Graded on a curve
Andrew Belasco, Kelly Rosinger & James Hearn
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2015, Pages 206-223
Abstract:
The test-optional movement in the United States emerged largely in response to criticism of standardized admissions tests as inadequate and potentially biased measures of postsecondary promise. Although anecdotal reports suggest that test-optional policies have improved campus diversity, empirical research has not yet confirmed this claim. Consequently, this study employs quasi-experimental techniques to assess the relationship between test-optional policy implementation and subsequent growth in the proportion of low-income and minority students enrolling at adopting liberal arts colleges. It also examines whether test-optional policies increase institutional standing through greater application numbers and higher reported Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) scores. Results show that, on average, test-optional policies enhance the perceived selectivity, rather than the diversity, of participating institutions.
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Peter Hunsberger & Seth Gitter
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
The National Collegiate Athletic Association has faced growing scrutiny due to the perceived disparity between the compensation athletes receive and their contribution to athletic revenue. Our novel use of college football game–level statistics shows a gap of millions of dollars between compensation and marginal revenue product (MRP) for elite quarterbacks, consistent with previous studies. Professional sports typically weight pay toward ex ante expected value of performance rather than incentives that pay ex post of performance. Using high school prospect rankings, we show ex ante estimates of elite quarterback expected MRP are substantially lower, roughly US$400,000, and have limited statistical significance with respect to winning or revenue. Our ex ante measurements suggest that expected player value may be closer to the value of scholarships than previous research suggests due to the difficulty in predicting which high school quarterbacks will excel in college.
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Thinking, Fast and Slow? Some Field Experiments to Reduce Crime and Dropout in Chicago
Sara Heller et al.
NBER Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
This paper describes how automatic behavior can drive disparities in youth outcomes like delinquency and dropout. We suggest that people often respond to situations without conscious deliberation. While generally adaptive, these automatic responses are sometimes deployed in situations where they are ill-suited. Although this is equally true for all youths, disadvantaged youths face greater situational variability. This increases the likelihood that automaticity will lead to negative outcomes. This hypothesis suggests that interventions that reduce automaticity can lead to positive outcomes for disadvantaged youths. We test this hypothesis by presenting the results of three large-scale randomized controlled trials (RCTs) of interventions carried out on the south and west sides of Chicago that seek to improve the outcomes of low-income youth by teaching them to be less automatic. Two of our RCTs test a program called Becoming a Man (BAM) developed by Chicago-area non-profit Youth Guidance; the first, carried out in 2009-10, shows participation improved schooling outcomes and reduced violent-crime arrests by 44%, while the second RCT in 2013-14 showed participation reduced overall arrests by 31%. The third RCT was carried out in the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) in 2009-11 and shows reductions in return rates of 22%. We also present results from various survey measures suggesting the results do not appear to be due to changes in mechanisms like emotional intelligence or self-control. On the other hand results from some decision-making exercises we carried out seem to support reduced automaticity as a key mechanism.
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Robert Stevens et al.
American Educational Research Journal, June 2015, Pages 582-617
Abstract:
This research investigated the cognitive demands of reading curricula from 1910 to 2000. We considered both the nature of the text used and the comprehension tasks asked of students in determining the cognitive demands of the curricula. Contrary to the common assumption of a trend of simplification of the texts and comprehension tasks in third- and sixth-grade curricula, the results indicate that curricular complexity declined early in the century and leveled off over the middle decades but has notably increased since the 1970s, particularly for the third-grade curricula.
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Matthew Davis & Blake Heller
University of Pennsylvania Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
While it is well-known that certain charter schools dramatically increase students' standardized test scores, there is considerably less evidence that these human capital gains persist into adulthood. To address this matter, we match three years of lottery data from a high-performing charter high school to administrative college enrollment records and estimate the effect of winning an admissions lottery on college matriculation, quality, and persistence. Seven to nine years after the lottery, we find that lottery winners are 10.0 percentage points more likely to attend college and 9.5 percentage points more likely to enroll for at least four semesters. These impacts do not come at the expense of college quality; our estimates are entirely driven by enrollment at selective, four-year institutions. Finally, we provide non-experimental evidence that more recent cohorts at other campuses increased enrollment at a similar rate. Overall, our results suggest that the causal effects of attending a "No Excuses" high school extend beyond graduation and into early adulthood.
