Teacher Characteristics and Student Achievement: Evidence from Twins

Abstract

Identifying the impact of classroom characteristics on student achievement has been a fundamental are recurring question in education economics. We employ a novel twin by year identification strategy using matched teacher-student data from North Carolina to credibly estimate how teacher characteristics such as experience, certification, advanced degrees, and education affect achievement on math and reading scores. Our new approach overcomes limitations of earlier studies such as their inability to account for time varying unobservable family shocks to non-schooling inputs. Our findings show that teacher experience and certification have positive and statistically significant effects on reading and math, however, we find inconclusive effects for advanced degrees such as a master’s, as results are sensitive to various specifications. Notably, we show that teacher experience has the largest effects on student achievement, but our effects are smaller than the standard estimates in the literature.