Visiting Speaker: Rebecca Thornton, Baylor University
Presentation Title: Learning More about Teachers: Estimating Teacher Value-Added and Treatment Effects on Teacher Value-Added in Northern Uganda
Abstract:
This paper uses longitudinal data from a school-based RCT to provide the first estimates of the variation in teacher effectiveness for sub-Saharan Africa. The lower bound on the SD of teacher effects is 0.09 SDs in local-language reading, 0.11 in English reading and 0.18 in math. We find no evidence of non-random sorting of students to teachers, but do find important sorting of teachers to grades. Providing high-impact teacher training and support causes the variation in teacher effectiveness to increase by 78% in local-language reading, likely via improvements for already-effective teachers. Observed teacher characteristics are weakly correlated with both levels of, and treatment effects on, teacher effectiveness.
Host: Lakshmi Iyer