Teacher Effectiveness and Policy Designs on Teachers' Labor Market

摘要教师的有效性一直是许多教育政策的焦点，如教师问责政策，教师绩效薪酬方案，以及在弱势学生较多的学校招聘和留住有效教师的措施。成功实施这些政策的一个主要问题是教师的有效性不容易观察到。本项目首先考察了提供更透明的教师效能信息如何影响教师-学校分类模式和不同背景学生的成绩。然后，该项目研究了当教师绩效成为透明信息时，如何改进政策设计，例如教师绩效薪酬计划。通过利用一个大型学区严格的教师评估体系和绩效工资体系的不同实施时间，以及每项政策的具体组成部分随时间的变化，本项目首先分析了不同学校的教师分类、教师的努力和学生的成绩如何响应这些政策变化。减少信息摩擦一方面可以增强师生分类，扩大不同学生构成的学校之间的成绩差距。另一方面，它可以诱导教师付出更多的努力，鼓励有效的教师进入市场。因此，通过精心设计的政策干预，提高学生的整体成绩和教育平等是可能的。本研究的第二部分构建并估计了具有信息摩擦的教师劳动力市场的均衡模型，利用政策变化进行识别。估计模型用于研究辅以教师评估计划的反事实政策干预措施，例如设计具有成本效益的绩效工资制度，奖励在弱势学校有效教学的教师。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

AbstractThe effectiveness of teachers has been a focal point of many educational policies, such as teacher accountability policies, teacher performance pay schemes, and measures to recruit and retain effective teachers in schools with more disadvantaged students. A major complication for successfully implementing these policies is the fact that teacher effectiveness is not easily observable. This project first examines how providing more transparent information about teacher effectiveness may affect teacher-school sorting patterns and the achievement of students from different backgrounds. Then, the project investigates how to improve the design of policies, such as teacher performance pay schemes, when teacher effectiveness becomes transparent information.By exploiting the differential implementation timing of a rigorous teacher evaluation system and a merit pay system in a large school district, as well as changes in specific components of each policy over time, this project first analyzes how teacher sorting across schools, teacher effort, and student outcomes responds to these policy changes. Reducing information friction may, on the one hand, enhance assortative teacher-school sorting and widen the achievement gap across schools with different compositions of students. On the other hand, it may induce teachers to exert more effort and encourage effective teachers to enter the market. Therefore, it is possible to improve both overall student achievement and educational equality with well-designed policy interventions. The second part of this project builds and estimates an equilibrium model of the teachers’ labor market with information friction, exploiting policy variation for identification. The estimated model is used to study counterfactual policy interventions that are supplemented with teacher evaluation programs, such as the design of a cost-effective merit pay system that rewards teachers for being effective and for teaching in disadvantaged schools.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.