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Early Childhood Education by MOOC: Lessons from Sesame Street
Melissa Kearney & Phillip Levine
NBER Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
Sesame Street is one of the largest early childhood interventions ever to take place. It was introduced in 1969 as an educational, early childhood program with the explicit goal of preparing preschool age children for school entry. Millions of children watched a typical episode in its early years. Well-designed studies at its inception provided evidence that watching the show generated an immediate and sizeable increase in test scores. In this paper we investigate whether the first cohorts of preschool children exposed to Sesame Street experienced improved outcomes subsequently. We implement an instrumental variables strategy exploiting limitations in television technology generated by distance to a broadcast tower and UHF versus VHF transmission to distinguish counties by Sesame Street reception quality. We relate this geographic variation to outcomes in Census data including grade-for-age status in 1980, educational attainment in 1990, and labor market outcomes in 2000. The results indicate that Sesame Street accomplished its goal of improving school readiness; preschool-aged children in areas with better reception when it was introduced were more likely to advance through school as appropriate for their age. This effect is particularly pronounced for boys and non-Hispanic, black children, as well as children living in economically disadvantaged areas. The evidence regarding the impact on ultimate educational attainment and labor market outcomes is inconclusive.
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In the Union Now: Understanding Public Sector Union Membership
Jacob Fowles & Joshua Cowen
Administration & Society, July 2015, Pages 574-595
Abstract:
Despite periodic consideration of public sector unions in the public management and administration literature, empirical evidence on the union membership decisions of public employees remains scant. In this article, we begin to address this issue by considering unique data on union membership drawn from a local educational agency in a midsize American city. We find union membership rates to be highest in schools that are hardest to staff and where working conditions may be most difficult. We consider this evidence in light of recent efforts to reform public sector unions in general and teacher unions in particular.
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Bargaining for Success: Examining the Relationship Between Teacher Unions and Student Achievement
Todd Vachon & Josef (Kuo-Hsun) Ma
Sociological Forum, June 2015, Pages 391–414
Abstract:
While many previous studies have identified a positive relationship between teachers unions and student achievement on standardized tests, little research to date has explored the channels through which unions might actually affect achievement. Utilizing multilevel random intercept models, we examine the effects of two categories of items commonly negotiated in teacher contracts — “industrial union” items and “professional union” items — on individual student math scores. Further, we assess the ability of these two clusters of variables to explain the positive union effect found in previous research. The results confirm that teachers unions are positively associated with student achievement and suggest that the industrial model explains moderately more of the union effect than the professional model; however, only the combination of both models is capable of reducing the union effect to nonsignificance. These findings are also confirmed in a supplemental analysis utilizing instrumental variables to account for the possibility of endogeneity. Finally, a decomposition of the union effect suggests that teachers unions are most beneficial to middle- and high-achieving students. We conclude that through industrial and professional bargaining, teachers are able to secure higher salaries, credentialing, and greater autonomy which lead to improved student achievement.
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Peter Bergman & Matthew Hill
Columbia University Working Paper, May 2015
Abstract:
In theory, the publication of performance ratings may improve performance through reputation concerns and peer effects or impede performance by demoralizing employees. This paper uses school-district data and a regression discontinuity design to answer how consumers and employees respond to making performance information public. We find that high-performing students sorted into classrooms with highly-rated teachers as a result of publication. Teachers who were published do not perform better or worse than teachers who were not published on average. This average effect is due to the heterogeneous impact of publication; highly-rated teachers perform worse following publication while low-rated teachers perform better. On net, the gap between high and low-performing students closes slightly as a result.
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Performance Federalism and Local Democracy: Theory and Evidence from School Tax Referenda
Vladimir Kogan, Stéphane Lavertu & Zachary Peskowitz
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Federal governments are increasingly employing empirical measures of lower-level government performance to ensure that provincial and local jurisdictions pursue national policy goals. We call this burgeoning phenomenon “performance federalism” and argue that it can distort democratic accountability in lower-level elections. We estimate the impact of a widely publicized federal indicator of local school district performance — one that we show does not allow voters to draw valid inferences about the quality of local educational institutions — on voter support for school tax levies in a U.S. state uniquely appropriate for this analysis. The results indicate that a signal of poor district performance increases the probability of levy failure, a substantively large and robust effect that disproportionately affects impoverished communities. The analysis employs a number of identification strategies and tests for multiple behavioral mechanisms to support the causal interpretation of these findings.
