective teaching; particularly, there is an ongoing debate regarding whether the educational credentials of teachers are indicative of their contribution to pupil's educational success. Utilizing pupil fixed-effect modeling and the China Education Panel Survey dataset (n = 5,032), this study evaluates the extent to which teachers who hold at least a Bachelor of Education (BEd) degree perform better than those who do not, in terms of pupil learning gains over the course of a full academic year. Empirical results from the pupil fixed-effect model indicate that mean learning gain is 0.042 SDs (95% CI: 0.008-0.083, p = 0.040) higher among pupils who studied with teachers holding higher educational credentials (at least a BEd degree) than those with lower educational credentials. This effect translates to approximately one month of additional learning per year, which is significant considering the potential compounding aggregation effects over the course of the entire educational career of pupils. This study adds new evidence that highlights the importance of the educational credentials of teachers as a predictor of effective teaching and that better-educated teachers can lead to improved pupil learning gains.
... In Indonesia, a raise "significantly improved teachers' satisfaction with their income, reduced the incidence of teachers holding outside jobs, and reduced self-reported financial stress" (dee Ree, Muralidharan, Pradhan, & Rogers, 2018, p. 993). However, these improvements did not translate into student achievement effects, which is consistent with the literature in other countries with similar pay experiments that find no relationship between teacher pay and effectiveness (Bau & Das, 2017;Hanushek, 1986;Muralidharan & Sundararaman, 2011). While I cannot study the effects of a pay increase with this study design, I can examine those districts in the top quartile of the state. ...
Education reform rhetoric frequently pits the vested interests of teachers’ unions against those of students and families. To test whether union restrictions are related to student learning, I analyze a unique database of contractual items for the 2016-2017 school year across all 499 Pennsylvania school districts in order to examine a) variation, b) partisan political predictors, and c) relationships to student achievement and graduation rates. I also examine changes in 105 contracts that occurred during the 2015-2016 school year. I depict variation among items using GIS mapping. I use OLS regression, probit regression, and spatial autoregression to examine relationships between contract features and student proficiency and graduation rates. I also use propensity score weighting with generalized boosted models (GBM). After controlling for spatial dependence and district demographics, I find a significant negative relationship between the percentage of registered Republicans in a district and bonuses for teacher graduate credentials. I find a significant and positive relationship between Republican registered voters and math and science proficiency. This relationship diminishes in magnitude for ELA proficiency. I also find a significant positive relationship between average years of teaching experience and ELA proficiency in grades 3-8. Using GBM, I find significant positive estimates (+2%) of teacher qualification indicators on students’ math achievement in grades 3-8, and a significant positive estimate (+2%) between harsh consequences for ELA teachers and student proficiency. I also find a significant positive estimate between higher teacher pay and biology proficiency (+4% for historically disadvantaged students), as well as a significant negative estimate of graduate credential bonuses on graduation rates (-6%). These correlational results suggest that subject-area and grade-level differentiation in contracts – such as higher wages for STEM teachers – might be beneficial. The most effective STEM teachers might be seeking out positions in the best-paying districts with the strongest contracts.
... Quality education can be achieved by teachers, who possess a good range of learning and teaching techniques and are facilitated by a supportive learning environment (Ng, 2015). Research focusing diversified nations suggests that teachers are the most important driver of student learning (Azam and Kingdon, 2015;Bau and Das, 2017;Molina et al., 2020). Snilstveit et al. (2016) provide evidence which supports that most interventions targeted student's learning worked through teachers. ...
This study investigated the current practice of learning, teaching and assessment in science, particularly in classrooms at primary level in a division of Bangladesh. In addition, this study also focused on the role of DPEd program in the development of the professional preparation of teachers' for improving their quality of science teaching. For the purpose of this study, a mixed method research design which used both quantitative and qualitative method to gather and analyse data. A random stratified sampling process was used to select 150 primary science teachers and 60 students in grade 5 (10 þ years) students for collecting quantitative data while a purposeful sampling process was used for qualitative inquiry. Qualitative data was obtained through analysis of the national documents and the interviews of Head teachers of primary schools, Assistant Upazila (Sub-district) Education Officers and Instructors of Primary Training Institutes (PTI) and Upazila Resource Centers. Quantitative data was analysed by using descriptive statistics and qualitative data was transcribed and labelled into emerging themes. A triangulation technique was used to establish the findings of this study. The findings of this study revealed that the present practice of learning and teaching science is mostly teacher centred with little active pupil participation, limited opportunity for hands on activity and discussion. The major barriers for teachers' to teach science effectively were large class sizes, insufficient materials, lack of teacher's knowledge and skills, absence of assessment for learning strategies, inadequate opportunities for professional development and poor quality of support from the stakeholders. The current DPEd program has consist of limited focus on hands of activities, insufficient learning assessment capacity of the PTI instructors, and a lack of teacher monitoring in placement schools during training. The basic recommendation suggested by this research is to enhance the use of an inquiry oriented science learning and teaching approach with associated assessment for learning strategies for ensuring the quality of science learning and teaching. For preparing a better quality teacher, ensuring subject based training and to review the current teacher training program is further suggested. The result of this study can be used for future development of science learning and teaching practice at elementary level in Bangladesh and similar other developing countries.
... Prior research has shown that exposure to better teachers is categorically more influential than attending a better school, and it matters substantively for social inclusivity by benefitting students from disadvantaged backgrounds (Chetty et al., 2014;Hanushek & Rivkin, 2012). This relationship has been shown to be even more evident in low-and middle-income countries (Bau & Das, 2017). Notwithstanding, the teaching profession constantly faces outside competition for talents. ...
Background: The remarkable economic growth in contemporary China is unprecedented, but scholars voice concerns regarding unintended consequences during this transitional phase. Of particular concern is the constant challenge to staff schools with highly qualified teachers.
Purpose: This study sets out to understand subtle yet consequential changes in schools during a sustained period of economic boom, through the lens of teacher occupational choice. This study contributes empirically to the teacher occupational choice literature by identifying the magnitude of lag in wage growth and returns to human capital in the teaching profession, and their critical relationship to affecting high-ability workers’ career decisions.
Research Design: Using a nationally representative repeated cross-sectional data set spanning a quarter century (1988–2013), this study estimates Mincer earnings function regression models and multinomial probit regression models to assess wage differentials and heterogeneous rates of return to human capital in teaching and nonteaching sectors, in addition to untangling complex relationships between worker quality and observed occupational choice.
Findings: We documented several novel facts about teachers in contemporary urban China. First, we found sharp shifts in the relative career attractiveness of teaching, such that a 13% wage premium for teachers in 1988 dissipated over time and regressed to a 11% wage penalty in 2013, when compared with similar workers. Second, returns to tertiary education are markedly higher in nonteaching careers—about 11–15 percentage points more so than in teaching. Third, highly educated workers in younger cohorts are half as likely to become teachers relative to older cohorts, particularly in recent years.
Conclusions: The authors contextualize findings and discuss appropriate policy implications. Most important, holding back teacher wage levels from broader market prices has consequential effects on teacher supply. Policy makers need to reconsider existing forms of teacher compensation arrangements and develop sustainable wage dynamics that can attract and retain bright minds to enter and stay in teaching.
