Meriden School Climate Survey-Student Version (MSCS-SV)
Category: Student Well-Being
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 estimate that incentivized-transfer teachers’ value added dropped by 0.12 student standard deviations. This decline appears to be driven by lower match quality, negative indirect school effects, and the loss of student-specific human capital.
Research Categories
Keywords
Teacher Effectiveness; School Climate; Teacher Transfers; Value-Added
Education level
Citation
Document Object Identifier (DOI)
10.26300/9zjf-j191
EdWorkingPaper suggested citation:
Kraft, Matthew A., John P. Papay, Jessalynn James, and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum. (). Is Teacher Effectiveness Fully Portable? Evidence from the Random Assignment of Transfer Incentives. (EdWorkingPaper: -1405). Retrieved from
Annenberg Institute at Brown University: https://doi.org/10.26300/9zjf-j191In the News
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A Flypaper review on whether high-performing teachers stay as effective after taking incentive pay to move to low-performing schools. It summarizes Matthew Kraft, John Papay, Jessalyn James, and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum's study using Transfer Talent Initiative data.
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A commentary on whether teacher effectiveness transfers across schools. It discusses the new paper co-authored by Matthew Kraft reanalyzing the Talent Transfer Initiative experiment.
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Chalkbeat Ideas piece built around a new paper reexamining the Talent Transfer Initiative, which found that top teachers' value-added fell after moving to low-performing schools. The study by Matthew Kraft, John Papay and coauthors is linked in its NBER version and is also EdWorkingPaper 26-1405.
