Teacher Effectiveness and its Determinants in Germany: An In-Depth Analysis

Tasks

Building upon the first funding phase, the project aims to analyse the effectiveness of teaching and its determinants based on student-level achievement data from the German National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). A first key goal of the project is to exploit the longitudinal structure of the NEPS data to estimate value-added models of student achievement that include teacher fixed effects. Based on the estimated distribution of teacher quality, we can quantify the effects of having an “effective” teacher on student achievement. A second key goal of the project is to study the determinants of teacher quality.

Methods

Multiple estimation strategies are used to increase the reliability of the results on teacher effectiveness in Germany and teacher- and classroom effects are disentangled.

Data Sources

The NEPS survey information exceeds the information on teacher characteristics typically available in large-scale linked student-teacher datasets, enabling new and detailed analyses of the determinants of teacher effectiveness.

Results

Our research indicates that there is lower variance in teacher quality in Germany than in the United States. Furthermore, the project results suggest that the grades scored by teachers in their high-school leaving exams and in their second state exam at university are good predictors of teacher effectiveness. In models that exploit within student variation across subjects, the project also investigated a battery of other potential determinants of teacher quality.