... Research in the United States and developed countries has shown that teacher attrition, or pre-retirement teacher exit, is a key factor impeding improvement in teacher quality and subsequent student learning (Hanushek & Rivkin, 2007;Sutcher et al., 2016). More troubling is the pronounced adverse effect of teacher attrition on students in middle-and lowincome countries, whose learning is already stymied by the lack of important education support systems (Bau & Das, 2017;Steiner-Khamsi, 2012;Liu & Steiner-Khamsi, 2020). In this regard, retaining bright and talented teachers become not only an education quality issue, but more critically, an education equity imperative, because when teachers do leave, it is most detrimental to disadvantaged or marginalized children. ...
Teacher attrition is a chronic challenge facing many education systems, and has been shown to negatively impact education quality and equity. Common explanations rooted in occupational choice theory identify pecuniary and non-pecuniary rewards as critical factors in motivating and retaining teachers. Using China Household Income Project (CHIP) urban dataset, which contains detailed information on teacher career decisions, this study examines these theoretical stipulations by simultaneously modeling teacher career decisions, wage compensation, and on-the-job well-being. Probit panel regression results demonstrate that a 10% increase in teacher wage and well-being gaps, relative to comparable professionals, predicts a 7.9% and 32% lower probability of retention respectively, with effects mostly operating through teacher well-being.
... In the United States, students in a class with an effective teacher advance 1.5 grade levels or more over a single school year, compared with just 0.5 grade levels for those with an ineffective one (World Development Report 2018). Similar effects of the quality of teachers on learning are also found in Ecuador, Uganda, Pakistan and India (Bau and Das 2017). Beteille and Evans (2019) find that some of the most effective interventions to improve student learning rely on teachers. ...
This open access book offers a comparative study of eight ambitious national reforms that sought to create opportunities for students to gain the necessary breath of skills to thrive in a rapidly changing world. It examines how national governments transform education systems to provide students opportunities to develop such skills. It analyses comprehensive education reforms in Brazil, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Portugal and Russia and yields original and important insights on the process of educational change. The analysis of these 21st century skills reforms shows that reformers followed approaches which are based on the five perspectives: cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political. Most reforms relied on institutional and political perspectives. They highlight the systemic nature of the process of educational change, and the need for alignment and coherence among the various elements of the system in order. They underscore the importance of addressing the interests of various stakeholders of the education system in obtaining the necessary impetus to initiate and sustain change. In contrast, as the book shows, the use of a cultural and psychological frame proved rarer, missing important opportunities to draw on systematic analysis of emerging demands for schools and on cognitive science to inform the changes in the organization of instruction. Drawing on a rich array of sources and evidence the book provides a careful account of how education reform works in practice.
... In the United States, students in a class with an effective teacher advance 1.5 grade levels or more over a single school year, compared with just 0.5 grade levels for those with an ineffective one (World Development Report 2018). Similar effects of the quality of teachers on learning are also found in Ecuador, Uganda, Pakistan and India (Bau and Das 2017). (2004)) Beteille and Evans (2019) find that some of the most effective interventions to improve student learning rely on teachers. ...
Mexico’s 2012–2018 federal administration launched an extensive educational reform whose main goal was to transform its large and complex education system, so as to prepare students to successfully face twenty first century challenges. The assumption being that, by providing them with the tools they need to succeed in this rapidly changing world, Mexico will in turn become prosperous, fair and free. It entailed rethinking the conceptualization and structure of the system, and involved profound transformations in its organizational, budgetary, technical, pedagogical and administrative spheres, with quality and equity as guiding principles. Two disruptive innovations –which steered the process– stand out: teachers’ appraisals and the new national curriculum. About this curriculum, three, of several salient features, discussed in this chapter, are: its learning outcomes’ structure, which effectively articulate twelve of the fifteen grades of compulsory education; the introduction, from PreK to12th grade, of socioemotional learning; and curricular autonomy as a means to achieving pedagogical innovations in schools. Unfortunately, this reform defied deeply rooted uses and habits of various stakeholders and treaded on many political interests, which resulted in a convoluted process that has threatened its consolidation. The new president campaigned against the reform. It is still uncertain what policies would continue.
... In the United States, students in a class with an effective teacher advance 1.5 grade levels or more over a single school year, compared with just 0.5 grade levels for those with an ineffective one (World Development Report 2018). Similar effects of the quality of teachers on learning are also found in Ecuador, Uganda, Pakistan and India (Bau and Das 2017). (2004)) Beteille and Evans (2019) find that some of the most effective interventions to improve student learning rely on teachers. ...
The dramatic story of moving from knowledge-based to competence-based education is the main focus of the chapter. This transition was very difficult because many people believed that the Soviet schools were best-in-the-world, because teachers and parents were not ready to change the schools. The paradigm change in Russian education has still heterogenic impact on schools, assessment system, education policy, curricula.
... In the United States, students in a class with an effective teacher advance 1.5 grade levels or more over a single school year, compared with just 0.5 grade levels for those with an ineffective one (World Development Report 2018). Similar effects of the quality of teachers on learning are also found in Ecuador, Uganda, Pakistan and India (Bau and Das 2017). (2004)) Beteille and Evans (2019) find that some of the most effective interventions to improve student learning rely on teachers. ...
As the demands for civic and economic participation increase, the result of technological, economic and social transformations, and in response to a rapidly changing world and to new challenges, many governments have turned to schools to provide students with opportunities to develop the skills necessary to thrive. This chapter traces the roots of education reforms that seek to develop a breadth of skills, to educate the whole child, reviewing the emergence of the field of comparative education as the first public education systems were created, and examining the role of the international development architecture built after world war II in advancing the global education movement. The chapter then examines the more recent efforts to develop twenty-first century skills. It then introduces the present comparative study of education reforms in Brazil, Finland, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Portugal and Russia, describing the basic tenets of each of those reforms. The chapter then examines how instruction and learning compare in these countries, using data from the latest survey of teacher practices conducted by the OECD (TALIS – The OECD teaching and learning international survey. http://www.oecd.org/education/talis/ . Accessed 3 Dec 2019).
The core argument of the chapter is that education reforms can be framed in five alternative ways, depending on which elements of the process of educational change they highlight: cultural, psychological, professional, institutional and political. Each of these frames is explicated and used to discuss the reforms examined in this book. The analysis shows that in practice, none of the reforms adopts a comprehensive multidimensional approach that draws from these five perspectives. Institutional and political perspectives are more common, and cultural and psychological perspective less so.
... In the United States, students in a class with an effective teacher advance 1.5 grade levels or more over a single school year, compared with just 0.5 grade levels for those with an ineffective one (World Development Report 2018). Similar effects of the quality of teachers on learning are also found in Ecuador, Uganda, Pakistan and India (Bau and Das 2017). (2004)) Beteille and Evans (2019) find that some of the most effective interventions to improve student learning rely on teachers. ...
