The Effects of Teacher Training on Teacher Value Added

Douglas Harris () and Tim Sass ()
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Douglas Harris: Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies, Florida State University
Tim Sass: Department of Economics, Florida State University

Working Papers from Department of Economics, Florida State University

Abstract: We study the effects of various types of education and training on teacherproductivity. Previous studies on the subject have been hampered by inadequatemeasures of teacher training and difficulties addressing the non-random selectionof teachers to students and of teachers to training. We address all of theselimitations by estimating models with student, teacher, and school fixed effectsusing an extensive database from the state of Florida. Our results suggest thatteacher training generally has little influence on productivity. One exception isthat content-focused teacher professional development is positively associatedwith productivity in middle and high school math. In addition, more experiencedteachers appear more effective in teaching elementary and middle school reading.There is no evidence that either pre-service (undergraduate) training or thescholastic aptitude of teachers influences their productivity. These results callinto question previous findings based on models that do not adequately control forthe various forms of selection bias.

Keywords: Teacher Quality; Teacher Training; Teacher Productivity; Student Achievement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I2 J24 J44 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 44
Date: 2006-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-eff, nep-hrm and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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