) of Norwegian schools, where between-school differences are smaller than in the US. I find that VA indicators are able to … predict in-school performance without bias. Furthermore, VA is strongly related to long-term outcomes, and differences between … differences in school quality, rather than unobserved student characteristics. Analyses of teacher grades and exam scores suggest …

We show that, when school quality is measured by the educational standard and attaining the standard requires costly … relatively high cost of effort, who would find the high standards of the public school excessively demanding. With the key …

of assessing the impact of education quality, the teacher contribution to pupils' achievement and the effect of school …