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、教师绩效工资计划，以及在学生条件较差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困难是，教师的有效性不容易观察到。这个项目首先考察了提供更透明的教师有效性信息如何影响教师-学校的分类模式和来自不同背景的学生的成绩。然后，该项目调查了当教师绩效信息变得透明时，如何改进政策的设计，如教师绩效薪酬计划。通过利用严格的教师评估制度和绩效薪酬制度在大型学区的不同实施时间，以及每项政策的特定组成部分随时间的变化，该项目首先分析了跨学校的教师分类、教师努力和学生结果如何响应这些政策变化。一方面，减少信息摩擦可能会加强教师与学校的分类，并扩大学生组成不同的学校之间的成绩差距。另一方面，它可能会诱导教师付出更多努力，鼓励有成效的教师进入市场。因此，通过精心设计的政策干预，有可能提高学生的整体成绩和教育平等。本课题的第二部分构建并估计了一个存在信息摩擦的教师劳动力市场均衡模型，利用政策变量进行识别。估计的模型用于研究反事实的政策干预措施，并辅之以教师评估计划，例如设计具有成本效益的绩效工资制度，奖励效率高的教师和在贫困学校任教的教师。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势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.