Does Teacher Testing Raise Teacher Quality? Evidence from State Certification Requirements

By Joshua D. Angrist, Jonathan Guryan. Social Science Research Network, 2008

255 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The education reform movement includes efforts to raise teacher quality through stricter certification and licensing provisions. Most US states now require public school teachers to pass a standardized test such as the Praxis. Although any barrier to entry is likely to raise wages in the affected occupation, the theoretical effects of such requirements on teacher quality are ambiguous. Teacher testing places a floor on whatever skills are measured by the required test, but testing is also costly for applicants. These costs shift teacher supply to the left and may be especially likely to deter high-quality applicants from teaching in public schools. Moreover, test requirements may disqualify some applicants that schools would otherwise want to hire. We use the Schools and Staffing Survey to estimate the effect of state teacher testing requirements on teacher wages and teacher quality as measured by educational background. The results suggest that state-mandated teacher testing increases teacher wages with no corresponding increase in quality.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/0178ba714e69c9c2f64e2332537a81b54ff4b039

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In Education

1. Michael Hansen
2. Dan Goldhaber
3. Roddy J. Theobald
4. Gema Zamarro
5. R. Buddin
6. A. Amrein-Beardsley

Citations in the corpus

• Race, Gender, and Teacher Testing: How Informative a Tool Is Teacher Licensure Testing? (2010, background): “For example, testing increases the cost of labor market participation (Friedman & Kuznets, 1945), may increase wages to teachers ( Angrist & Guryan, 2008 ), and could discourage otherwise qualified people from becoming teachers (Angrist & Guryan, 2004; Hanushek & Pace, 1995), and teacher test perfor”
• What's in a teacher test? Assessing the relationship between teacher licensure test scores and student STEM achievement and course-taking (2016, unknown): “Public debates about teacher licensure often center on the exent to which traditional licensure exams are a useful screen as pposed to an inefficient barrier to entry to the teacher workorce (e.g., Angrist & Guryan, 2008; Goldhaber, Cowan, & Theobald, 017a ).”
• Teacher qualifications and student achievement in urban elementary schools (2009, unknown): “Different standards might restrict entry into the teacher profession, however, and have adverse consequences for teacher supply (Angrist and Guryan, 2008).”
• Measuring teaching quality in higher education: assessing selection bias in course evaluations (2017, unknown): “Furthermore, there is little evidence that certified teachers are more effective (Angrist and Guryan 2008; Kane et al. 2008; Rivkin et al. 2005) even though teachers who are more qualified in the field they are teaching provide higher-quality instruction than so-called adjunct teachers (e.g. see…”
• Teachers’ Education and Outcomes: Mapping the Research Terrain (2012, unknown): “Lastly, Angrist and Guryan (2008) consider occupational licensing in terms of the impact of worker screening mechanisms on productivity and quality.”