URBAN INSTITUTE The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality E r i c H a n u s he k working paper 56 • december 2010 The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality Contents Acknowledgements ii Abstract iii Introduction The Central Importance of Teachers Problems with Current Teacher Policies Current Certification Policies Current Salary Policies What is the Economic Value of Quality Teachers? 12 The Demand Side Based on Expected Student Earnings 13 The Demand Side Based on Aggregate Economic Growth 21 Costs and the Timing of Benefits 23 Policy Conclusions 26 References 29 Tables 35 Figures 38 i Acknowledgements The research presented here benefitted from extensive and insightful comments by Martin West Valuable research assistance was provided by Lorra de la Paz This is a revised version of a paper originally prepared for the conference on "Merit Pay: Will it Work? Is it Politically Viable?" sponsored by Harvard's Program on Education Policy and Governance, Taubman Center on State and Local Government, Harvard's Kennedy School, 2010 The author gratefully acknowledges the National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research (CALDER) funded through Grant R305A060018 to the Urban Institute from the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S Department of Education for supporting this research CALDER working papers have not gone through final formal review and should be cited as working papers They are intended to encourage discussion and suggestions for revision before final publication The Urban Institute is a nonprofit, nonpartisan policy research and educational organization that examines the social, economic, and governance problems facing the nation The views expressed are those of the authors and should not be attributed to the Urban Institute, its trustees, or any of the funders or supporting organizations mentioned herein Any errors are attributable to the author CALDER, The Urban Institute 2100 M Street N.W., Washington, D.C 20037 202-261-5739 • www.caldercenter.org ii The Economic Value of Higher Teacher Quality Eric A Hanushek CALDER Working Paper No 56 December 2010 Abstract Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement, which provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers which comes from their impact on economic outcomes Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion iii iv Introduction It has become widely accepted that high quality teachers are the most important asset of schools, but this recognition has not led to any consensus on the appropriate policies that should be followed to ensure that we have a good stock of teachers The policy proposals range quite broadly, although generally they call either for closer regulation of quality or for more use financial incentives with little in between these two poles Remarkably, these policy deliberations seldom include even the most rudimentary economic analyses or evaluations The focus of most educational policy research and of the majority of public discussions of school policy is simply whether or not some school input has a significant positive impact on student achievement and not what it might cost or the economic benefits it might produce.1 This paper focuses on the demand side of the teacher labor market in the United States and provides baseline estimates of the economic value of improving teacher quality Much of the discussion about the potential demand for teachers is framed in terms of ensuring sufficient numbers of trained teachers This, however, is not really the issue, because the U.S has have for a long time trained considerably more teachers than the number of positions that annually become open in schools For example, in 2000 86,000 recent graduates entered into teaching, even though 107,000 graduated with an education degree the year before (see Provasnik and Dorfman 2005; U.S Department of Education 2009).2 At the same time, many have noted shortages of teachers in particular One notable exception is the long term emphasis by Henry Levin and his co-authors on comparing benefits and costs, although this has not developed much traction in policy debates See, for example, Levin and McEwan (2001) and Belfield and Levin (2007) An early attempt at benefit-cost analysis in the case of class size reduction is found in Krueger (2002), following a conceptually similar approach to one part of the analysis below Note that the recently graduated group entering teaching also includes a number of people who graduate with degrees other than in education, making the excess supply of education graduates even larger Similar differentials existed throughout the 1990s, implying that the stock of trained teachers not in the teaching profession is substantial geographic regions or subject areas, such as math, science, or special education.3 What usually gets left out is anything to with quality.4 The analysis presented below is built on a simple premise: The key element defining a school’s impact on student achievement is teacher quality In turn, the demand for teacher quality is derived from just this impact of teachers on student outcomes Both existing academic studies and the related policy discussions devote little thought to the economic value of outcomes, generally relying on the vague notion that higher scores on tests are better than lower scores This analysis puts outcome gains in economic perspective Consideration of the economic value of teacher quality is especially relevant for the debates about performance pay for teachers and administrators Until recently, teacher salary policies have given low priority to any consideration of merit pay, generally viewing it as a small add-on to salaries As such, it was generally viewed as an add-on to the basic pay system and one of the first items to be eliminated at any sign of budget pressure (see, for example, Cohen and Murnane (1986)) In this context, it is useful to understand the value of keeping high quality teachers as it provides some bounds on the funding of potential pay policies to attract and retain effective teachers Estimates of the relevant achievement and pay-off parameters are in fact available in the literature Moreover, the key parameters have been consistently