Introducing the Issue Susanna Loeb (bio), Cecilia Rouse (bio), and Anthony Shorris (bio) Susanna Loeb Susanna Loeb is associate professor of education and director of the Institute for Research on Education Policy and Practice at Stanford University. Cecilia Rouse Cecilia Rouse is the Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, director of the Education Research Section at Princeton University, and a senior editor of The Future of Children. Anthony Shorris Anthony Shorris is Executive Director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and former director of the Policy Research Institute for the Region at Princeton University. Notes 1. Cecilia Elena Rouse, "Inadequate Education: Consequences for the Labor Market," mimeo (Princeton University, September 2005). 2. Lisa Barrow and Cecilia Elena Rouse, "U.S. Elementary and Secondary Schools: Equalizing Opportunity or Replicating the Status Quo?" The Future of Children 16 (2006): 99-117. 3. Eric A. Hanushek, Steven G. Rivkin, and John J. Kain, "Teachers, Schools and Academic Achievement," Econometrica 73, no. 2 (2005): 417-58. Here, a "good teacher" is defined as one with an average value added that is one standard deviation greater than the average. This does not include knowledge depreciation. 4. Hamilton Lankford, Susanna Loeb, and James Wyckoff, "Teacher Sorting and the Plight of Urban Schools: A Descriptive Analysis," Education Evaluation and Policy Analysis 24, no. 1 (2002): 37-62. 5. This estimate comes from multiplying the average teacher salary from 2003-04 ($46,752 at http://www.nea.org/edstats/images/05rankings.pdf) by the number of teachers given above. 6. Thomas D. Snyder, Alexandra G. Tan, and Charlene M. Hoffman, Digest of Education Statistics 2005 (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, July 2006), table 28, downloaded from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d05/tables/dt05_028.asp?referer=list (October 26, 2006). 7. Susanna Loeb and Luke Miller, "State Teacher Policies: What Are They, What Are Their Effects, and What Are Their Implications for School Finance," Getting Down to Facts Report, unpublished (Stanford University, December 2006). 8. G. A. Strizek and others, Characteristics of Schools, Districts, Teachers, Principals, and School Libraries in the United States: 2003-04 Schools and Staffing Survey (U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2006) http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2006/2006313.pdf 9. Bringing in effective administrators is likely to be even more helpful, but unfortunately this is a substantially more difficult undertaking, since administrator labor markets are no less complicated than teacher labor markets. [End Page 14] Copyright © 2007 The Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and The Brookings Institution