Lasting Impacts of Effective Teachers
Teachers who raise test scores have long-term effects on students’ college enrollment and earnings as adults
A study showing the large impacts that highly skilled teachers have on students’ academic achievement and lifetime earnings is available on the Education Next website, www.educationnext.org. Researchers Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard University and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia University analyzed school-district data from grades 3–8 for 2.5 million children, and linked those data to information on student outcomes as young adults. Their study has received widespread attention since its release as an academic paper in January, 2012. The article, “Great Teaching: Measuring its effects on students’ future earnings,” is accompanied by four commentaries from experts on the study’s policy implications.
The Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff study finds that, on average, a 1 standard deviation improvement in teacher value added (equivalent to having a teacher in the 84th percentile rather than one at the median) for one year raises a student’s earnings at age 28 by about 1 percent. They estimate that the effect of such a teacher on an entire class of students is more than a $1.4 million increase in cumulative lifetime earnings.
Relative to the median, a teacher at the 84th percentile increases math and English scores by 12 and 8 percent