Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives

Matthew Kraft, John P. Papay, Jessalynn K. James and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum

No 34845, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We examine how performance changes when teachers transfer across very different school contexts. The Talent Transfer Initiative program created a rare natural experiment to study such transfers by randomly assigning low-achieving schools the ability to offer high-performing teachers at higher-achieving schools a $20,000 transfer stipend. Forecast tests show that these high-performing teachers’ prior value added is only moderately predictive of their effectiveness in low-achieving schools. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we estimate that incentivized-transfer teachers’ value added dropped by 0.12 student standard deviations. This decline appears to be driven by lower match quality, negative indirect school effects, and the loss of student-specific human capital.

JEL-codes: I2 I21 I24 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
Note: ED
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