This chapter describes an education reform towards twenty-first century education in Japan. The Ad Hoc Council on Education which was established in 1984 by Prime Minister was the starting point of the reform. Japanese society was also undertaking a transition from twentieth century industry to twenty-first century industry. Education reform was a part of it. That was the reason this education reform involved national wide debate including industry people, union people, mass media people, politicians as well as education people. This education reform covers all aspects of education, that is contents, teachers, facilities, school management system, education administration system and fundamental laws. At first this chapter focuses on reform of national standard curriculum from 1990 until 2020. The basic stance of this reform was that the teaching style must take the transition from cramming to help students acquiring the ability to learn and think on their own. And then other reforms such as introduction of national academic ability test, reform of teacher training system, reform of university entrance examination and reform of school management system are also described. This chapter describes the continuous efforts and challenges during this education reform.
... States maximize their potential in improving quality of teachers. Ultimate aim is to enhance students' achievement scores (Azam & Kingdom, 2015;Bau & Das, 2017;De Talancé, 2017). Results of present study claim that parents' socioeconomic status has affected 74.70% of their students' achievement scores with the formation of significant regression equation, (F (1, 799) = 882.891, ...
Irony of humans’ resiliencies to grasp life achievements has been remaining one of the important debates since long ago. Controversy prolongs when few report it destiny, whereas remaining claim individual’s endless effort. Origin of social learning theory stoppage caused entire debate and declared that teachers’ psychological attribute; locus of control is a key construct that actively affects students’ success / failure. Present research was conducted to explore the effect of teachers’ locus of control on students’ achievement scores in facing diverse socioeconomic status enrolled in public sector secondary schools of District Kasur; Punjab-Province. Researchers followed quantitative research adopting ex-post-facto
design to investigate a burning dilemma on the sample of conveniently selected 1100 respondents. After ensuring ethical considerations from the respondents, researchers collected data from teachers through administering Rose and Medway (1981) Teacher Locus of Control Scale after obtaining unfettered and unrestricted permissions from the authors. Researchers obtained students’ achievement scores and their family socioeconomic status from parents, teachers and head teachers respectively. Researchers’
pilot tested scale on the sample of 100 respondents to confirm Cronbach’s Alpha reliability statistics is .850. Results of regression analysis reported that teachers’ locus of control has affected 66%, teachers’ demographic variables 84.30% and parental socioeconomic status have affected 74.70% of students’ achievement scores. Research recommends that Govt. provide in-service training to secondary school teachers on their neglected psychological attribute; locus of control that confirms worth-seeing importance in obtaining students’ achievement scores and grants monthly stipend to passed ninth grade students having 85% marks in annual examinations focusing their parental socioeconomic status.
... 10 A dummy variable capturing parents' university aspirations for their children is also included. 11 Lastly, an asset index score Das et al., 2016;and Bau and Das, 2017). It is important to note here that there are other supply and demand side variables that are not available in this dataset, which have been found to be statistically significant predictors of school choice in related research, such as village level characteristics, supply of schools and information on birth order for example (Asadullah and Maliki, 2018). ...
This paper seeks to evaluate the access to Public Private Partnership (PPP) schools by examining their geographic distribution and the factors that predict whether a child enrolls in a public, PPP, or private school in Punjab, Pakistan using multiple micro data sets. The analysis shows that PPP schools are located in districts where high shares of children are out-of-school, unlike public and private schools. The results indicate that while private school students are the most likely to belong to more affluent households and receive private tuition, there is no evidence that students enrolled in PPP schools come from more advantaged households than public school students. Girls are more likely to be enrolled in PPP schools than in public schools, while students enrolled in the New School Program seem to be the most disadvantaged amongst all PPP students.
... Teachers are the most important determinant of student learning in both developed and developing countries, though they often lack the skills or motivation needed to be effective (Hanushek, 1992;Rockoff, 2004;Bau & Das, 2017). Despite the importance of teacher quality for student learning, most education systems, including Tanzania, do not attract strong candidates to the profession. ...
This report provides a snapshot of the basic education system in Tanzania using a combination of data collected from the Service Delivery Indicators (SDI) Surveys in 2014 and 2016, and data from SABER Service Delivery 2016 (i.e. Development-World Management Survey, Classroom Observation). Using data collected through direct observations, unannounced visits, and tests from primary schools in Tanzania, the report highlights strengthens and weaknesses of the education system and identifies specific bottlenecks that inhibit student learning. One of the main contributions of this report is to provide information on different domains which are crucial for learning but have not been examined previously due to lack of data such as quality of teaching practices and quality of school management. In addition, this report provides guidance to the Government on student, teacher and school level factors associated with learning outcomes, which are intended to help the Government to make informed choices on where to direct resources to further raise learning and reduce inequities in the basic education sector. Despite the improvement in the learning outcomes and the progress in terms of access to education during the past ten years, there is still a learning crisis in Tanzania. These poor learning outcomes reflect a somewhat weak provision in service delivery, especially in terms of (i) teaching practices, (ii) school management, and (iii) school inputs.
... Rigorous research in the United States have shown that students can learn as much as three times more with a high quality teacher as opposed to studying with a less effective teacher in a given school year (Rockoff, 2004). To add, this relationship has been shown to be even more evident in low-and middle-income countries (Bau & Das, 2017). To further substantiate the magnitude of the impact of teachers, Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (2005) and Jackson (2010) show that exposure to better teachers are categorically more influential than attending a better performing school, and matters more for student learning achievement. ...
Teachers are central to improving education quality and student learning. Yet, it is common that education systems short-pay teachers. Linking the occupational choice literature, this dissertation raises concern regarding potentially large adverse effects of holding teacher wages back from broader market levels, in terms of declining teacher aptitude and reduced student learning. Using a four-part analysis, I examine and contextualize theoretical stipulations using the case of Chinese teachers. Firstly, in Part I, I establish the causal link between teachers’ human capital level and student learning outcomes, by employing student fixed-effect models to relate differences in teachers across subjects to variations in student test scores. I find statistically significant impacts of teachers holding advanced tertiary degrees on improving student learning, at 0.033 standard deviations or adding about 1 additional month of learning over a typical 9-month academic year. Secondly, in Part II, I document relative pay gaps between teachers and comparable workers using Mincer earnings function. Between 1988 and 2013, I find sharp shifts in the relative wage attractiveness in the teaching sector, such that teachers’ mean wage levels experienced 24 percentage-points reversal, at 11 percent below the private sector levels in 2013. Also, returns to holding advanced tertiary degrees in teaching is about 11 to 15 percent less than that of the private sector in years 2007, 2008, and 2013, while this difference was statistically indistinguishable in the pre-2007 period. Thirdly, in Part III, I estimate the probability of entry to teaching by different human capital traits, and find declining trends for more educated individuals overall. In 2007 and 2013, new labor market entrants with advanced tertiary degrees are 4.7 and 5.8 percentage-points less likely than comparable workers in older cohorts to choose teaching. Similar patterns continue to hold when I use alternative human capital and skills proxies. Fourthly, in Part IV, using a national representative panel dataset containing 211 matched teachers, I track career destinations and relate it to opportunity wages and non-pecuniary outcomes. In general, I find that teacher turnover rates are high at about 35 percent, half of which are exits from the education sector entirely; there also exist positive associations between opportunity wage levels and turnover decisions, but there is no evidence of non-pecuniary gains from turnovers.
