What Do Test Scores Miss? The Importance of Teacher Effects on Non–Test Score Outcomes

Teachers affect a variety of student outcomes through their influence on both cognitive and noncognitive skill. I proxy for students’ noncognitive skill using non–test score behaviors. These behaviors include absences, suspensions, course grades, and grade repetition in ninth grade. Teacher effects on test scores and those on behaviors are weakly correlated. Teacher effects on behaviors predict larger impacts on high school completion and other longer-run outcomes than their effects on test scores. Relative to using only test score measures, using effects on both test score and noncognitive measures more than doubles the variance of predictable teacher impacts on longer-run outcomes.

• Publication year

  2018

• Venue

  Journal of Political Economy

• Publication date

  2018-08-30

• Fields of study

  Economics, Education, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1086/699018
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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