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Teacher Characteristics and Gains in Student Achievement: Estimation Using Micro Data
Author(s): Eric Hanushek
Source: The American Economic Review, Vol. 61, No. 2, Papers and Proceedings of the Eighty-
Third Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (May, 1971), pp. 280-288
Published by: American Economic Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1817003
Accessed: 24/05/2010 20:54
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Teacher Characteristicsand Gains in
Student Achievement: Estimation Using
Micro Data *
By ERIC HANUSHEK
U. S. Air Force Academny
Recent attention to education in the public policy point of view. Three funda-
United States represents the merger of mental educational policy questions are
concern about efficiency of the educational addressed: (1) do teachers count? (2) are
system and concern about the distribution schools operated efficiently now? (3) what
of educational services, particularly along characteristics of teachers and classrooms
racial and ethnic lines. However, there is are important? Past studies have given
very little guidance on how to satisfy any ambiguous answers to these questions,
efficiency or distributional goals through largely due to inadequate data. Specifically,
public policy because extremely little is no data set which supplies accurate his-
known about the relationship between in- torical information on educational inputs
puts-particularly inputs available for at an individual level has been available.
public policy--and outputs of the educa- This study attempts to provide more con-
tional process. Educational research has clusive answers by remedying the most
been slow in providing definitive answers glaring data problems for a set of students
to public policy questions for several (third graders) in one school district.
understandable reasons: the subject of the
educational process is extremely complex, I. ConceptutalModel and Data
especially as regards the physiological and
psychological aspects; any theoretical de- The major objective of this analysis was
velopment of a learning theory amenable to estimate the relationship between vari-
to analysis for policy purposes is absent; ables which can be controlled by public
and the required data traditionally have policy and educational output. The basic
not been collected. Previous analyses have conceptual model of the educational pro-
yielded some suggestive beginnings, and cess which was used can be depicted by
have provided insights into how the Equation 1.
analysis should proceed. This analysis
represents a next step of statistical in- (1) A t- f(Ait*) B, ) P. , I,, Si )
quiry into the educational process from a where
* Many people have offered useful suggestions along
the way, but special thanks go to Franklin Fisher, John A it= vector of educational outputs of
Jackson, John Kain, Herbert Kiesling, Frank Sloan and the ith student at time t
Finis Welch. This project could not have been under-
taken without the help of Wilber Hawkins of the Cali- A =vectorof entering achievement
fornia school district in arranging for data collection and levels at time t*
discussing the overall problems. Any remaining errors B t-t*)-vector of family inputs to edu-
are, of course, mine. This work was supported by the
RAND Corporation, RPN 7502/7510, and The Car- cation of ith student cumulative
negie Corporation of New York. from time t*
280
EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTION RELATIONSHIPS 281
p-t*)=- vector of peer influences of ith For public policy purposes, most of the
student cumulative from time interest in the model centers upon the
t* influence of school characteristics on
Ii= vector of innate endowments of achievement. Ilowever, in order to avoid
ith student biased estimates of school effects, the other
S(t- *'=vector of school inputs to iih input vectors must be entered into the
student cumulative from time statistical ainalysis.The reasoning behind
t* the inclusion of each of the input vectors
This model simply states that educational is fairly straightforward, and just a brief
discussion of specific measures will be
output (A it), itself a multidimensional fac-
tor, is a function of entering achievement given here.2It would be possible to specify
(A i,*) and of the influences of the indi- a model which did not include an initial
vidual's family (B(t-*)), of the influences achievement level. But, without this
input, the data requirements are multi-
of his peers (P(t-1*)), of his innate abilities plied considerably since the entire past
(It) and of the cumulative school inputs history of all inputs must be known.
(S(t-1*)) over the period being studied. Families obviously have considerable
This abstract model provides a framework impact on education through physical con-
for discussion of models of the educational ditions, attitude formation and direct
process which can be tested empirically. involvement in the educational process.
