What's the Value of a High Quality Teacher?

Sucky teachers. We've all had them. But what's the value of a good teacher over a bad one? According to working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a good teacher could be marginally worth over $400,000 per year over a bad one.

This paper in particular reminds me a lot of the discussions that were going on last year with the teacher's union. This paper puts a lot of empirical evidence behind those discussions to reveal the truth about pay structures for the market for teachers.

The abstract of the paper is below:

"Most analyses of teacher quality end without any assessment of the economic value of altered teacher quality. This paper combines information about teacher effectiveness with the economic impact of higher achievement. It begins with an overview of what is known about the relationship between teacher quality and student achievement. This provides the basis for consideration of the derived demand for teachers that comes from their impact on economic outcomes. Alternative valuation methods are based on the impact of increased achievement on individual earnings and on the impact of low teacher effectiveness on economic growth through aggregate achievement. A teacher one standard deviation above the mean effectiveness annually generates marginal gains of over $400,000 in present value of student future earnings with a class size of 20 and proportionately higher with larger class sizes. Alternatively, replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers could move the U.S. near the top of international math and science rankings with a present value of $100 trillion."