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Abstract:
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Previous research indicates that teachers indeed matter for the improvement of students' educational outcomes, but getting good measures of what is meant by teacher quality is a continuing challenge (Goldhaber, 2002). This paper focuses on the state of California to examine the relationship between the academic achievement of high school students and teacher quality as measured by teacher certification and level of educational attainment, using school level data from 1999 to 2005. Results indicate that an increase of 10 percentage points in the fraction of teachers who are fully credentialed is estimated to increase the average school API score by 7 points (p=.0001). Similarly, it is estimated that a 10 percentage point increase in the percentage of instructional staff who have a Master's degree or above results in a 1.5 point increase in a school's average API score (p=.091), compared to the excluded category of the proportion of teachers without a BA or with a BA only. |