... Arguably, to achieve this objective in education, governments and schools would have to engage in meaningful practices of recruitment, screening, and selection of teachers by relying on a robust and evidence-based understanding of what subject knowledge, pedagogical skills, personal characteristics, and individual attributes/dispositions that make teachers effective (Stronge and Hindman, 2006). However, what makes a teacher effective has been one of the most contentious educational issues of the last couple of decades (Bau and Das, 2017), especially since the highly publicised McKinsey Report reinforced claims that the quality of any educational system is intrinsically linked to the quality of its teachers (Barber and Mourshed, 2007). Regardless of such claims, this thesis acknowledges as its second fundamental assumption that the 'quality' of teachers is a multifaceted and complex construct (e.g. ...
In Brazil, teacher selection for state secondary schools is centralised and standardised, without the participation of schools, resulting in a hiring process that heavily emphasises subject knowledge and academic qualifications. This process is called the concurso examination. Considering the existing gap in the Brazilian academic literature on teacher selection, and the pressing need to attract more people into the teaching profession to recruit, screen and select the best candidates, this study sought to understand the concurso as the instrument which executes this selection, and its potential links with the notion of teacher quality. A comparative casestudy approach as both epistemology and methodology was used to support the research design. The conceptual framework developed proposes an ideology of selection shaped by specific features and assumptions of the concurso and informed by participants’ views and understandings. Thus, the study relied on 61 interviews with teachers, school principals, teachers’ union representatives, and high-level political stakeholders in order to capture and articulate their unique voices about the concurso. A thematic analysis was conducted, and its findings indicate five underlying concepts: the need for the valorisation of teachers, a ‘perceived’ quality associated with the issue of meritocracy, as well as a sense of trust in a process assumed to be democratic due to a pervasive fear of corruption. These findings lead to the idea that in Brazil, the concurso is an inevitability sustained by legislative markers and informed by socioeconomic, political, cultural and historical influences. The concurso must be understood as a complex social process where it is conceptualised as ‘instrument’ – addressing a need for impartiality with the intention of preventing corruption; as ‘policy’ – aiming to valorise teachers through merit and job-stability but which instead creates a two-tier system of concursados and non-concursados; and as ‘ideology’ – helping to maintain the status-quo of the concurso.
... Though we do not have data on teacher salaries paid in these schools, we know from other studies that teacher salaries are substantially lower in private schools than in government schools in Punjab. One estimate put average monthly salaries in private schools at 1,407 rupees ($12), and in government schools at 7,671 rupees ($66) (Bau and Das, 2017). This increase in the number of teachers in treatment schools translates into an overall reduction in class sizes of 9 pupils per teacher, compared to control schools. ...
Can governments contract out the management of schools to private operators at scale? This paper estimates the effect of a school reform in Punjab, Pakistan, in which 4,276 poorly performing public primary schools (around 10 percent of the total) were contracted out to private operators in a single school year. These schools remain free to students and the private operator receives a per-student subsidy equivalent to less than half of spending in government schools. Using a difference-indifference framework we estimate that enrolment in converted schools increased by over 60 percent. Converted schools see a slight decline in overall average test scores, but this may be a composition effect rather than a treatment effect. Schools with the same number or fewer students as in the previous year saw no change in average test scores.
... Studies have consistently found that teacher effectiveness increases non-linearly with experience during the first two years of teaching, and later tends to slows down. SeeRockoff (2004),Chetty et al (2011),Bau & Das (2017). ...
In this paper we propose a behaviorally informed intervention to address the 'learning crisis' plaguing government schools in Indian. The proposed intervention is aimed at encouraging government school teachers to create and employ lesson plans to increase their effectiveness and improve student learning outcomes. We use behaviorally informed tools such as enhanced active choice, defaults, anchors, and checklists. As well as behavioral insights on social norms and present-bias to inform our intervention design.
... Although considerably getting more and more budget from the government recently, it is still insufficient and cannot sustain all the financial requirements to keep the program running effectively. This resulted to problems such as hiring contractual teachers who typically do not meet eligibility requirements (Bau & Das, 2016), flawed facilities and low-quality learning materials (Orleans, 2007). This is where it gets messy. ...
Public education in the Philippines is 'free' and adopts a K-12 curriculum that is well-aligned with neoliberal global trend. These two aspects of public education speak not only the kind of education young Filipino students will receive, but also mirror the social ills the country is facing. First, I explore the concept of 'free' and the quality that comes with it. I then argue that free education and its low quality created space for private entities, which the rich and capable social class overly exploit leading to unequal opportunities, exclusion and faction among groups of people. Second, I argue that because of the misleading motivation behind K-12 curriculum, to address the needs of the global market and exporting its graduates, the country is now at risk of brain drain and puts its democratic citizenship and the construction of Filipino identity on the brink of obsolescence. I label these social ills as social epidemia because of its widespread occurrence in nature, just like an infection, which causes threat and harm to the society and its people.
... (2) Do teachers have the relevant subject content knowledge to teach basic and higher-order language and mathematics skills? (3) Do teachers have the pedagogical knowledge and skills 1 See for example Rockoff (2004); Rivkin et al. (2005); Aaronson et al. (2007); Metzler and Woessmann (2012); Chetty et al. (2014); and Das and Bau (2016) for evidence based on quasi-experimental data. These findings are supported by a growing experimental literature reviewed in, for example, Kremer, Brannen, and Glennerster (2013); Glewwe and Muralidharan (2015); Bruns, Filmer and Patrinos (2014) and Evans and Popova (2016), showing that traditional educational inputs have little impact on test scores but incentivizing teacher effort and supporting specific aspects of pedagogy do. to transfer what they know to students? ...
... These results are similar to those found in publicly-provided education in India and Pakistan, where teacher salaries increase with qualifications and seniority, but are not correlated with their effectiveness at raising test scores(Muralidharan 2013;Das and Bau 2014). Note also that our results add to a very limited evidence base (outside education) on the correlation between pay and productivity in the public sector, since worker-level productivity is typically not observed (see Muralidharan 2016 for a review of the evidence).25 ...
We present unique audit-study evidence on health care quality in rural India, and find that most private providers lacked medical qualifications, but completed more checklist items than public providers and recommended correct treatments equally often. Among doctors with public and private practices, all quality metrics were higher in their private clinics. Market prices are positively correlated with checklist completion and correct treatment, but also with unnecessary treatments. However, public sector salaries are uncorrelated with quality. A simple model helps interpret our findings: Where public-sector effort is low, the benefits of higher diagnostic effort among private providers may outweigh costs of potential overtreatment.
Value added scores, statistical estimates of teacher quality, are exemplar of neoliberal logic. The higher average scores of teachers of socially advantaged students raise concerns that scores are inaccurate and unfair, and propagate decontextualized neoliberal understandings of the nature of learning and teachers' work. This study uses longitudinal data on around 4,500 teachers in a large urban district between 2007-08 through 2012-13 to follow individual teachers as they switch into schools of different "performance levels" over time. Fixed-intercept models tracking individual teachers between 2007-08 and 2012-13 showed scores increased for teachers who switched into high-performing schools, and decreased for teachers who switched into low-performing schools. Particularly indicative of scores biased by contextual factors outside teachers' control, score changes for mobile teachers are partially attributable to shifts in the economic status and race of students in teachers' classrooms and schools. Understanding how neoliberalism operates within education provides sociological insight into how neoliberalism is legitimated and perpetuated in other central social institutions, like the criminal justice system, the environment, gender, sexuality, and health.