Specific variables corresponding to Since these factors tend to be highly cor-
Equation 1 are derivedfrom a combination related with socioeconomic status of the
of past work in the field, theoretical con- family, this aspect of education is proxied
siderations, and sheer data availability. by father's occupation and family struc-
For instance, it is possible to develop ture. The influence of peers is much the
many measuresof the output of the educa- same as that from the family, and, thus,
tional process, such as standardized test this aspect is proxied by aggregate mea-
scores, juvenile delinquincy rates, post- sures of the socioeconomic status of indi-
school income streams, occupationalchoice viduals in a given class or school. While
or level of education completed. Yet, the innate abilities are included in the con-
availability of data has restricted most ceptual model, there is no direct measure
past studies of education-and this analy- of this aspect. However, there is reason to
sis-to examining a single output. This believe that biases in the school param-
paper concentrates entirely on an analysis eters due to this missing variable are
of cognitive development as reflected by minimal. First, the model with initial
reading achievement in the third grade. achievement measures the "value added"
While it is believed that these scores of various inputs and biases will occur only
represent differenceswhich are ultimately if the missing portion of innate abilities is
valued by society, results in terms of this correlated with the rate of learning (as
single measure must be considered tenta- opposed to the level). Second, at least for
tive until there is confirmationin terms of whites, it is reasonableto assume that this
different outputs.' College Quality," The Reziew of Economics antdStatistics,
I There is scattered evidence on the valuation of November 1968; and Randall D. Weiss, "The Effects of
achievement in W. Lee Hansen, Burton A. Weisbrod Education on the Earnings of Blacks and Whites,"
and William J. Scainlon, "Schooling and Earnings of Relieuv of Economics awd Statistics, February 1970.
Low Achievers," American Economzic Review, June 2 A more complete discussion can be found in Eric
1970; Burton A. Weisbrod and Peter Karpoff, "Mone- Hanushek, The Value of Teachlersin Teaching, RM-
tary Returns to College Education, Student Ability and 6362-CC/RC (Santa Monica: The RAND Corp., 1970).
282 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
than 1.25. This indicates that schools are (t-statistics are displayed below each co-
now operating inefficiently but gives min- efficient; SE is the standard error of es-
imal guidance to school administrators. timate.)
The remainder of the paper attempts to
identify the aspects of schools and teachers This model presents an interesting view of
which are important in education. teachers. The teacher characteristics that
The estimates for the white manual appear to be important are not the char-
sample are displayed in Equation 3. Vari- acteristics that are purchased by schools.
able definitions, means, and standard devi- For both the second and third grade
ations appear in Table 2. teachers, the score on the verbal facility
test (T) and the recentness of education
(3) A,3 - 20.8 + 2.81F - 6.38R
(Y) are the most important factors.7 Ad-
(2.3) (-2.8) ditionally, there is a "quasi teacher" char-
acteristic of percent of time spent on dis-
? .79A3 1- .07 D cipline by the third grade teacher. Each of
(18.8) (-2.1) these has important implicationsfor school
operations.
? .097T3- .57 Y3 The verbal facility test (T) probably
7 The model was not constrained to have the same
(2.4) (-1.5)
characteristics for second and third grade teachers; this
results from the analysis of various characteristics with-
+ .06Th- .68Y2 out constraint. If we test the joint hypotheses that all
four strictly teacher characteristics together have no
(1.9) (-2.9) effect on education, we reject at the .01 level with
R2 = .51 SE = 13.5 F4,,06=5.68.
