This paper investigates how the precision and stability of a teacher's value-added estimate relates to the characteristics of the teacher's students. Using a large administrative data set and a variety of teacher value-added estimators, it finds that the stability over time of teacher...

The federal government's Race to the Top competition has promoted the adoption of test-based performance measures as a component of teacher evaluations throughout many states, but the validity of these measures has been controversial among researchers and widely contested by teachers' unions. A...

The typical measure used by researchers and school administrators to evaluate teachers is based on how the students' achievement increases after being exposed to the teacher, or based on the teacher's "value-added''. When teacher value-added is heterogeneous across her students, the typically...

We examine the relationship between the distribution of upper secondary school performance and a range of individual and school level characteristics using unconditional quantile regression methods and data from Ireland. We find that determinants such as social class, maternal unemployment,...

En este trabajo se analizan los cambios en la desigualdad producidos durante el período 1998-2005. Se presenta un conjunto de resultados que pueden contribuir a entender mejor los cambios en la desigualdad. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que la desigualdad distributiva observada entre ambos...

An explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect is provided which does not require any psychological explanation, because it is derived as a statistical artefact. This is achieved by specifying a simple statistical model which explicitly takes the (random) boundary constraints into account. This...

Las regiones argentinas presentan diferencias en su estructura poblacional y también en la forma en que retribuyen a los distintos factores. Este trabajo estudia cómo esas diferencias afectan la distribución del ingreso y la pobreza, aplicando técnicas de microdescomposición. La...

Time preferences can affect divorce probability both affecting the quality of the match and affecting the spouses' reactions to negative shocks. We analyze the relationship between time preferences and divorce decisions using data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth, which...

In OECD countries, 'real world' upper-secondary vocational education and training (VET) programs are used to engage less academically oriented youth in learning, while helping to prepare them for post-school work and/or further training. In general terms, VET programs with high employer...

We study the properties of two specification tests that have been applied to a variety of estimators in the context of value-added measures (VAMs) of teacher and school quality: the Hausman test for choosing between random and fixed effects and a test for feedback (sometimes called a...