This study used longitudinal data on 444 teachers and 3,435 students to examine teacher performance in Ghana. The study is divided into two parts. The first part of the study examined factors that mediate the causal effects of a kindergarten teacher training program on classroom quality and student outcomes. Specifically, it examined whether teachers’ knowledge of the learning content, teachers’ implementation quality of behavioral and instructional practices and teachers’ professional well-being were significant mediators of the treatment effect. It utilized a causal mediation approach, which allowed the average causal mediation effects to be parametrically and nonparametrically identified under a set of minimum conditions. The study found that implementation quality was a significant mediator of positive treatment effect on classroom quality across time. This effect persisted even when teacher knowledge and professional well-being were accounted for. The study also found small marginal mediation effects on student outcomes, including a positive mediation effect on literacy and a negative mediation effect on executive functioning in the presence of all mediators. Overall, this study provides empirical evidence to design future interventions that place more emphasis on the influential pathway of implementation quality to yield positive impacts, particularly in early education contexts. The second part of the study examined teacher profiles that provide diagnostic information about teachers’ instructional strengths and weaknesses. It applied stage-wise cluster analysis to reveal different subpopulations of teachers and study how they relate to student outcomes. The study found six profiles of teachers with varying professional well-being and classroom practices, including two that were significantly associated with positive student learning across all four domains of numeracy, literacy, socioemotional development and executive functioning. Overall, the results allow easy identification of growth opportunities for each profile of teachers that helps provide formative feedback and targeted support to facilitate high quality teaching and maximize positive student learning outcomes.
After decades of expansion, the Peruvian education system had relatively high levels of access, but low and heterogeneous quality. The depth of the learning crisis was seen in 2013, when Peru ranked last in PISA. The country responded by implementing an ambitious reform which built on previous efforts, which is described in detail in this chapter. The reform was composed of four pillars: (i) Revalorize teachers’ career by making selection and promotion meritocratic, attracting the best into the profession, and supporting teacher professional development through school-based coaching; (ii) Improve the quality of learning for all by revising the curriculum, expanding early childhood education and full-day schooling, providing direct support to schools (through lesson plans and school grants) and carrying out several deep institutional reforms to the university system; (iii) Effective management of the school and the education system, including the use of learning assessment data for school planning. This entailed increasing school autonomy, introducing meritocracy in the selection of principals, and creating a culture of evidence-based decision making; and (iv) Close the infrastructure gap. The reform process required strong political and financial commitment and resulted in impressive improvements in student learning. Most importantly, it led to a change in mindsets towards a focus on learning.
The paper develops and estimates a dynamic structural model of girls' school‐going decisions and mother's labor market participation. It seeks to determine the causes of low school participation and to evaluate alternative public policies. The model incorporates mother's education, school availability, the productivity of the girl when engaged in household production, and the potential trade‐off between mother's and daughter's housework decisions. Our findings suggest that school construction is the most cost‐effective program. When using monetary incentives, our results highlight the effectiveness of conditionality, as opposed to unconditional transfers, and the existence of a trade‐off between maternal employment and daughter's schooling. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved
How does a large unconditional increase in salary affect the performance of incumbent employees in the public sector?We present experimental evidence on this question in the context of a policy change in Indonesia that led to a permanent doubling of teacher base salaries. Using a large-scale randomized experiment across a representative sample of Indonesian schools that accelerated this pay increase for teachers in treated schools, we find that the large pay increase significantly improved teachers' satisfaction with their income, reduced the incidence of teachers holding outside jobs, and reduced self-reported financial stress. Nevertheless, after two and three years, the increase in pay led to no improvement in student learning outcomes. The effects are precisely estimated, and we can rule out even modest positive impacts on test scores. Our results suggest that unconditional pay increases are unlikely to be an effective policy option for improving the effort and productivity of incumbent employees in public-sector settings. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.
Sri Lanka is increasingly seeking to ensure that its public school system not only delivers greater shares of students who have completed higher secondary and tertiary education but also that all students obtain a much better education. Raising teacher effectiveness is considered to be crucial for achieving these aims. This article reviews the literature on teacher management in Sri Lanka and points to what may be critical teacher management issues. The article also discusses considerations and options for addressing these issues, informed by international evidence on approaches to improve teacher effectiveness.
We assigned two cohorts of kindergarten students, totaling more than 24,000 children, to teachers within schools with a rule
that is as-good-as-random. We collected data on children at the beginning of the school year, and applied 12 tests of math,
language and executive function (EF) at the end of the year. All teachers were filmed teaching for a full day, and the videos
were coded using a well-known classroom observation tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (or CLASS). We find substantial
classroom effects: A one-standard deviation increase in classroom quality results in 0.11, 0.11, and 0.07 standard deviation
higher test scores in language, math, and EF, respectively. Teacher behaviors, as measured by the CLASS, are associated with
higher test scores. Parents recognize better teachers, but do not change their behaviors appreciably to take account of differences
in teacher quality.
It has become commonplace to measure teacher quality in terms of teacher value-added. Operationally, this means evaluating teachers according to the learning gains of students on various achievement tests. Existing research consistently shows large variations in teacher effectiveness, much of which is within schools as opposed to between schools. The policy implications of these variations are dramatic. But the underlying statistical modeling has become the subject of intense research, in part because of this direct use of value-added measures in policy discussions.
Many wonder whether teacher gender plays an important role in higher education by influencing student achievement and subject interest. The data used in this paper help identify average effects from male and female college students assigned to male or female teachers. We find instructor gender plays only a minor role in determining college student achievement. Nevertheless, the small effects provide evidence that gender role models matter to some college students. A same-sex instructor increases average grade performance by at most 5 percent of its standard deviation and decreases the likelihood of dropping a class by 1.2 percentage points.
A prominent class of explanations for the gender gaps in student outcomes focuses on the interactions between students and teachers. In this study, I examine whether assignment to a same-gender teacher influences student achievement, teacher perceptions of student performance, and student engagement. This study’s identification strategy exploits a unique matchedpairs feature of a major longitudinal study, which provides contemporaneous data on student outcomes in two different subjects. Within-student comparisons indicate that assignment to a same-gender teacher significantly improves the achievement of both girls and boys as well as teacher perceptions of student performance and student engagement with the teacher’s subject.
This paper looks at the private schooling sector in Pakistan, a country that is seriously behind schedule in achieving the Millennium Development Goals. Using new data, the authors document the phenomenal rise of the private sector in Pakistan and show that an increasing segment of children enrolled in private schools are from rural areas and from middle-class and poorer families. The key element in their rise is their low fees-the average fee of a rural private school in Pakistan is less than a dime a day (Rs.6). They hire predominantly local, female, and moderately educated teachers who have limited alternative opportunities outside the village. Hiring these teachers at low cost allows the savings to be passed on to parents through low fees. This mechanism-the need to hire teachers with a certain demographic profile so that salary costs are minimized-defines the possibility of private schools: where they arise, fees are low. It also defines their limits. Private schools are horizontally constrained in that they arise in villages where there is a pool of secondary educated women. They are also vertically constrained in that they are unlikely to cater to the secondary levels in rural areas, at least until there is an increase in the supply of potential teachers with the required skills and educational levels.
