Out-of-Field Teachers and Student Achievement

Thomas Dee and Sarah Cohodes

Public Finance Review, 2008, vol. 36, issue 1, 7-32

Abstract: This study examines whether subject-specific teacher certification and academic degrees are related to teacher quality. The research design exploits contemporaneous, within-student comparisons made possible by a unique feature of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88). Specifically, NELS:88 contains subject-specific outcomes for eighth-grade students in two subjects as well as data on their teachers for those subjects. The analysis of these data indicates that assignment to a subject-certified teacher is associated with higher test scores. However, these gains appear to be concentrated in social studies and mathematics. Furthermore, the authors also find that subject-certified teachers are not more effective at promoting the intellectual engagement of their students but are more likely to have negative opinions of a given student's performance.

Keywords: teacher quality; student achievement; certification (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (14)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:pubfin:v:36:y:2008:i:1:p:7-32

DOI: 10.1177/1091142106289330

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