Teacher Applicant Hiring and Teacher Performance: Evidence from DC Public Schools / Brian Jacob, Jonah E. Rockoff, Eric S. Taylor, Benjamin Lindy, Rachel Rosen.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jacob, Brian.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Rockoff, Jonah E.

Taylor, Eric S.

Lindy, Benjamin.

Rosen, Rachel.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w22054.

NBER working paper series no. w22054

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Other Title:

Teacher Applicant Hiring and Teacher Performance

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2016.

Summary:

Selecting more effective teachers among job applicants during the hiring process could be a highly cost-effective means of improving educational quality, but there is little research that links information gathered during the hiring process to subsequent teacher performance. We study the relationship among applicant characteristics, hiring outcomes, and teacher performance in the Washington DC Public Schools (DCPS). We take advantage of detailed data on a multi-stage application process, which includes written assessments, a personal interview, and sample lessons, as well as the annual evaluations of all DCPS teachers, based on multiple criteria. We identify a number of background characteristics (e.g., undergraduate GPA) as well as screening measures (e.g., applicant performance on a mock teaching lesson) that strongly predict teacher effectiveness. Interestingly, we find that these measures are only weakly, if at all, associated with the likelihood of being hired, suggesting considerable scope for improving teacher quality through the hiring process.

Notes:

Print version record

March 2016.