Teacher Knowledge and Student Achievement

The literature shows that teachers differ greatly in how much they teach their students. But little is known about which teacher attributes make for a good teacher. In one paper, we exploit specific Peruvian data to estimate the effect of teacher subject knowledge on student achievement. As we can observe both student and teacher achievement in two subjects (math and reading) in the data, our analysis can circumvent bias from any student and teacher characteristics that do not vary between the two subjects. The results show that teacher subject knowledge indeed has a noteworthy effect on student achievement particularly in math.

Research paper:

The Impact of Teacher Subject Knowledge on Student Achievement: Evidence from Within-Teacher Within-Student Variation (with J. Metzler). Journal of Development Economics 99 (2): 486-496, 2012