Disparate Teacher Effects, Comparative Advantage, and Match Quality

Author: Wiliam Delgado

This reflects work completed in coordination with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research.

Project Summary

This study uses data from the Chicago Public Schools to examine differences in student performance and experiences relative to varying measures of teacher quality and seeks to ask: Is the best teacher the best for everyone? The analysis explores the extent to which “highly effective” teachers are differentially effective for different groups of students, particularly Black students. This then leads the author to imagine a new, novel measure of teacher quality that takes these differences into account, a measure he calls a teacher’s “comparative advantage.” The working paper continues to theorize that leveraging this comparative advantage metric within policy and practice decisions (e.g., student assignment patterns) could have an outsized impact on the Black – non-Black achievement gap.

Key Findings 

• Teacher impacts on Black students varied widely.
• The teachers that were more effective for Black students often were also more effective for non-Black students, but not always.
• Race-specific value-added scores were predictive of teachers’ subsequent effects on students.
• Experienced teachers and teachers with a master’s degree tended to be highly effective overall, but much less effective for Black than non-Black students.
• Incorporating teachers’ revealed comparative advantage into policy decisions has the potential to increase the efficiency and equity of education systems.