Abstract
We study a teacher incentive policy in Washington State that awards a financial bonus to National Board certified teachers in high poverty schools. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that the bonus policy increased the proportion of certified teachers in bonus-eligible schools by improving hiring, increasing certification rates of incumbent teachers, and reducing turnover. Depending on the method, we estimate that the proportion of NBCTs in treated schools increased by about four to eight percentage points over the first five years of eligibility. However, the improvement in certification rates corresponds to a change of about 0.2–0.3% of a standard deviation in teacher quality per year and we do not find evidence that the bonus resulted in detectible effects on student test achievement.
Highlights
Teacher quality is among the most variable school-based influences on student learning
We show a discontinuity in the share of National Board certified teachers (NBCTs) of about 1.7 percentage points at the eligibility threshold
NBCTs in schools that are just eligible for the bonus in the upcoming school year are 2.7 percentage points less likely to leave their schools at the end of the year
Summary
Teacher quality is among the most variable school-based influences on student learning. As with other schooling resources, not all students have equitable access to high-quality teachers, whether measured by observable credentials or effects on student achievement (Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2005; Goldhaber, Lavery, & Theobald, 2015; Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2002; Mansfield, 2015; Sass, Hannaway, Xu, Figlio, & Feng, 2012) In response to these discrepancies, policymakers have become increasingly interested in using financial incentives to increase the number of effective teachers in high poverty and other hard-to-staff schools. Based on estimates of the relative effectiveness of NBCTs at raising student achievement found in the literature, our estimated effects on school staffing imply annual improvements in student learning of less than 0.001 standard deviations per year of eligibility Consistent with this prediction, our direct estimates of the effects of the bonus policy on student achievement are near zero and not statistically significant
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