Class-size Reduction Policies and the Quality of Entering Teachers

Class-size Reduction Policies and the Quality of Entering Teachers

Speaker: Steven Dieterle (University of Edinburgh)

Hosted by: Andrea Patacconi

Venue: Room S86, Edward Wright Building

State-wide class-size reduction (CSR) policies have typically failed to produce large achievement gains. One explanation is that the introduction of such policies forces schools to hire relatively low-quality teachers. This paper uses data from an anonymous state to explore whether teacher quality suffered from the introduction of CSR. We find that it did, but not nearly enough to explain the small achievement e
ects of CSR. The combined fall in achievement due to hiring lower quality teachers and more inexperienced teachers is small relative to the unrealized gains. Furthermore, between-school differences in the quality of incoming teachers cannot explain the poor estimated CSR performance from previous quasi-experimental treatment-control comparisons.

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