Teacher Effects on Student Achievement and Height: A Cautionary Tale
Marianne Bitler1, Sean Corcoran2, Thurston Domina3
1UC Davis & NBER.
Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness
|January 26, 2024
Summary
Value-added models may overestimate teacher effectiveness. Unexplained classroom variations, not teacher impact, drive large estimated effects on student height, a factor teachers cannot influence. Refined models show zero teacher impact on height.
Area of Science:
- Educational Measurement
- Statistics in Education
Background:
- Value-added models (VAMs) are widely used to estimate teacher effectiveness.
- Concerns exist regarding the validity of VAMs due to potential confounding factors.
- Teacher effects on non-academic outcomes are poorly understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the validity of VAMs by examining teacher effects on student height, an outcome teachers cannot influence.
- To identify sources of bias in commonly used VAMs.
- To assess the reliability of VAMs for estimating teacher effectiveness.
Main Methods:
- Applied standard value-added models to New York City student data.
- Analyzed teacher effects on student height and compared them to effects on math and reading achievement.
- Investigated potential explanations including student-teacher sorting and classroom-level variation.
- Utilized models that disentangle persistent and transient classroom effects.
Main Results:
- Standard VAMs produced large, statistically significant teacher effects on student height, comparable to those on academic achievement.
- No evidence of student sorting to teachers based on prior height was found.
- Correlations between teacher effects on height across years and between height and achievement effects were insignificant.
- Transient classroom variation, not persistent teacher effects, drove the large estimated impacts on height.
Conclusions:
- Commonly used VAMs may produce misleading estimates of teacher effectiveness due to unaddressed classroom-level variation.
- Teacher value-added on non-academic outcomes like height should theoretically be zero.
- Models that account for transient classroom effects confirm the absence of teacher impact on student height, supporting their use in research settings.
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