In this paper, we report results from surveys in which enumerators made unannounced visits to primary schools and health clinics in Bangladesh, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Peru and Uganda and recorded whether they found teachers and health workers in the facilities. Averaging across the countries, about 19 percent of teachers and 35 percent of health workers were absent. The survey focused on whether providers were present in their facilities, but since many providers who were at their facilities were not working, even these figures may present too favorable a picture. For example, in India, one-quarter of government primary school teachers were absent from school, but only about one-half of the teachers were actually teaching when enumerators arrived at the schools. We will provide background on education and health care systems in developing; analyze the high absence rates across sectors and countries; investigate the correlates, efficiency, and political economy of teacher and health worker absence; and consider implications for policy.
Aside from revenue mobilization, one of the arguments for allowing the private sector to assume a larger role in the provision of education is that it would increase efficiency, as administrators become more responsive to the needs of students and their parents. But what is the evidence? Based on case studies that compare private and public secondary education in Colombia, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines, Tanzania, and Thailand, private school students generally outperform public school students on standardized math and language tests. This finding holds even after holding constant for the fact that, on average, private school students in these countries come from more advantaged backgrounds than their public. school counterparts. In addition, preliminary evidence shows that the unit costs of private schools are lower than those of public schools. Although these results cannot, in themselves, be used as arguments for massive privatization, they indicate that governments should reconsider policies that restrain private sector participation in education. Further research is needed to determine whether some teaching and administrative practices in private schools are applicable to public schools. © 1991 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank.
We study gender gaps in learning and the effectiveness of female teachers in reducing them using a large, representative, annual panel data set from the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh.We find a small but significant negative trend in girls' test scores in both math and language. Using five years of panel data, we find that teachers are more effective at teaching students of their own gender. Female teachers are more effective at teaching girls than male teachers but no worse at teaching boys. Thus, hiring female teachers on the current margin may reduce gender gaps in test scores without hurting boys. © 2016 by the Board of Regents of the University ofWisconsin System.
In Project STAR, 11,571 students in Tennessee and their teachers were randomly assigned to classrooms within their schools from kindergarten to third grade. This article evaluates the long-term impacts of STAR by linking the experimental data to administrative records. We first demonstrate that kindergarten test scores are highly correlated with outcomes such as earnings at age 27, college attendance, home ownership, and retirement savings. We then document four sets of experimental impacts. First, students in small classes are significantly more likely to attend college and exhibit improvements on other outcomes. Class size does not have a significant effect on earnings at age 27, but this effect is imprecisely estimated. Second, students who had a more experienced teacher in kindergarten have higher earnings. Third, an analysis of variance reveals significant classroom effects on earnings. Students who were randomly assigned to higher quality classrooms in grades K-3-as measured by classmates' end-of-class test scores-have higher earnings, college attendance rates, and other outcomes. Finally, the effects of class quality fade out on test scores in later grades, but gains in noncognitive measures persist.
Using data from a randomized experiment, we find that having a female teacher lowers the math test scores of female primary school students in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Moreover, we do not find any effect of having a female teacher on male students’ test scores (math or reading) or female students’ reading test scores, which seems to rule out explanations pertaining to the unobserved quality differences between male and female teachers. Finally, this negative effect seems to persist only for female students who were assigned to a female teacher with a limited math background.
We present experimental evidence on the impact of a school choice program in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh (AP) that provided students with a voucher to finance attending a private school of their choice. The study design featured a unique two-stage lottery-based allocation of vouchers that created both a student-level and a market-level experiment, which allows us to study both the individual and the aggregate effects of school choice (including spillovers). After two and four years of the program, we find no difference between test scores of lottery winners and losers on Telugu (native language), math, English, and science/social studies, suggesting that the large cross-sectional differences in test scores across public and private schools mostly reflect omitted variables. However, private schools also teach Hindi, which is not taught by the public schools, and lottery winners have much higher test scores in Hindi. Further, the mean cost per student in the private schools in our sample was less than one-third of the cost in public schools. Thus, private schools in this setting deliver slightly better test score gains than their public counterparts (better on Hindi and same in other subjects), and do so at a substantially lower cost per student. Finally, we find no evidence of spillovers on public-school students who do not apply for the voucher, or on private school students, suggesting that the positive impacts on voucher winners did not come at the expense of other students.
Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores (value-added) a good measure of their quality? One reason this question has sparked debate is disagreement about whether value-added (VA) measures provide unbiased estimates of teachers' causal impacts on student achievement. We test for bias in VA using previously unobserved parent characteristics and a quasi-experimental design based on changes in teaching staff. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we find that VA models which control for a student's prior test scores provide unbiased forecasts of teachers' impacts on student achievement.
Are teachers' impacts on students' test scores (value-added) a good measure of their quality? This question has sparked debate partly because of a lack of evidence on whether high value-added (VA) teachers improve students' long-term outcomes. Using school district and tax records for more than one million children, we find that students assigned to high-VA teachers are more likely to attend college, earn higher salaries, and are less likely to have children as teenagers. Replacing a teacher whose VA is in the bottom 5 percent with an average teacher would increase the present value of students' lifetime income by approximately $250,000 per classroom.
The recent wave of randomized trials in development economics has provoked criticisms regarding external validity. We investigate two concerns — heterogeneity across beneficiaries and implementers — in a randomized trial of contract teachers in Kenyan schools. The intervention, previously shown to raise test scores in NGO-led trials in Western Kenya and parts of India, was replicated across all Kenyan provinces by an NGO and the government. Strong effects of short-term contracts produced in controlled experimental settings are lost in weak public institutions: NGO implementation produces a positive effect on test scores across diverse contexts, while government implementation yields zero effect. The data suggests that the stark contrast in success between the government and NGO arm can be traced back to implementation constraints and political economy forces put in motion as the program went to scale.
The recent availability of administrative databases that track individual students and their teachers over time has lead to both a surge in research measuring teacher quality and interest in developing accountability systems for teachers. Existing studies employ a variety of empirical models, yet few studies explicitly state or test the assumptions underlying their models. Using an extensive database from the State of Florida, we test many of the central assumptions of existing models and determine the impact of alternative methods on measures of teacher quality. We find that the commonly used "restricted value- added" or "achievement-gain" model is a good approximation of the more cumbersome cumulative achievement model. Within the context of the restricted value-added model, we find it is important to control for unmeasured student, teacher and school heterogeneity. Relying on measurable characteristics of students, teachers and schools alone likely produces inconsistent estimates of the effects of teacher characteristics on student achievement. Moreover, individual-specific heterogeneity is more appropriately captured by fixed effects than by random effects; the random effects estimator yields inconsistent parameter estimates and estimates of time-invariant teacher quality that diverge significantly from the fixed effects estimator. In contrast, the exclusion of peer characteristics and class size each have relatively little effect on the estimates of teacher quality. Using aggregated grade-within-school measures of teacher characteristics produces somewhat less precise estimates of the impact of teacher professional development than do measures of the characteristics of specific teachers. Otherwise, aggregation to the grade level doesn't have a substantial effect. These findings suggest that many models currently employed to measure the impact of teachers on student achievement are mis-specified.
