A Synapse Lab Seminar with Dr. Matthew A. Kraft, Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a Fellow with the American Educational Research Association.
Dr. Matthew A. Kraft, Professor of Education and Economics at Brown University,
Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives
Wednesday 10 June, 10:45–11:45 Elise Ottesen-Jensens hus, EOJ 276/277
Abstract
We examine how performance changes when teachers transfer across very different school contexts. The Talent Transfer Initiative program created a rare natural experiment to study such transfers by randomly assigning low-achieving schools the ability to offer high-performing teachers at higher-achieving schools a $20,000 transfer stipend. Forecast tests show that these high-performing teachers’ prior value-added is only moderately predictive of their effectiveness in low-achieving schools. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find that incentivized transfer teachers’ value-added dropped by 0.09-0.15 student standard deviations. This decline appears to be driven by negative match quality, negative indirect school effects, and loss of student-specific human capital.