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Marcus Winters
Educational Researcher, May 2015, Pages 228-236
Abstract:
A widely cited report by the federal Government Accountability Office found that charter schools enroll a significantly smaller percentage of students with disabilities than do traditional public schools. However, thus far no hard evidence exists to definitively explain or quantify the disparity between special education enrollment rates in charter and traditional public schools. This article uses student-level data from Denver, Colorado, to map the creation and growth of the special education gap in elementary and middle school grades. The gap begins because students with disabilities are less likely to apply to charter schools in gateway grades than are nondisabled students. However, the special education gap in Denver elementary schools more than doubles as students progress between kindergarten and the fifth grade. About half of the growth in the gap in elementary grades (46%) occurs because of classification differences across sectors. The remaining 54% of the growth in the gap in elementary grades is due to differences in student mobility across sectors. However, the gap does not primarily grow — and in fact tends to shrink — due to the movement of students with disabilities across sectors and out of the city’s school system. Rather, the impact of student mobility on the gap is driven primarily by nondisabled students: Regular enrollment students are more likely to enter into charter schools, thus disproportionately reducing the percentage of students with disabilities within the charter sector.
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The distribution and mobility of effective teachers: Evidence from a large, urban school district
Jennifer Steele et al.
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using seven years of student achievement data from a large urban school district in the south, this study examines the sorting of teachers’ value-added effectiveness estimates by student demographics and considers factors that may contribute to such sorting. We find that students in schools in the highest quartile of minority enrollments have teachers with value-added estimates that are about 0.11 of a student-level standard deviation lower than their peers in schools in the lowest minority quartile. However, neither teacher mobility patterns nor between-school differences in teacher qualifications seems responsible for this sorting. Though the highest minority schools face higher teacher turnover, they do not disproportionately lose their highest value-added teachers, nor are teachers with high value-added systematically migrating to lower-minority schools. Instead, teachers in the highest minority schools have lower value-added on average, regardless of experience. We find suggestive but inconclusive evidence that teachers’ improvement rates differ by minority-enrollment quartile.
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How Do College Students Respond to Public Information about Earnings?
Matthew Wiswall & Basit Zafar
Journal of Human Capital, Summer 2015, Pages 117-169
Abstract:
Expectations are important determinants of decisions made under uncertainty, and if individuals’ expectations are biased, they can make suboptimal choices. This paper uses a unique “information” experiment in which we provide college students true information about the population distribution of earnings. We find that college students are substantially misinformed about population earnings and revise their earnings beliefs in a sensible way in response to the information. The specificity and informativeness of the signal matters for updating. There is, however, substantial heterogeneity in students’ updating heuristics. We also find that students revise their intended major in response to the information.
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Laura Nichols & Ángel Islas
Journal of Adolescent Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Interview, survey, and academic transcript data with a diverse sample of first-generation college (FGC) and continuing generation college (CGC) premedical intended emerging adults are analyzed to study academic outcomes and any differences in the availability and use of social capital the first year of college. CGC students know many people with college degrees including those in careers they aspire to obtain, while FGC students do not. All students identify parents as very important forms of social capital who contribute to their success in college, but the types of support differs by educational background. Students whose parents have at least a bachelor’s degree (CGC) are “pulled” through their first year with specific advice from their parents about how to succeed in college, while FGC students are “pushed” by their parents with support. In addition, CGC students display evidence of enacting Lareau’s concept of concerted cultivation, being much more likely than FGC students to approach and gain assistance from professors, openly critiquing those professors and classes in which they are not doing well and showing a sense of entitlement to and confidence in their ability to stay on the premedical track, even when receiving low test scores.
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The Relationship Between Siblings’ College Choices: Evidence from One Million SAT-Taking Families
Joshua Goodman et al.