estimated across different studies and with considerable precision The innovation of this paper is to draw on those parameter estimates to produce plausible ranges for the underlying demand for teacher quality This paper begins with discussion of an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement It then discusses the policy alternatives that have been pursued as a motivation for considering performance based policies The central part of the paper Interestingly, these discussions have occurred over a long period of time See Kershaw and McKean (1962) The one possible exception is attention to teachers lacking full certification On the other hand, teacher certification has not been shown to be closely related to student achievement; see, for example, Goldhaber and Brewer (2000), Kane, Rockoff, and Staiger (2008), and Boyd et al (2008) are better utilized Of course, any direct impacts of altered class size would be relevant, but the existing research makes it difficult to include that in any systematic manner Further, the more effective teachers might react badly to having larger classes, which in turn require more work Indeed anecdotal evidence suggests that schools may try to the opposite If pay is completely constrained, schools may reward the better teachers by giving them smaller classes These concerns could be eliminated if teachers are paid a portion of their economic returns In the end, there is ambiguity in policy because we have never been able to effectively evaluate what the supply function for teacher quality looks like This lack of information could, of course, be eliminated by a set of pay experiments Unfortunately, the current negotiated pay alternatives not seem to be providing much information – in part because they imply salaries that are relatively insensitive to effectiveness The bottom line remains that much higher teacher salaries would be economically justified if salaries reflected teacher effectiveness more closely Without that linkage, we should expect our schools to underperform, and we might also expect teacher salaries to lag those in the general labor market 28 References Aaronson, Daniel, Lisa Barrow, and William Sander 2007 "Teachers and Student Achievement in the Chicago Public High Schools." 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CALDER Working Paper 17 (revised) Washington, DC: The Urban Institute 34 Tables Table Estimates of Within School Variation in Teacher Effectiveness (  w ) Study Location Rockoff (2004) Test subject reading math New Jersey 0.10 0.11 Nye, Konstantopoulos, and Hedges (2004) Tennessee 0.26 0.36 Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (2005) Texas 0.15 0.11 Aaronson, Barrow, and Sander (2007) Chicago Kane, Rockoff, and Staiger (2008) New York City 0.08 0.11 Jacob and Lefgren (2008) Undisclosed city 0.12 0.26 Kane and Staiger (2008) Los Angeles 0.18 0.22 Koedel and Betts (2009) San Diego Rothstein (2010) North Carolina Hanushek and Rivkin (2010a) Undisclosed city AVERAGE 0.13 0.23 0.11 0.15 0.11 0.13 0.17 Note: All estimates indicate the standard deviation of teacher effectiveness in terms of student achievement standardized to mean zero and variance one All variances are corrected for test measurement error and except Kane and Staiger (2008) are estimated within school-by-year or within school-by-grade-by-year Corrected reading estimates included for Rivkin, Hanushek, and Kain (2005) Source: Hanushek and Rivkin (2010b) 35 Table Baseline Marginal Annual Economic Value Based on Student Lifetime Incomes (  T  0.2 ;   0.13 ;   0.3 ) class size th 0.25 (60 ) Teacher effectiveness as s.d from mean (percentile) 0.5 (69th) 0.75 ((77th) 1.0 (84th) 1.25 (89th) 1.5 (93rd) $26,458 $53,036 $79,735 $106,556 $133,500 $160,566 10 $52,915 $106,071 $159,470 $213,113 $267,000 $321,132 15 $79,373 $159,107 $239,205 $319,669 $400,499 $481,698 20 $105,830 $212,143 $318,941 $426,225 $533,999 $642,264 25 $132,288 $265,179 $398,676 $532,781 $667,499 $802,831 30 $158,745 $318,214 $478,411 $639,338 $800,999 $963,397 Note:  =depreciation rate ;  T =standard deviation of teacher quality;  = labor market return to one standard deviation higher achievement 36 Table Sensitivity of Demand Based on Earnings to Key Parameters (marginal annual economic value of teacher one standard deviation above mean)   0.6   0.3  T  0.3  T  0.2  T  0.3  T  0.2 class size   0.13   0.2   0.13   0.2   0.13   0.2   0.13   0.2 $60,652 $93,573 $91,215 $140,923 $106,556 $164,741 $160,566 $248,858 10 $121,303 $187,145 $182,430 $281,847 $213,113 $329,482 $321,132 $497,715 15 $181,955 $280,718 $273,645 $422,770 $319,669 $494,223 $481,698 $746,573 20 $242,607 $374,290 $364,860 $563,693 $426,225 $658,964 $642,264 $995,431 25 $303,259 $467,863 $456,075 $704,617 $532,781 $823,706 $802,831 $1,244,288 30 $363,910 $561,435 $547,290 $845,540 $639,338 $988,447 $963,397 $1,493,146 Note:  =depreciation rate ;  T =standard deviation of teacher quality;  =labor market return to one standard deviation higher achievement 37 Figures Figure Impact of Student Lifetime Incomes by Class Size and Teacher Effectiveness (Compared to Average Teacher) Impact on Student Lifetime Earnings $1,000,000 $500,000 $0 10 15 20 25 30 90th percentile teacher 75th percentile teacher 60th percentile teacher 40th percentile teacher -$500,000 -$1,000,000 Class Size Source: Author calculations 38 Figure Alternative Estimates of How Removing Ineffective Teachers Affects Student Achievement Source: Author Calculations 39 Table Average Teacher Salary by Figure Average Teacher Salary by Experience, 2007 Degree and Degree and Experience, 2007 $70,000 $60,000 $50,000 $40,000 $30,000 Bachelor's degree $20,000 Master's degree $10,000 $0 10 15 20 25 Years of Experience Source: U.S Department of Education (2010), Table 74 40 30 ... 0.28–0.42 s.d of performance by the end of their schooling, depending on the bounds of the teacher quality estimates These estimates of the importance of teacher quality permit some calculations of what... analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher. .. replicated across all of the other students in the class Thus, calculation of the impact of a teacher depends directly on class size Table provides the calculated economic value of teachers at different