The Effect of Teaching Experience on Student Performance: Evidence from Elementary and Middle School Students in Wisconsin

Matthew Land

No 348435, Master's Theses and Plan B Papers from University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics

Abstract: This research explores the role teacher experience plays in determining student achievement. Using data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, I estimate how teacher experience affects student performance on the English language arts and mathematics portions of the Wisconsin Forward Exam. In doing so, I contribute to the literature by examining the effect of teacher experience on middle school student performance relative to elementary school student performance and by studying how the effectiveness of teachers varies at different experience levels. I find that teacher experience is more important in determining mathematics exam scores compared to English language arts exam scores. However, after controlling for unobserved school characteristics by using school fixed effects, I only find significant returns to teacher experience in third grade mathematics. Additionally, I find that these returns persist well into teachers’ careers, as the largest returns to teacher experience in third grade mathematics occur in the groups of the most experienced teachers. This evidence highlights the need for future research to examine differences in the returns to teacher experience between grade levels and subject areas and to explore why such differences exist.

Keywords: Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 43
Date: 2024-12-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-inv and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/348435/files/L ... Paper_FinalDraft.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ags:umapmt:348435

DOI: 10.22004/ag.econ.348435

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Master's Theses and Plan B Papers from University of Minnesota, Department of Applied Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by AgEcon Search ().