This study uses administrative data linking students and teachers at the classroom level to evaluate teacher quality and joint production in secondary school. Teacher quality is measured by value-added to student test scores in math and reading. Although empirical research has struggled to link...

Value-added modeling continues to gain traction as a tool for measuring teacher performance. However, recent research (Rothstein, 2009, forthcoming) questions the validity of the value-added approach by showing that it does not mitigate student-teacher sorting bias (its presumed primary...

This study uses administrative data linking students and teachers at the classroom level to estimate teacher value-added to student test scores. We find that variation in teacher quality is an important contributor to student achievement more important than has been implied by previous work....

Value-added measures of teacher quality may be sensitive to the quantitative properties of the testing instruments upon which they are based. This paper focuses on the sensitivity of value-added to a particularly relevant testing-instrument property test-score-ceiling effects. Test-score...

We evaluate the integrating and segregating effects of school choice in a large, urban school district. Our findings, based on applications for fall 2001, suggest that open enrollment, a school-choice program that does not have explicit integrative objectives and does not provide busing,...