286 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
D 1.00
Ts -. t9 1.00
Y3 .01 .08 1.00
T2 o.07 .19 . 13 1.00
12 -.14 -.09 .11 -.19 1.00
Exper3 -.14 .37 .11 .17 . 05 1.00
Units3 -.09 .01 -.14 .09 .12 .53 1.00
Exper2 .09 -.11 -.01 -.09 .20 -.18 -.11 1.00
Units2 -.02 .07 .01 -.03 -.15 -.02 .03 .43 1.00
plays two roles: first, it is a measure of This seems to provide the rationale for
communicative ability; second, as the au- encouraging or requiring teachers to re-
thors of the test point out, it can be taken turn to school periodically. However, as
as a quick measure of overall intelligence indicated by the results of analyzing grad-
or general ability. Thus, general ability uate units and the effects of Master's de-
seems important, regardless of formal grees, it does not really matter whether the
training. There are some important policy teacher is enrolled in an advanced degree
implications surrounding the verbal test programor is taking many courses. Educa-
measureof teacher quality. By interchang- tion of the second and third grade teacher
ing teachers at the top and bottom of the in the last year as opposed to five years
verbal ability scale for this system, achieve- ago would be worth .2 to .3 years of read-
ment changes by .2 to .4 grade levels.8 ing achievement to a given third grader.
This is very significant given the powerful Finally, there is the measureof discipline
effect of a student's early education on time (D) that was labeled as a quasi-
later achievement as evidenced both by the teacher characteristic. Certainly, an inter-
increasing grade level disparities in the action between the classroom and the
Coleman Report and by the strength of teacher is reflected in this variable. How-
first grade achievement in Equation 3. ever, as expected, the more time spent on
Further, since this test has national norms, disciplinarymatters, the lower the achieve-
it is possible to get some idea of how the ment level of the class. It does suggest that
teachers being hired in this system rate efforts to reduce such time could be bene-
alongside other college graduates. The ficial. These efforts would include using
mean score of 68 places the teachers in this principals or assistant principals or even
sample slightly under the median for fe- teacher's helpers as disciplinarians.
male college graduates. Thus, this system It is immediately obvious that these are
is not being successful in attracting the not the characteristicsof teachers that are
best people. currently being purchased. Certainly if
In addition to teacher ability as mea- there is an excess supply of teachers,
suredby the verbal facility test, the recent- schools can be selective in hiring and can
ness of educational experiences (Y) has a attempt to evaluate the general ability of
significant effect on educating students. teachers. However, casual observation
8 This is calculated by changing only the third grade suggests that the most selective (suburban)
teacher verbal score for the lower limit and both second systems weight previous teaching ex-
and third for the upper limit. The scores are changed
from 40 to 96 to represent the range found in the data.
perience heavily. Moreover, as suggested
(Maximum score is 100.) The resulting achievement by the simple correlationmatrix for teacher
score is then converted to grade level equivalents. characteristics displayed in Table 3, the
EDUCATIONAL PRODUCTION RELATIONSHIPS 287
purchasedfactors for the third and second be significant, experience with this socio-
grade teachers (experience and units of economic group assumes importance. As
graduate work) are not highly correlated would be expected, the correlation be-
with the characteristics included in the tween total experience and socioeconomic
model. group experienceis quite high. The simple
A model for the white nonmanual pop- correlation for third grade teachers is .8.
ulation was also estimated.9The results of Thus, the present policies of paying for
this analysis, shown in Equation 4, pro- experiencecould be reasonablein this case.
vided a different set of teacher character- Recentness of education is, however, only
istics that seemed importaint. (Variable slightly correlatedwith the pay factors, as
definitions, means, and standard devi- in the manual occupation sample.
ations are displayed in Table 2.) In comparison to the manual occupa-
tion sample, the coefficient estimates are
(4) A3=35.0 + .72A,1- 5.1C
not as reliable in the nonmanual sample.