Economics of Education Review, October 2015, Pages 75–85
Abstract:
Recent empirical work has demonstrated the importance both of educational peer effects and of various factors that affect college choices. We connect these literatures by highlighting a previously unstudied determinant of college choice, namely the college choice made by one's older sibling. Data on 1.6 million sibling pairs of SAT-takers reveals that younger and older siblings’ choices are very closely related. One-fifth of younger siblings enroll in the same college as their older siblings. Compared to their high school classmates of similar academic skill and with observably similar families, younger siblings are about 15-20 percentage points more likely to enroll in four-year colleges or highly competitive colleges if their older siblings do so first. These findings vary little by family characteristics. Younger siblings are more likely to follow the college choices of their older siblings the more they resemble each other in terms of academic skill, age and gender. We discuss channels through which older siblings’ college choices might causally influence their younger siblings, noting that the facts documented here should prompt further research on the sharing of information and shaping of educational preferences within families.
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Teacher Effectiveness: An Analysis of Licensure Screens
James Shuls & Julie Trivitt
Educational Policy, June 2015, Pages 645-675
Abstract:
Historically, the government has sought to improve the quality of the teacher workforce by requiring certification. Teachers are among the most licensed public personnel employees in the United States. Traditionally, an education degree with a student teaching experience and passage of licensure exams were necessary for licensure. In the 1980s, alternative paths to certification developed. In this article, we evaluated the impact of licensure screens and licensure routes on student achievement. Our findings from an analysis of Arkansas data suggest that there is little difference in terms of quality between traditionally and alternatively certified teachers. However, licensure exams do have some predictive power.
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When Education Expenditure Matters: An Empirical Analysis of Recent International Data
Emiliana Vegas & Chelsea Coffin
Comparative Education Review, May 2015, Pages 289-304
Abstract:
We analyze the diminishing correlations between education expenditure and learning outcomes to address two fundamental questions: Do education systems with different levels of education spending have different student achievement levels? If so, at what amount of education spending does the relationship between increased expenditure and student achievement differ? Using data from a large group of countries around the world, we find that the association between education spending and student performance in mathematics is statistically significant among systems that spend below a threshold of US$8,000 per student annually (in purchasing power parity). Controlling for average income (GDP) per capita and income inequality, our estimates suggest that education spending is associated with increased student performance only among systems that spend below this threshold, with mean student achievement approximately 14 points higher on the PISA scale for every additional US$1,000 spent.
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Higher Test Scores or More Schooling? Another Look at the Causes of Economic Growth
Theodore Breton
Journal of Human Capital, Summer 2015, Pages 239-263
Abstract:
I use a dynamic augmented Solow model to estimate the effect of international test scores and investment in schooling and tutoring on economic growth rates in 55 countries during 1985–2005. Either test scores or investment in schooling and tutoring can explain growth rates in the full data set or in countries that had less than 8 years of schooling in 1985. In countries with more schooling in 1985, investment in schooling has a small effect and test scores have no effect on growth rates. In the 24 countries with scores above 470, higher scores have no effect on growth rates.
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Choice of Ontario high schools and student sorting by ability
P.S.J. Leonard
Applied Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
To what extent can offering more choice in schooling lead to ‘cream skimming,’ or the sorting of students by ability? I study whether increased choice leads to student sorting by ability into high schools in the Greater Toronto Area. On average, 41% of students ‘opt out’ of the high school to which they would normally be assigned based on their residence. Students are more likely to opt out in areas where accessibility to other schools is greatest due to population density and explicit ‘open enrolment’ policies. While students of higher ability are generally more likely to opt out, an interaction term between school choice and ability is insignificant, suggesting that increased choice does not have differential impacts by student ability. Findings are robust to changes in assumptions about instrument exogeneity.
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The Effect of Shocks to College Revenues on For-Profit Enrollment: Spillover from the Public Sector
Sarena Goodman & Alice Henriques
Federal Reserve Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
This paper investigates whether declines in public funding for post-secondary institutions have increased for-profit enrollment. The two primary channels through which funding might operate to reallocate students across sectors are price (measured by tuition) and quality (measured by resource constraints). We estimate, on average, that a 10 percent cut in appropriations raises tuition about 1 to 2 percent and decreases faculty resources by ½ to 1 percent, creating substantial bottlenecks for prospective students on both price and quality. These cuts, in turn, generate a nearly one percentage point increase in the for-profit market share of “elastic” enrollment (i.e. attendees of community colleges plus for-profit institutions), owing entirely to students who, in a better funding environment, would have attended a public institution. We estimate an elasticity of for-profit enrollment with respect to state and local appropriations of 0.2. Finally, we extend our analysis is to show that for every 1 percent increase in flagship tuition generated by funding shortfalls, for-profit attendance increases by 1½ percent.
