Nber Working Paper Series the Narrowing Gap in New York City Teacher Qualifications and Its Implications for Student Achievement in High-poverty Schools

The gap between the qualifications of New York City teachers in high-poverty schools and low-poverty schools has narrowed substantially since 2000. Most of this gap-narrowing resulted from changes in the characteristics of newly hired teachers, and largely has been driven by the virtual elimination of newly hired uncertified teachers coupled with an influx of teachers with strong academic backgrounds in the Teaching Fellows program and Teach for America. The improvements in teacher qualifications, especially among the poorest schools, appear to have resulted in improved student achievement. By estimating the effect of teacher attributes using a value-added model, the analyses in this paper predict that observable qualifications of teachers resulted in average improved achievement for students in the poorest decile of schools of .03 standard deviations, about half the difference between being taught by a first year teacher and a more experienced teacher. If limited to teachers who are in the first or second year of teaching, where changes in qualifications are greatest, the gain equals two-thirds of the first-year experience effect. Donald Boyd Rockefeller Institute of Government 411 State Street Albany, NY 12203 [email protected] Hamilton Lankford School of Education, ED 317 University at Albany State University of New York Albany, NY 12222 [email protected] Susanna Loeb 524 CERAS, 520 Galvez Mall Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305 and NBER [email protected] Jonah Rockoff Columbia University Graduate School of Business 3022 Broadway #603 New York, NY 10027-6903 and NBER [email protected] James Wyckoff Curry School of Education University of Virginia P.O. Box 400277 Charlottesville, VA 22904-4277 [email protected]