Responsible researcher: Eduarda Miller de Figueiredo
Intervention Location: Jerusalem
Sample Size: 880 students
Sector: Education
Variable of Main Interest: Test Score
Type of Intervention: Budget increases for education
Methodology: Differences in Differences
Summary
The question of how teacher characteristics affect student learning has long been a concern for economists, educators, and parents. The literature suggests that parents would be willing to pay for more qualified teachers, thus, there is a need to estimate the effect of teachers' characteristics on student grades. Aiming to further understand this relationship, the authors carry out an analysis using the Differences in Differences method with schools in Jerusalem in which teachers received a training program. The results suggest that schools in the treatment group obtained higher results in mathematics and literature tests.
A study by Black (1999) suggests that parents would be willing to pay for more qualified teachers if they knew that this would make their children learn more. From this, numerous studies have emerged that attempt to estimate the effect of teachers' characteristics on their students' grades. Another line of research looks at how specific workplace training affects student performance, where on-the-job training may be no less important than more widely studied measures of general education or experience. According to Farrell and Oliveira (1993), initial training is essential for teaching the subject, while in-service training is essential for teaching teaching skills.
The objective of this article analyzed here was to contribute to the literature on the effects of in-service training through an evaluation of teacher training in primary education in Jerusalem schools. To this end, the causal effect of a training program designed to improve the teaching of linguistic and mathematical skills on the results of tests administered to students was estimated.
Public schools in Jerusalem and elsewhere in Israel are separated into religious and secular systems. In 1995, some Jerusalem public schools received a special amount of funds intended primarily for on-the-job teacher training. Thus, it was possible to provide a type of training to reading and mathematics teachers based on widely used pedagogical strategies originally developed in schools in the United States – “humanistic mathematics” and “individualized instruction”.[1].
Schools were selected for two neighborhoods in North Jerusalem [2] , as well as other towns and cities in Israel. These two chosen neighborhoods form a distinct geographic block, constituting an autonomous school district with a high proportion of immigrant students and performance levels below the city's measure.
The goal of the intervention was to increase pass rates, increase achievement test scores, and improve school climate. In which the intervention took the form of budget increases, although in some cities the money was destined for certain uses. In Jerusalem, the money was spent mainly on teacher training, which took place jointly with all teachers of the relevant subjects in a grade and everyone participated. The authors report that they confirmed that these teachers were the same ones who taught the children, with the exception of just one who retired.
In Jerusalem, a total of 10 primary schools were affected, 7 secular and 3 religious [3] . The authors present data for three dates: 1994, which is before the training program began; 1995, which is the year the training began; and 1996, which is a year in which training inputs remained at a new higher level in the treated schools.
Training is measured as the total hours of instruction received by all teachers in each school per week, averaged over the school year, and is recorded separately for reading and mathematics. The data demonstrated that there was a sharp increase in hours of training offered to teachers in secular schools between 1994-1995 and 1995-1996. The authors point out that, in contrast to data on training and expenses, hours of instruction per student and class size remained essentially unchanged in both treated and control schools.
The tests were based on the core material taught throughout the year at each grade level. However, although the intervention was school-wide, the only students for whom we have data on test scores before and after the intervention began is the cohort of fourth graders enrolled in the 1993-1994 school year. Therefore, the study is limited to fourth grade students in 1994 in schools.
Control schools were selected for comparability and practical reasons related to data collection. Out of 20 schools applying for the control group, 11 schools met the criteria for inclusion in the study.
The study was carried out for the two types of schools separately – religious systems and secular systems -. Thus, 406 students took the reading test and 428 took the math test in the secular treatment schools, while in the secular control schools there were 405 students in the reading test and 420 in the math test. Therefore, the evaluation strategy compares the population of fourth grade students enrolled in treated schools in 1994 with the population of students in control schools.
The authors used a Differences in Differences model to perform the impact analysis. Thus, they are based on the assumption that any differences between students in the treatment and control groups are fixed over time, so repeated observations on the same students can be used to make the treatment and control groups comparable. In which the variable of main interest is the score of the test taken by the student.
Comparisons of means by treatment status in the study show that students in treatment schools had lower test scores than students in control schools in 1994, before treatment began. Therefore, students in the two groups are not directly comparable. To correct for this bias, fixed effects were replaced with the assumption that students in treatment and control schools are comparable conditionally on prior test scores and other observed covariates.
The results for the secular schools show no significant change in the control schools' test scores between 1994 and 1996. In contrast, test scores increased considerably and significantly in the treatment schools. Thus, the estimate is an increase of 0.62 in reading test scores and 0.46 in mathematics, for the period from 1994 to 1996.
Estimates for religious schools show a sharp drop in treated schools. However, treatment in these schools began later and the scale of intervention was smaller, therefore, the authors emphasize that their results seem to be less reliable and more difficult to interpret. The results to control for the bias explained above demonstrate that most of the difference in 1994 scores between treatment and control students remains even after applying the bias control.
By subsampling math test scores, the findings are similar to those from the full sample. Thus, corroborating the results found previously.
The results found by this study suggest that teacher training may provide a less costly means of increasing test scores taken by public school students, highlighting that such an intervention may be an alternative to reducing class size or to increase school hours.
References
ANGRIST, Joshua D.; LAVY, Victor. Does teacher training affect pupil learning? Evidence from matched comparisons in Jerusalem public schools. Journal of labor economics , vol. 19, no. 2, p. 343-369, 2001.
[1] Translated from: “[...] 'humanistic mathematics' and 'individualized instruction'”.
[2] Neve Yaakov and Pisgat Zeev.
[3] The authors point out that one of the religious schools was removed from the analysis, as it was opened after the intervention began.
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