The Value of a College Education: Estimating the Effect of Teacher Preparation on Student Achievement

Federal legislation currently holds institutions of higher education accountable for the quality of teachers that they produce. However research has yet to demonstrate that teacher preparation programs (TPPs) have differential effects on the quality of teachers they produce in terms of student achievement. This study uses data from a sample of 2,582 5th grade math students in an urban school district in Kentucky and a school fixed effects design to explore the variation in average TPP effects. The authors find that TPPs are differentially effective in training teachers, which in turn impacts student performance on 5th grade math scores. There is also some indication that these differential effects converge around teachers’ fifth year of teaching.