(16.0) (-3.0) Although there is a smaller standard error
- Y+
.79Y .1OS3 of estimate for the nonmanual model, this
is coupled with a smaller variance in over-
(-1.9) (1.2) all achievement; the RI'sin the two models
- .66 Y2 + .20S2 are almost equal. The estimated coeffi-
(-1.7) (1.8) cients in Equation 4 do indicate that
teachers have less effect on these non-
R= .52 SE 11.8
manual children. Although the effects of
The characteristics which seem im- recent education are roughly the same in
portant for the white children from non- the two models, the potential for change
manual occupation families are not en- in achievement through increasing verbal
tirely the same as for childrenfrom families facility, or general ability, is considerably
with manual occupations. The recentness greater. Not only can verbal facility be
of education is again a significant factor, changed more rapidly-since experience
with approximately the same effect here usually comes by aging rather than hiring
as in the previous model. However, while -but given percentage changes in verbal
teacher verbal ability does not appear to quality have a considerablylarger effect on
student achievement.
9 A word on sample stratification is necessary. A for- The previous discussions of Equations
mal test for equality of coefficients between the two
white models was performed. The methodology of this
3 and 4 must be taken within the context
test can be found in Franklin M. Fisher, "Tests of of the overall model. In the process of de-
Equality Between Sets of Coefficients in Two Linear veloping these models, several other hy-
Regressions: An Expository Note," Econometrica,
March 1970. When testing the entire model and restrict-
potheses about educational inputs were
ing the models for both samples to the form of Equation tested and rejected. In particular, vari-
3, the hypothesis of coefficient equality was rejected at ables measuring school composition in
the .025 level (F9,820=2.13). However, since the princi-
pal interest centers upon the teacher characteristics, a
terms of occupational distribution, ethnic
test of just this subset of variables seems more appro- distribution, and achievement distribu-
priate. When this test is performed, the results are in- tion; variables measuring objective back-
conclusive siniceF4,820= 1.57 when the critical value for
those degrees of freedom at the .10 level is 1.94. Thus, it
ground characteristicsof the teachers such
is not possible to reject the hypothesis of homogeneity as socioeconomic background, college ma-
with a high level of confidence; yet, at the same time jor, and membership in professional or-
the evidence does not seem strong enough to pool the
sample. Since both samples are quite large, the loss in
ganizations; and variables measuring sub-
efficiency by not pooling would not be large, and the jective factors such as attitudes toward
decision was made to stratify. types of students were tested and found to
288 AMERICAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
have statistically insignificant effects on some average experience level over one
the students' achievement. The implica- year would be reasonable. However, the
tion that arises from both these "nonre- current average of over 11 years is cer-
sults" and from the models presented is tainly excessive. Second, teachers do not
that we do not have very good measuresof appear to count for Mexican-American
teachers. We can identify a few objective students in the sense that different teach-
factors that appear to affect education. ers and different classroom compositions
Yet most of our notions about important do not affect the achievement outcome
attributes of teachers are probably too of the Mexican-American students.
simple. Although teachers do appear im- This might well be a language problem,
portant in the model, precise decision rules but there is no direct measure of this.
for hiring teachers are not readily avail- Third, the attempts to provide a set of
able at this time. It appears that objective measurable characteristics which schools
characteristics of teachers and classrooms could hire and control to affect achieve-
are insufficient and that it is necessary to ment did not produce clear-cut answers.
measure behavior in the classroom better. There is a considerable part of teaching
that cannot be explained by a set of fairly
IV. Summary and Conclusions standard variables measuringteachers and
From this study three conclusions are classrooms,particularlyfor whites in white
apparent. It should be borne in mind that collar families.
these conclusions derive from a sample of It would be imprudent to generalize too
one school system; therefore, some cau- much from these findings. They refer to
tion should be used in generalizingto other one school system, one measure of output,
systems. First, the present set of hiring and one particular grade level in elemen-
practices leads to an inefficient allocation tary schools. For this reason this study is
of resources. The analysis indicates that best looked upon as being suggestive rather
teaching experience and graduate edu- than definitive; as being a prototype rather
cation do not contribute to gains in student than a final analysis. Yet the evidence is
achievement scores. Moreover, the char- beginning to mount and seems to indicate
acteristics that do matter are not highly fairly consistently that the past ways of
correlated with these factors. Yet these operating schools leave something to be
attributes are being purchased by the desired.
school district. Since turnover is costly,