Teacher Quality and Learning Outcomes in Kindergarten

By M. Araujo, Pedro Manuel Carneiro, Yyannu Cruz Aguayo, Norbert R. Schady. Social Science Research Network, 2016

343 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We assigned two cohorts of kindergarten students, totaling more than 24,000 children, to teachers within schools with a rule that is as-good-as-random. We collected data on children at the beginning of the school year, and applied 12 tests of math, language and executive function (EF) at the end of the year. All teachers were filmed teaching for a full day, and the videos were coded using a well-known classroom observation tool, the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (or CLASS). We find substantial classroom effects: A one-standard deviation increase in classroom quality results in 0.11, 0.11, and 0.07 standard deviation higher test scores in language, math, and EF, respectively. Teacher behaviors, as measured by the CLASS, are associated with higher test scores. Parents recognize better teachers, but do not change their behaviors appreciably to take account of differences in teacher quality .

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/27c9940e69a1714700eda4156149478751ac5a1e

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Citations in the corpus

The Classroom as a Developmental Context for Cognitive Development: A Meta-Analysis on the Importance of Teacher–Student Interactions for Children’s Executive Functions (2018, background): “With regard to the classroom level, teacher–child interactions were positively related to general EFs, even after controlling for additional variables, such as, age, gender, SES, and teacher experience (Araujo et al., 2016; Cadima, Verschueren, et al., 2016).”
Teacher Professional Development around the World: The Gap between Evidence and Practice (2018, background): “Good teachers have a major impact on student performance, both over the course of the school year (Araujo et al. 2016) and into adulthood (Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff 2014).”
Early Childhood Professional Development: Coaching and Coursework Effects on Indicators of Children’s School Readiness (2017, background): “, 2011) but also to improvement in general classroom conditions (Gilliam & Frede, 2012) and teacher–child interaction (Araujo et al., 2016; Downer et al., 2014; Neuman & Cunningham, 2009).”
Do teachers’ years of experience make a difference in the quality of teaching? (2020, background): “In their footnote, the authors report that “ the returns to experience in Ecuador rise sharply in the ﬁ rst three years, and then ﬂ atten out ” (p. 11).”
Measuring Early Care and Education Quality (2018, result): “Furthermore, mixed findings regarding these associations emerged in recent studies, with some rigorous quasiexperimental studies finding somewhat larger effect sizes (13).”
The Misallocation of Pay and Productivity in the Public Sector: Evidence from the Labor Market for Teachers (2017, unknown): “Instead, to estimate the variance of the classroom effects, following Araujo et al. (2016), we de-mean our estimates of δ jt at the school-level. While demeaning at the school-level may be less attractive than demeaning at the school-year-grade level, it is a necessity in many low-income countries, ”