Clotfelter, Charles T., Helen F. Ladd, and Jacob L. Vigdor. 2006. “Teacher-Student Matching and the Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness.” Journal of Human Resources 41(4): 778–820.
Administrative data on fifth grade students in North Carolina shows that more highly qualified teachers tend to be matched with more advantaged students, both across schools and in many cases within them. This matching biases estimates of the relationship between teacher characteristics and achievement; we isolate this bias in part by focusing on schools where students are distributed relatively evenly across classrooms. Teacher experience is consistently associated with achievement; teacher licensure test scores associate with math achievement. These returns display a form of heterogeneity across students that may help explain why the observed form of teacher-student matching persists in equilibrium.
Charles T. Clotfelter is the Z. Smith Reynolds Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. Helen F. Ladd is the Edgar T. Thompson Distinguished Professor of Public Policy Studies at Duke University. Jacob L. Vigdor is an associate professor of public policy studies and economics at Duke University, Box 90245, Durham, NC 27708. The authors thank Roger Aliaga, Russell Triplett, and Jane Cooley for outstanding research assistance, the Spencer Foundation for financial support, Diane Whitmore and three anonymous referees for valuable comments, and participants in seminars or presentations at the University of Virginia, the University of Michigan, the University of Connecticut, the University of Chicago, Duke University, Harvard University, and the APPAM fall conference for their comments and suggestions. A previous draft of the current paper was entitled, “Teacher Sorting, Teacher Shopping, and the Assessment of Teacher Effectiveness.” The data used in this article can be obtained by application to the North Carolina Education Research Data Center, administered by Elizabeth Glennie, Duke University, Box 90312, Durham NC 27708, <eglennie@duke.edu>.