The utility of value-added estimates of teachers' effects on student test scores depends on whether they can distinguish between high- and low-productivity teachers and predict future teacher performance. This article studies the year-to-year variability in value-added measures for elementary and middle school mathematics teachers from five large Florida school districts. We find year-to-year correlations in value-added measures in the range of 0.2–0.5 for elementary school and 0.3–0.7 for middle school teachers. Much of the variation in measured teacher performance (roughly 30–60 percent) is due to sampling error from “noise” in student test scores. Persistent teacher effects account for about 50 percent of the variation not due to noise for elementary teachers and about 70 percent for middle school teachers. The remaining variance is due to teacher-level time-varying factors, but little of it is explained by observed teacher characteristics. Averaging estimates from two years greatly improves their ability to predict future performance. © 2009 American Education Finance Association
Teacher e¤ectiveness is generally characterized by a single e¤ect that is common across stu-dents. However, educators are multi-task agents that choose how to allocate their e¤orts among pupils. Some teachers may target their courses towards the top students in the class while others to the bottom, leading to di¤erent complementarity e¤ects. Moreover, the introduction of accountability programs, such as No Child Left Behind (NCLB), could induce a reallocation of teacher's e¤orts, a¤ecting the dynamics of student-teacher interactions. This study shows that the role of complementarities is key from a policy perspective. In this regard, an analyt-ical framework and a novel iterative algorithm are implemented in order to characterize and quantify these e¤ects. Results indicate that interaction e¤ects played a crucial role in shaping the distribution of student achievement, especially after the implementation of NCLB. While more than half of the total gains in test scores experienced by the bottom third of the student achievement distribution post NCLB are due to adjustments in teacher-student complemen-tarities, high ability students have seen decreases in their performance due to this change in educators'behavior.
We examine a program that enabled Parent-Teacher Associations (PTAs) in Kenya to hire novice teachers on short-term contracts, reducing class sizes in grade one from 82 to 44 on average. PTA teachers earned approximately one-quarter as much as teachers operating under central government civil-service institutions but were absent one day per week less and their students learned more. In the weak institutional environment we study, civil-service teachers responded to the program along two margins: first, they reduced their effort in response to the drop in the pupil-teacher ratio, and second, they influenced PTA committees to hire their relatives. Both effects reduced the educational impact of the program. A governance program that empowered parents within PTAs mitigated both effects. Better performing contract teachers are more likely to transition into civil-service positions and we estimate large potential dynamic benefits of contract teacher programs on the teacher workforce.
To the extent that students benefit from high-achieving peers, tracking will help strong students and hurt weak ones. However, all students may benefit if tracking allows teachers to better tailor their instruction level. Lower-achieving pupils are particularly likely to benefit from tracking when teachers have incentives to teach to the top of the distribution. We propose a simple model nesting these effects and test its implications in a randomized tracking experiment conducted with 121 primary schools in Kenya. While the direct effect of high-achieving peers is positive, tracking benefited lower-achieving pupils indirectly by allowing teachers to teach to their level. (JEL I21, J45, O15)
Increasing evidence suggests that the level and distribution of cognitive skills is more important to economic development than absolute measures of schooling attainment, and that income and skill inequality are inextricably linked. Yet for most of the developing world no internationally comparable estimates of cognitive skills exist. This paper uses student answers to publicly released questions from an international testing agency together with statistical methods from Item Response Theory to place secondary students from two Indian states—Orissa and Rajasthan—on a worldwide distribution of mathematics achievement. These two states fall below 43 of the 51 countries for which data exist. The bottom 5% of children rank higher than the bottom 5% in only three countries—South Africa, Ghana and Saudi Arabia. But not all students test poorly. Inequality in the test-score distribution for both states is next only to South Africa. The combination of India's size and large variance in achievement give both the perceptions that India is shining even as Bharat, the vernacular for India, is drowning. How India's development unfolds will depend critically on how the skill distribution evolves and how low- and high-skilled workers interact in the labor market.
We analyze several statistical assumptions used in empirical models on public–private sector wage structures. Based on data for Germany, which contain a large range of background variables usually not available in other studies, we investigate the sensitivity of results to various specification and identification assumptions. The standard switching regression model is extended to allow for endogeneity of education level, experience, and hours worked. These extensions lead to considerably different parameter estimates. We compare conditional and unconditional wage differentials between the public and the private sector for the various specifications. These differentials are sensitive to identification assumptions, but robust across specifications which do and do not allow for endogeneity of education, experience, and hours worked.
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.
This paper provides an introduction and "user guide" to Regression Discontinuity (RD) designs for empirical researchers. It presents the basic theory behind the research design, details when RD is likely to be valid or invalid given economic incentives, explains why it is considered a "quasi-experimental" design, and summarizes different ways (with their advantages and disadvantages) of estimating RD designs and the limitations of interpreting these estimates. Concepts are discussed using examples drawn from the growing body of empirical research using RD. ( JEL C21, C31)
Teachers differ greatly in how much they teach their students, but little is known about which teacher attributes account for this. We estimate the causal effect of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement using within-teacher within-student variation, exploiting a unique Peruvian 6th-grade dataset that tested both students and their teachers in two subjects. We circumvent omitted-variable and selection biases using student and teacher fixed effects and observing teachers teaching both subjects in one-classroom-per-grade schools. After measurement-error correction, one standard deviation in subject-specific teacher achievement increases student achievement by about 10 percent of a standard deviation.
A number of countries committed themselves to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), aimed at eradicating extreme poverty, and improving the welfare of people by the year 2015. The book assesses whether universal primary education can be achieved by 2015. The study focuses on the largest low-income countries that are furthest from the goal, home to about seventy five percent of the children out of school globally. By analyzing education policies, and financing patterns in relatively high-performing countries, the study identifies a new policy, and financing framework for faster global progress in primary education. The authors use a simulation model to show how adoption of this framework, could accelerate progress in low-income countries, currently at risk of not reaching the education MDG. The study however, makes it clear that worldwide attainment of universal primary education by 2015, will necessitate an even stronger combination of political will, deep and sustained reform, faster dissemination of best practices, and intensified financial effort than has been marshaled to date.
We used a random-assignment experiment in Los Angeles Unified School District to evaluate various non-experimental methods for estimating teacher effects on student test scores. Having estimated teacher effects during a pre-experimental period, we used these estimates to predict student achievement following random assignment of teachers to classrooms. While all of the teacher effect estimates we considered were significant predictors of student achievement under random assignment, those that controlled for prior student test scores yielded unbiased predictions and those that further controlled for mean classroom characteristics yielded the best prediction accuracy. In both the experimental and non-experimental data, we found that teacher effects faded out by roughly 50 percent per year in the two years following teacher assignment.