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The Impact of Tuition Increases on Undocumented College Students' Attainment
Dylan Conger & Lesley Turner
NBER Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
We examine the impact of a temporary price shock on the attainment of undocumented college students enrolled in a large urban college system. In spring 2002, the City University of New York reversed its policy of charging in-state tuition to undocumented students. By fall 2002, the state legislature restored in-state rates. Using a differences-in-differences identification strategy, we estimate impacts on reenrollment, credits, grades, and degree completion. The price shock led to an immediate 8 percent decrease in senior college students' enrollment. Senior college students who entered college the semester prior to the price shock experienced lasting reductions in attainment, including a 22 percent decrease in degree receipt. Conversely, among senior college students who been enrolled for at least a year, the price shock only affected the timing of exit.
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Russell Gersten et al.
American Educational Research Journal, June 2015, Pages 516-546
Abstract:
Replication studies are extremely rare in education. This randomized controlled trial (RCT) is a scale-up replication of Fuchs et al., which in a sample of 139 found a statistically significant positive impact for Number Rockets, a small-group intervention for at-risk first graders that focused on building understanding of number operations. The study was relatively small scale (one site) and highly controlled. This replication was implemented at a much larger scale — in 76 schools in four urban districts; 994 at-risk students participated. Intervention students participated in approximately 30 hours of small-group work in addition to classroom instruction; control students received typical instruction and whatever assistance the teacher would normally provide. Intervention students showed significantly superior performance on a broad measure of mathematics proficiency.
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David Blazar
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent investigations into the education production function have moved beyond traditional teacher inputs, such as education, certification, and salary, focusing instead on observational measures of teaching practice. However, challenges to identification mean that this work has yet to coalesce around specific instructional dimensions that increase student achievement. I build on this discussion by exploiting within-school, between-grade, and cross-cohort variation in scores from two observation instruments; further, I condition on a uniquely rich set of teacher characteristics, practices, and skills. Findings indicate that inquiry-oriented instruction positively predicts student achievement. Content errors and imprecisions are negatively related, though these estimates are sensitive to the set of covariates included in the model. Two other dimensions of instruction, classroom emotional support and classroom organization, are not related to this outcome. Findings can inform recruitment and development efforts aimed at improving the quality of the teacher workforce.
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Subjective and Projected Returns to Education
Nick Huntington-Klein
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is significant heterogeneity over high school students in the wage and employment rate returns to education. I evaluate this heterogeneity using subjective returns derived from a data set of high school juniors and seniors in Washington State. Variation over observables in projected returns estimated using observed data is uncorrelated with variation in subjective returns elicited by directly asking students about their beliefs. These results mean that returns estimated using observed data are likely a very weak proxy for student beliefs.
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Compulsory schooling laws and school crime
Gregory Gilpin & Luke Pennig
Applied Economics, Summer 2015, Pages 4056-4073
Abstract:
Extensive literature demonstrates that compulsory schooling laws improve educational attainment, well-being, civic involvement, and labour market outcomes. However, at-risk youth incapacitated to schools may impact the learning environment and school safety. The purpose of this article is to study whether raising the minimum dropout age (MDA) requirement above 16 increases crime committed within US public high schools. A difference-in-difference estimation exploits changes in state-level MDA laws over time and indicates that schools in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18 incur more overall crime relative to schools in states that do not, while no effect on overall crime is identified when the MDA requirement is raised to 17. Furthermore, these effects persist for 4 years after passage and more intensely in metropolitan areas. Coupling this research with existing literature suggests that when the MDA requirement is raised to 18, only a small portion of the observed reduction in juvenile crime is displaced to schools. Analysis by category of crime reveals schools incur more physical attacks, no change in illegal drug and property crimes, and fewer violent crimes in states that raise their MDA requirement to 18, while illegal drug crimes increase in states that raise their MDA requirement to 17.
