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Broken gears: the value added of higher education on teachers’ academic achievement

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Abstract

Good teachers are essential for high-quality educational systems. However, little is known about teachers’ skill formation during college. By combining two standardized tests for Colombian students, one taken at the end of senior year in high school and the other when students are near graduation from college, we test the extent to which students majoring in education relatively improve or deteriorate their skills in quantitative reasoning, native language and foreign language, in comparison with students in other programs. We find that teachers’ skills vis-à-vis those in other majors deteriorate in quantitative reasoning and foreign language, although these skills deteriorate less for those in math-oriented and foreign language-oriented programs, respectively. For native language, we do not find evidence of robust differences in relative learning mobility.

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Notes

  1. Instructions to gain access the data can be found at ICFES: http://www2.icfes.gov.co/investigacion/acceso-a-bases-de-datos.

  2. See: http://www.icfes.gov.co/examenes/.

  3. Refer to the following link: https://sites.google.com/site/cfbalcazars/misc for information on how we classified each major in education into each of these four categories.

  4. Given that \(t_{i,1}\) is endogenous for modeling students’ skills, \(t_{i,1} \times y_{i,0}\) is also endogenous. Also remember that any valid instrument for \(t_{i,1}\) can also be used as a valid instrument for \(t_{i,1} \times y_{i,0}\).

  5. See: http://www.icfes.gov.co/resultados/.

  6. To dissipate any doubts regarding our instruments, we also compute tests for underidentification, weak identification and overidentification.

  7. See Heckman and Navarro-Lozano (2004) for a related discussion.

  8. Table 5 in the "Appendix" shows the size of the common support after adding each matching variable at a time. After controlling for the full set of observable characteristics, we are left with 61 % approximately of the teachers sample and 21 % of the other professionals sample. Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests for the equality of the distributions of teachers and other professionals fail to reject the null hypothesis.

  9. The first-step estimates are in Table 6 in the "Appendix".

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Acknowledgments

The comments of Mariana Alfonso, Leonardo Bonilla, Fernando Fernández, Diana Hincapie, Catherine Rodríguez, Martha Schmitz and Emiliana Vegas are specially acknowledged. Daniel Alonso provided research assistance. The findings herein do not necessarily represent the views of the Inter-American Development Bank, The World Bank Group or their Boards of Directors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Poverty Global Practice, The World Bank Group, 1818 H St. NW, Washington, DC, USA

    Carlos Felipe Balcázar

  2. Education Division, Inter-American Development Bank, 1300 New York Ave. NW, Washington, DC, USA

    Hugo Ñopo

Authors
  1. Carlos Felipe Balcázar
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  2. Hugo Ñopo
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Correspondence to Carlos Felipe Balcázar.

Appendix

Appendix

See appendix of Tables 5 and 6.

Table 5 Size of common support and Kolmogorov–Smirnov tests
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Table 6 First-stage regressions for the decision of being a teacher
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Balcázar, C.F., Ñopo, H. Broken gears: the value added of higher education on teachers’ academic achievement. High Educ 72, 341–361 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9960-0

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