Growing concerns over the inadequate achievement of U.S. students have led to proposals to reward good teachers and penalize
(or fire) bad ones. The leading method for assessing teacher quality is “value added” modeling (YAM), which decomposes students'
test scores into components attributed to student heterogeneity and to teacher quality. Implicit in the VAM approach are strong
assumptions about the nature of the educational production function and the assignment of students to classrooms. In this
paper, I develop falsification tests for three widely used VAM specifications, based on the idea that future teachers cannot
influence students' past achievement. In data from North Carolina, each of the VAMs' exclusion restrictions is dramatically
violated. In particular, these models indicate large “effects” of fifth grade teachers on fourth grade test score gains. I
also find that conventional measures of individual teachers' value added fade out very quickly and are at best weakly related
to long-run effects. I discuss implications for the use of VAMs as personnel tools.
Using data from India, we estimate the relationship between household wealth and children's school enrollment. We proxy wealth by constructing a linear index from asset ownership indicators, using principal-components analysis to derive weights. In Indian data this index is robust to the assets included, and produces internally coherent results. State-level results correspond well to independent data on per capita output and poverty. To validate the method and to show that the asset index predicts enrollments as accurately as expenditures, or more so, we use data sets from Indonesia, Pakistan, and Nepal that contain information on both expenditures and assets. The results show large, variable wealth gaps in children's enrollment across Indian states. On average a "rich" child is 31 percentage points more likely to be enrolled than a "poor" child, but this gap varies from only 4.6 percentage points in Kerala to 38.2 in Uttar Pradesh and 42.6 in Bihar.
Considerable controversy surrounds the impact of schools and teachers on the achievement of students. This paper disentangles the separate factors influencing achievement with special attention given to the role of teacher differences and other aspects of schools. Unique matched panel data from the Harvard/UTD Texas Schools Project permit distinguishing between total effects and the impact of specific, measured components of teachers and schools. While schools are seen to have powerful effects on achievement differences, these effects appear to derive most importantly from variations in teacher quality. A lower bound suggests that variations in teacher quality account for at least 7« percent of the total variation in student achievement, and there are reasons to believe that the true percentage is considerably larger. The subsequent analysis estimates educational production functions based on models of achievement growth with individual fixed effects. It identifies a few systematic factors a negative impact of initial years of teaching and a positive effect of smaller class sizes for low income children in earlier grades but these effects are very small relative to the effects of overall teacher quality differences.
This paper uses microeconomic data from the British Household Panel and General Household Surveys to describe how the distribution of pay differs between the public and private sectors in 1983 and in the early 1990s. Separate analyses by gender and education group reveal that it is women and those with intermediate-level qualifications who do best in the public sector. The large differences between the shapes of the conditional (that is, holding age and education constant) distributions of wages in the public and private sectors are demonstrated using quantile regressions estimated separately for each education group. The paper also exploits the longitudinal structure of the data used to assess how much of these differences can be explained by the unobserved characteristics of individuals.
JEL classifications: J31, J45.
Bold assertions have been made in policy reports and popular articles on the high and increasing enrollment in Pakistani religious schools, commonly known as madrassas. Given the importance placed on the subject by policy makers in Pakistan and those internationally, it is troubling that none of the reports and articles reviewed based their analysis on publicly available data or established statistical methodologies. This paper uses published data sources and a census of schooling choice to show that existing estimates are inflated by an order of magnitude. Madrassas account for less than 1 percent of all enrollment in the country and there is no evidence of a dramatic increase in recent years. The educational landscape in Pakistan has changed substantially in the last decade, but this is due to an explosion of private schools, an important fact that has been left out of the debate on Pakistani education. Moreover, when we look at school choice, we find that no one explanation fits the data. While most existing theories of madrassa enrollment are based on household attributes (for instance, a preference for religious schooling or the household’s access to other schooling options) the data show that among households with at least one child enrolled in a madrassa, 75 percent send their second (and/or third) child to a public or private school or both. Widely promoted theories simply do not explain this substantial variation within households.
This paper constructs a model of saving for retired single people that includes heterogeneity in medical expenses and life expectancies, and bequest motives. We estimate the model using Assets and Health Dynamics of the Oldest Old data and the method of simulated moments. Out-of-pocket medical expenses rise quickly with age and permanent income. The risk of living long and requiring expensive medical care is a key driver of saving for many higher-income elderly. Social insurance programs such as Medicaid rationalize the low asset holdings of the poorest but also benefit the rich by insuring them against high medical expenses at the ends of their lives. (c) 2010 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved..
Teacher quality is widely believed to be important for education, despite little evidence that teachers' credentials matter for student achievement. To accurately measure variation in achievement due to teachers' characteristics-both observable and unobservable-it is essential to identify teacher fixed effects. Unlike previous studies, I use panel data to estimate teacher fixed effects while controlling for fixed student characteristics and classroom specific variables. I find large and statistically significant differences among teachers: a one standard deviation increase in teacher quality raises reading and math test scores by approximately .20 and .24 standard deviations, respectively, on a nationally standardized scale. In addition, teaching experience has statistically significant positive effects on reading test scores, controlling for fixed teacher quality.
Group-average observables as controls for sorting on unobservables when estimating group treatment effects: The case of school and neighborhood effects. NBER Working Paper #20781
- J G Altonji
- R K Mansfield
Altonji, J. G. and R. K. Mansfield (2014). Group-average observables as controls for sorting on
unobservables when estimating group treatment effects: The case of school and neighborhood
effects. NBER Working Paper #20781. Cambridge, MA.
Test scores and civic values in public and private schools
- T Andrabi
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Andrabi, T., N. Bau, J. Das, and A. I. Khwaja (2010). Are bad public schools public "bads?" Test
scores and civic values in public and private schools. Working Paper. Cambridge, MA.
Focusing on teacher quality in Pakistan: Urgency for reform
- M Aslam
Aslam, M. (2013). Focusing on teacher quality in Pakistan: Urgency for reform. Right to Education.
Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining topthird graduates to careers in teaching: An international and market research-based perspective
- B G Auguste
- P Kihn
- M Miller
Auguste, B. G., P. Kihn, and M. Miller (2010). Closing the talent gap: Attracting and retaining topthird graduates to careers in teaching: An international and market research-based perspective.
McKinsey & Company.
An investigation into teacher retention and recruitment in Punjab. Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives
- F Bari
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- M Aslam
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- N Maqsood
Bari, F., R. Raza, M. Aslam, B. Khan, and N. Maqsood (2013). An investigation into teacher
retention and recruitment in Punjab. Institute of Development and Economic Alternatives.
School competition and product differentiation
- N Bau
Bau, N. (2015). School competition and product differentiation. Working Paper. Toronto, ON.
Assessing the compensation of public-school teachers. The Heritage Foundation
- A G Biggs
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Response to Rothstein (2014) 'revisiting the impacts of teachers'. CEPR Discussion Paper #10768
- R Chetty
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Chetty, R., J. N. Friedman, and J. E. Rockoff (2015). Response to Rothstein (2014) 'revisiting the
impacts of teachers'. CEPR Discussion Paper #10768. London, UK.
Contract employment policy review. Punjab Government Efficiency Improvement Program
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Cyan, M. (2009). Contract employment policy review. Punjab Government Efficiency Improvement Program.
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