The Value of Smarter Teachers: International Evidence on Teacher Cognitive Skills and Student Performance

NBER Working Paper No. 20727

Issued in December 2014, Revised in March 2018

NBER Program(s):Children, Economics of Education, Labor Studies



International differences in teacher quality are commonly hypothesized to be a key determinant of the large international student performance gaps, but lack of consistent quality measures has precluded testing this. We construct country-level measures of teacher cognitive skills using unique assessment data for 31 countries. We find substantial differences in teacher cognitive skills across countries that are strongly related to student performance. Results are supported by fixed-effects estimation exploiting within-country between-subject variation in teacher skills. A series of robustness and placebo tests indicate a systematic influence of teacher skills as distinct from overall differences among countries in the level of cognitive skills. Moreover, observed country variations in teacher cognitive skills are significantly related to differences in women’s access to high-skill occupations outside teaching and to salary premiums for teachers.

Acknowledgments

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Document Object Identifier (DOI): 10.3386/w20727

Published: Eric A. Hanushek & Marc Piopiunik & Simon Wiederhold, 2019. "The Value of Smarter Teachers," Journal of Human Resources, vol 54(4), pages 857-899. citation courtesy of

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