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Benjamin Castleman, Laura Owen & Lindsay Page
Economics of Education Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
The summer melt and academic mismatch literatures have focused largely on college-ready, low-income students. Yet, a broader population of students may also benefit from additional support in formulating and realizing their college plans. We investigate the impact of a unique high school-university partnership to support college-intending students to follow through on their college plans. Specifically, we facilitated a collaborative effort between the Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) and the University of New Mexico (UNM), and randomly assigned 1602 APS graduates admitted to UNM across three experimental conditions: (1) outreach from an APS-based counselor; (2) outreach from a UNM-based counselor; or (3) the control group. Among Hispanic males, who are underrepresented at UNM compared to their APS graduating class, summer outreach improved timely postsecondary matriculation, with suggestive evidence that college-based outreach may be particularly effective. This finding is consistent with the social-psychological literature showing that increasing students’ sense of belonging at college can improve enrollment outcomes.
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Performance Screens for School Improvement: The Case of Teacher Tenure Reform in New York City
Susanna Loeb, Luke Miller & James Wyckoff
Educational Researcher, May 2015, Pages 199-212
Abstract:
Tenure is intended to protect teachers with demonstrated teaching skills against arbitrary or capricious dismissal. Critics of typical tenure processes argue that tenure assessments are superficial and rarely discern whether teachers in fact have the requisite teaching skills. A recent reform of the tenure process in New York City provides an unusual opportunity to learn about the role of tenure in teachers’ career outcomes. We find the reform led to many fewer teachers receiving tenure. Those not receiving tenure typically had their probationary periods extended to allow them an opportunity to demonstrate teaching effectiveness. These “extended” teachers were much more likely to leave their schools and be replaced by a teacher who was judged to be more effective.
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Career Technical Education and Labor Market Outcomes: Evidence from California Community Colleges
Ann Huff Stevens, Michal Kurlaender & Michel Grosz
NBER Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
This paper estimates the earnings returns to vocational, or career technical, education programs in the nation’s largest community college system. While career technical education (CTE) programs have often been mentioned as an attractive alternative to four-year colleges for some students, very little systematic evidence exists on the returns to specific vocational certificates and degrees. Using administrative data covering the entire California Community College system and linked administrative earnings records, this study estimates returns to CTE education. We use rich pre-enrollment earnings data and estimation approaches including individual fixed effects and individual trends, and find average returns to CTE certificate and degrees that range from 12 to 23 percent. The largest returns are for programs in the healthcare sector; among non-health related CTE programs estimated returns range from five to ten percent.
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Adjusted State Teacher Salaries and the Decision to Teach
Dan Rickman, Hongbo Wang & John Winters
Oklahoma State University Working Paper, April 2015
Abstract:
Using the 3-year sample of the American Community Survey (ACS) for 2009 to 2011, we compute public school teacher salaries for comparison across U.S. states. Teacher salaries are adjusted for state differences in teacher characteristics, cost of living, household amenity attractiveness and federal tax rates. Salaries of non-teaching college graduates, defined as those with occupations outside of education, are used to adjust for state household amenity attractiveness. We then find that state differences in federal tax-adjusted teacher salaries relative to those of other college graduates significantly affects the share of education majors that are employed as teachers at the time of the survey.
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Teachers Without Borders: Consequences of Teacher Labor Force Mobility
Kevin Bastian & Gary Henry
Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, June 2015, Pages 163-183
Abstract:
Many states have responded to teacher shortages by granting certification to individuals traditionally prepared out-of-state; now, out-of-state prepared teachers comprise a sizable percentage of the teacher workforce in many states. We know little about these teachers, and therefore, in the present study, we estimate the effectiveness of out-of-state prepared teachers in North Carolina elementary schools. We find that out-of-state prepared teachers are significantly less effective than in-state prepared and alternative entry teachers; however, there is a substantial overlap in the distributions of effectiveness across groups. Upon testing hypotheses to explain these findings, results indicate that differences in human capital help explain out-of-state prepared teachers’ underperformance and suggest the utility of research evidence to inform state policy and local hiring decisions.